Quotes About Awareness

Now, for the first time, I began to be aware of my heart, the heart itself: and with this awareness, conscious terror came. I realized that I knew nothing whatever about the way we are put together; and I realized that what I did not know might be in the process of killing me.

It's funny about people. Just before something happens, you almost know what it is. You do know what it is, I believe. You just haven't had the time—and now you won't have the time—to say it to yourself.

The blacks have a song which says, 'I can't believe what you say, because I see what you do.' No American film, relating to blacks, can possibly incorporate this observation.

anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster.

People who shut their eyes to reality simply invite their own destruction, and anyone who insists on remaining in a state of innocence long after that innocence is dead turns himself into a monster. The

The effort not to know what one knows is the most corrupting effort one can make—

In order to change a situation one has first to see it for what it is.

I think that people can be better than that, and I know that people van be better than they are. We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.

The great question that faced him this morning was whether or not he had ever, really, been present at his life. For if he had ever been present, then he was present still, and his world would open up before him.

We don't know enough about ourselves. I think it's better to know that you don't know, that way you can grow with the mystery as the mystery grows in you. But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people, especially most white people, are so lost.

A bill is coming in that I fear America is not prepared to pay.

All of us know, whether or not we are able to admit it, that mirrors can only lie, that death by drowning is all that awaits one there.

I missed the way the dark face closes, the way the dark eyes watch, the way the dark face opens and lights up the room.

Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.

We are capable of bearing a great burden, once we discover that the burden is reality and arrive where reality is.

They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand; and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it.

Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity.

The eyes of his friends told him that he was falling. His own heart told him so. But the air through which he rushed was his prison.

Black people, mainly, look down or look up but do not look at each other, not at you, and white people, mainly, look away.

and Rufus realized that he had not thought at all about this world and its power to hate and destroy.

Once one has begun to suspect this much about the world — once one has begun to suspect, that is, that one is not, and never will be, innocent, for the reason that no one is — some of the self-protective veils between oneself and reality begin to fall away.

SOMEONE ONCE SAID TO ME that the people in general cannot bear very much reality. He meant by this that they prefer fantasy to a truthful re-creation of their experience.

The brutality with which Negroes are treated in this country simply cannot be overstated, however unwilling white men may be to hear it.

But, these days, of course, everybody knows everything, that's why so many people are lost.