Quotes About Consciousness

there is no such thing as matter at all, and that the world consists of nothing but minds and their ideas. Hylas

Look into the irrationality closely, with a determination not to respect it, and not to let it dominate you. Whenever it thrusts foolish thoughts or feelings into your consciousness, pull them up by the roots, examine them, and reject them.

Is consciousness ultimate and simple, something to be merely accepted and contemplated? Or is it something complex, perhaps consisting in our way of behaving in the presence of objects, or, alternatively, in the existence in us of things called ideas, having a certain relation to objects, though different from them, and only symbolically representative of them?

The stuff of which the world of our experience is composed is, in my belief, neither mind nor matter, but something more primitive than either. Both mind and matter seem to be composite, and the stuff of which they are compounded lies in a sense between the two, in a sense above them both, like a common ancestor.

In national politics, where you are one of some twenty million voters, your influence is infinitesimal unless you are exceptional or occupy an exceptional position. You have, it is true, a twenty-millionth share in the government of others, but only a twenty-millionth share in the government of yourself. You are therefore much more conscious of being governed than of governing.

We are not only aware of things, but we are often aware of being aware of them.

The implication of the free-will doctrine are not realized by those who hold it. We say "why did you do it?" and expect the answer to mention beliefs and desires which caused action. When a man does not himself know why he acted as he did, we may search his unconscious for a cause, but it never occurs to us that there may have been no cause.

The faculty of being acquainted with things other than itself is the main characteristic of a mind.

We might state the argument by which [idealists] support their view in some such way as this: 'Whatever can be thought of is an idea in the mind of the person thinking of it; therefore nothing can be thought of except ideas in minds; therefore anything else is inconceivable, and what is inconceivable cannot exist.

Thus every principle of simplicity urges us to adopt the natural view, that there really are objects other than ourselves and our sense-data which have an existence not dependent upon our perceiving them.

Before we can profitably discuss whether we shall continue to exist after death, it is well to be clear as to the sense in which a man is the same person as he was yesterday.  

Although personal survival after death is an illusion, there is nevertheless something in the human mind that is eternal

It is in the moments when the mind is most active and the fewest things are forgotten that the most intense joys are experienced.

The drunkard who sees snakes does not imagine, afterwards, that he has had a revelation of a reality hidden from others […]. From a scientific point of view, we can make no distinction between the man who eats little and sees heaven and the man who drinks much and sees snakes.

It seems natural to suppose that self-consciousness is one of the things that distinguish men from animals: animals, we may suppose, though they have acquaintance with sense-data, never become aware of this acquaintance.

In one sense it must be admitted that we can never prove the existence of things other than ourselves and our experiences. No logical absurdity results from the hypothesis that the world consists of myself and my thoughts and feelings and sensations, and that everything else is mere fancy.

we can only infer it, and can never be directly and immediately aware of it.

Having, by a time of very intense concentration, planted the problem in my subconsciousness, it would germinate underground until, suddenly, the solution emerged with blinding clarity, so that it only remained to write down what had appeared as if in a revelation.

English old ladies still sentimentalize about the wisdom of the East and American intellectuals about the earth consciousness of the negro.

Acquaintance with objects essentially consists in a relation between the mind and something other than the mind; it is this that constitutes the mind's power of knowing things. If we say that the things known must be in the mind, we are either unduly limiting the mind's power of knowing, or we are uttering a mere tautology.

I shall never lose the sense of being a ghost.

very many philosophers, perhaps a majority, have held that there is nothing real except minds and their ideas. Such philosophers are called 'idealists'.

ViaÈ›a împlinit? presupune, pe lâng? virtute, multe altele – de pild?, inteligen??. Iar conÈ™tiinÈ›a este aici cel mai nepotrivit ghid, c?ci ea const? din vagi reminiscenÈ›e de percepte auzite în frageda tinereÈ›e, astfel încât nu este niciodat? mai înÈ›eleapt? decât guvernanta sau mama persoanei în cauz?.

The question whether we are also acquainted with our bare selves, as opposed to particular thoughts and feelings, is a very difficult one, upon which it would be rash to speak positively.