Quotes About Consciousness

Birds and animals probably think without knowing that they think; that is, they have not self-consciousness. Only man seems to be endowed with this faculty; he alone develops disinterested intelligence, intelligence that is not primarily concerned with his own safety and well-being but that looks abroad upon things.

How we feel about ourselves as we read the newspaper, set the table, wash the dishes, recycle the trash and wash our clothes... is essential to our overall happiness and well-being.

Morality must relate, at some level, to the well-being of conscious creatures. If there are more and less effective ways for us to seek happiness and to avoid misery in this world - and there clearly are - then there are right and wrong answers to questions of morality.

I freed a thousand slaves I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.

I certainly believe that what we perceive as humans is just the tip of the iceberg. I don't necessarily believe in vampires or werewolves or that kind of thing, but I believe there is definitely a realm we don't necessarily have access to.

Lofty questions about the mind are fascinating to ask, philosophers have been asking them for three millennia both in India where I am from and here in the West - but it is only in the brain that we can eventually hope to find the answers.

A radical inner transformation and rise to a new level of consciousness might be the only real hope we have in the current global crisis brought on by the dominance of the Western mechanistic paradigm.

I think we should stop drinking bottled water. There's no need to be drinking it if you're living in western communities.

The psyche of the individual is commensurate with the totality of creative energy. This requires a most radical revision of Western psychology.

As a man is, so he sees. As the eye is formed, such are its powers.

In Socrates' thought the two marks of individual self-consciousness appear; it is practical and it is social.

The practice of meditation can reveal to you more of your mental capacity.

Get practiced at taking deep breaths before you speak. This will give you the space to stop, notice what was about to come out of your mouth, and course correct if needed.

I think it's important to talk to your inner thing. The purpose is to go over the decisions that will affect my life and others. I pray that I don't make my decisions based on ego.

I think, with my own daughters, rather than preaching a feminine agenda, I just really try to help them understand what it meant to be a woman in the late 20th century and the consciousness of how to be a woman in the 21st century: What is working for you and what is working against you.

When you master the art of being fully awake to this moment, you bestow a precious gift on your soul - the experience of love. Being present is the art of the soul.

I think if you let go of preconceived ideas, you'll find everything in this life. For me, my understanding is God is all that is, God is everything, all that is, and your true God is within, and that's the power that you have as a human being.

I prefer insomnia to anaesthesia.

I prefer to be able to identify what I'm eating. I have to know.

For generations, black children have been brought up to have a critical race consciousness, a framework for dealing with prejudice and discrimination, which helps inoculate them against the spiritual toxins they will almost certainly encounter as they come of age in our society.

What people think is their individual nature is just a bundle of thoughts, emotions, ideas, opinions, and prejudices. The world can do without this individuality.

Obama's presence opened a new field for writers, and what began as curiosity about the man himself eventually expanded into curiosity about the community he had so consciously made his home and all the old, fitfully slumbering questions he'd awakened about American identity.

No one forgets the presence of the camera, no matter how long it's there.

Nothingness is not nothing at all, so it is physical, but not in the sense of constant presence. Nothingness is disturbing. It is there in a mind-independent sense; it is part of what is given.