Quotes About Awareness

Clarity affords focus.

Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness.

This is the tragedy: Consciousness has forced us into the paradoxical position of striving to be unself-conscious of what we are—hunks of spoiling flesh on disintegrating bones.

There is nothing like fear to complicate one's consciousness, inducing previously unknown levels of reflection

the knowledge that life is worthless is the flower of all human wisdom.

If things are not what they seem—and we are forever reminded that this is the case—then it must also be observed that enough of us ignore this truth to keep the world from collapsing.

As Zapffe concluded, we need to hamper our consciousness for all we are worth or it will impose upon us a too clear vision of what we do not want to see,

What we do, as a conscious species, is set markers for ourselves. Once we reach one marker, we advance to the next—as if we were playing a board game we think will never end, despite the fact that it will, like it or not. And if you are too conscious of not liking it, then you may conceive of yourself as a biological paradox that cannot live with its consciousness and cannot live without it. And in so living and not living, you take your place with the undead and the human puppet.

Whether you think consciousness to be a benefit or a horror, this is only what you think—and nothing else.

From them I had nothing to learn—one cannot cease to know what one does know.

might just as well ask how you knew how to do the things you did.

Whether you think consciousness to be a benefit or a horror, this is only what you think—and nothing else. But even though you cannot demonstrate the truth of what you think, you can at least put it on show and see what the audience thinks.

Question: How could we know we were keeping certain truths from ourselves regarding how things truly are in this world at its deepest level? Answer: Because we have done it before.

Something is back there. She feels this to be a horrible truth. She almost knows what the thing is, but, afflicted with some kind of oneiric aphasia, she cannot find the word for what she fears. She can only wait, hoping that sudden shock will soon bring her out of the dream, for she is now aware that "she is dreaming," thinking of herself in the third person.

Consciousness makes it seem as if (1) there is something to do; (2) there is somewhere to go; (3) there is something to be; (4) there is someone to know.

I have only recorded what everyone is saying (though they may not know they are saying it), and sometimes what they have seen (though they may not know they have seen it).

Life is a nightmare that leaves its mark upon you in order to prove that is, in fact, real.

as British economist John Maynard Keynes reportedly stated, "we are all dead.

You see how I live: shadows and silence, leaving things as I find them because I have no reason to disturb them. But there are things that I have known, even though I never wished to know them and cannot give them a name.

The look of the world's a lie, a face made up O'er graves and fiery depths, and nothing's true But what is horrible. If man could see The perils and diseases that he elbows Each day he walks a mile, which catch at him, Which fall behind and graze him as he passes, Then would he know that life's a single pilgrim Fighting unarmed among a thousand soldiers

Well-honed attention—as evidenced in trackers, mindfulness practitioners, athletes, hunters, artists, writers, ornithologists, and more—is something quite different. It can be focused narrowly or distributed across the entire visual field at will. Its focus can be internal (on the contents of mind) or external, and it can be sustained for long periods. It is penetrating, quick, and efficient, picking up signals that are altogether unseen by the untrained eye.

I have died so little today, friend, forgive me.

Knowledge is devalued when it becomes too generally known

This illustrates an important point: then as now, Americans tend to think about issues like macroeconomic policy or foreign affairs only when things go wrong. The rest of the time, they remain happily unaware of the policies and processes that function well everyday while the nation goes about its business.