Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
I recall feeling an almost delicious terror when one day I found myself alone in the midst of tall June grasses that grew high as my head. But here the secret working of self consciousness is almost too entangled with the things of the past for me to explain it.
Internationalism on the other hand admits that spiritual achievements have their roots deep in national life; from this national consciousness art and literature derive their character and strength and on it even many of the humanistic sciences are firmly based.
The idea that excites me the most concerns the two greatest puzzles in science: the origin of the universe, and the origin of consciousness. The origin of the universe is what I do for a living, working on string theory. But I am also fascinated by consciousness.
The situation around Terri Schiavo was a deeply held conflict over what to do if someone isn't going to return to consciousness or competence. Who will decide? Even there, where we had settled legal rules, we still had disagreement. We're torn about these things.
I believe that we are at a very low level of consciousness, and we do not know how to treat each other as human beings. We are caught up in our own lives, our own needs, our own ego gratification. I feel a strong sense of responsibility in delivering that message.
Our daughters were coming of age during a rising consciousness about gender equality. Throughout their school years - from kindergarten through graduate school, 1972 to 1992 - women were starting to take their places in areas traditionally reserved mostly for men.
As the practical value of altering consciousness becomes recognized, procedures to effect these alterations will become increasingly ordinary and unremarkable. The whole concept of changing states of consciousness will cease to have a threatening or exotic aspect.
If the clockwork universe equated the human body with the mechanics of the clock, the digital universe now equates human consciousness with the processing of the computer. We joke that things don't compute, that we need a reboot, or that our memory has been wiped.
When I came into consciousness as a writer when I was in my early 20s, I just assumed that a writer did - a poet writer did everything all at once. I would write poetry, and while writing poetry I would also write work in the world - if I could get into the world.
Once you understand the power of stimulus control, you can use it to your advantage by changing the stimuli in your environment and avoiding undesirable ones; or, if that's not possible, by filling your consciousness with thoughts about their less tempting aspects.
I write because writing is something that I have to do. And it doesn't matter whether people like it or not. When I write, I feel the pressure and anxiety that come with taking an empty piece of paper and trying to fill it with something from your own consciousness.
I was extremely irritated being photographed for a long time, then I gave up caring. Photography is a nauseating cliche, but there is a lot to it. You can tell so much about a person from it. You are exaggerating the consciousness. It's life-thickening, photography.
I told myself – as I’ve told myself before – that the body shuts down when the pain gets too bad, that consciousness is temporary, that this will pass. But just like always, I didn’t slip away. I was left on the shore with the waves washing over me, unable to drown.
In aesthetic consciousness we enter that painless state, prized by Epicurus as the state of the gods; for a moment we are delivered from the miserable pressure of the will. We celebrate the Sabbath from the penal servitude of willing; the wheel of Ixion stands still.
Religion has endured since the dawn of human consciousness precisely because it encompasses so much of being human. No idea has endured so long, gathered up so many disparate needs and wants and feelings, and inspired so many different paths towards understanding it.
So much of my writing derives from these questions that I ask myself - things that are utterly beyond my personal set of experiences - and it's my attempt to try to... understand, to sort of break out of my own consciousness, you know, the limitations of my own life.
In its entirety, probably, it follows us at every instant; all that we have felt, thought and willed from our earliest infancy is there, leaning over the present which is about to join it, pressing against the portals of consciousness that would fain leave it outside.
Corrupt fantasy points us, or forms us, in a consciousness that can lead to thinking that evil is good and good is evil. In the worst case, this may have long range effects, prompting the reader intuitively, subconsciously, to do evil while thinking they're doing good.
From my experience, I cannot doubt but that man, when lost to terrestrial consciousness, is indeed sojourning in another and uncorporeal life of far different nature from the life we know; and of which only the slightest and most indistinct memories linger after waking.
I'm not saying everybody has a social responsibility of what art they create, but art should be open-ended. I just feel there's a lack of consciousness and understanding of impact and reach. Just maybe, for a second, just think of the effect you could have with a lyric.
Just to say 'woke' is to always be in a constant stream of consciousness where you don't feel like the wool is pulled over your eyes so much. You question your belief that everything should just be presented to you on this beautiful plate. Everything is not as it seems.
But like a born actor who only really wants to direct, Gingrich has always been unsatisfied with what he's brilliant at. He can't still his hunger to deliver grand pronouncements on life, liberalism, conservatism, religion and whatever else swims into his consciousness.
We're still growing into that place of higher consciousness; we are becoming a global conscience. The idea is to unravel the onion and let go of the ego and evolve to that place where you perceive everything to be a beautiful experience rather than a daunting experience.
If all consciousness is subject to essential laws in a manner similar to that in which spatial reality is subject to mathematical laws, then these essential laws will be of most fertile significance in investigating facts of the conscious life of human and brute animals.
A writer has a use for his experiences that most civilians simply don't; he or she discerns material in situations that others simply live through. Perhaps there are some who disapprove of this, but without this double consciousness, literature would not get made at all.
I remember going to a son's friend's bar mitzvah, and the text that he chose to explicate was right at the beginning of Genesis. It was not about a fall from grace or a fall from perfection; it was about an awakening into consciousness, which is what it means to be human.
Science can explain what's happening down inside atoms and what's happening at the edge of the universe, but it cannot explain consciousness. It's a paradox--withou t consciousness there would be no science, but science doesn't know what to do, at all, with consciousness.
'Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.
In my other books, things do happen, but they are kind of bookends to the real action, which for me was an exploration of consciousness. Not that I don't get into the consciousness of the people in 'The Surrendered,' but you could say there's not as much anxiety about it.
I'm not sure about prizes. I don't know how far you can seriously raise public consciousness about poetry. Having a 'National Poetry Day,' like a 'No Smoking Day,' is just shelving the problem. Things which should by rights be every day are not best served by these things.
Consciousness is not the ineluctable starting point for self-understanding because there is a difference between being conscious and understanding oneself as a conscious being. The difference is between being in a certain state and knowing oneself to be in a certain state.
So for instance it becomes clear why space and time and even the properties of matter itself depend on the observer in consciousness. In fact when you take this point of view it even explains why the laws of the universe themselves are fine tuned for the existence of life.
A person influenced by circumstances can become viciously envious or affectionately kind. Our company and our surroundings have a crucial effect on our consciousness. How important it is to be an instrument to bring out the inherent good of each other rather than the worst.
Rajneeshism is creating a Noah's Ark of consciousness, remaining centered exactly in the middle of the cyclone. You can only escape within, and that's what I teach. I do not teach worship of God or any other ritual but only a scientific way of coming to your innermost core.
In the child, consciousness rises out of the depths of unconscious psychic life, at first like separate islands, which gradually unite to form a 'continent,' a continuous landmass of consciousness. Progressive mental development means, in effect, extension of consciousness.
Psychologically experienced consciousness is therefore no longer pure consciousness; construed Objectively in this way, consciousness itself becomes something transcendent, becomes an event in that spatial world which appears, by virtue of consciousness, to be transcendent.
Flashy characters are more entertaining to people because you get it. You don't have to work to get someone who says what they mean and says what they think. They're out there. It's harder to play a quiet character because everything happens in their stream of consciousness.
Even though I went to Exeter and Yale, and I enjoyed all the trappings of those places, I think at the same time - and maybe it's because I'm an immigrant kid and not white - there was always this other consciousness; that is, I was conscious of everything that was going on.
I do believe that any sort of electromagnetic energy that can be measured beyond the moment of death is, by the definition of energy, eternal. But I cop to the fact that calling it a 'soul' and presuming it sustains our consciousness in any form is, to put it kindly, a leap.
When we talk about novels, we don't often talk about imagination. Why not? Does it seem too first grade? In reviews, you read about limpid prose, about the faithful reproduction of consciousness, about moral heft, but rarely about the power of pure, unadulterated imagination.
I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be re-created on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one's memories.
I don't think it's the writer's job to give answers or to give opinions. In fact, when a writer has answers, I think the work ends up being corrupted. It becomes didactic. What a book does is share a consciousness and invite people to explore the questions as best as you can.
Your 'hara' is here, where your uterus is if you're a woman, where the tummy sticks out if you're a man, the centre of gravity of the human body. It is the synthesis of our intellect, body and spirit, and by developing our consciousness of it, we can become incredibly rooted.
I don't really know what it is about vampires that makes them such a powerful symbol, metaphor, whatever in people's consciousness. But I do know they're tremendously powerful. I mean, there's a vampire on 'Sesame Street.' And Count Chocula. I don't know why it's so powerful.
I grew up around a lot of various religions, so it's a part of my consciousness in a way. Everything from heavy Catholicism to followers of Indian spiritual masters to Unitarian universalists - all in one family. Though the family aspect was stronger than any particular dogma.
I truly believe the intention of creating positive change is so important to the collective consciousness. When you have a group of people that have the intention and the capacity, talent, and intelligence to actualize those intentions, then you have something really powerful.
Each time you choose not to act on a frightened part of your personality, you create authentic power - and you grow spiritually. The frightened parts of your personality come less frequently and with less intensity, and the loving parts fill more and more of your consciousness.
To be successful in struggle requires remembrance of the Creator and the doing of good deeds. This is important because successful struggle demands that there be a kind of social consciousness. There has to be a social commitment, a social consciousness that joins men together.
There have only been about a half dozen genuinely important events in the four-billion-year saga of life on Earth: single-celled life, multicelled life, differentiation into plants and animals, movement of animals from water to land, and the advent of mammals and consciousness.
In the theatre, because you're all looking at the same thing in the same space, consciousness is no longer individual. There is a unified consciousness. Until you look and project what is happening, it doesn't exist; the audience are the ones making the theatre, not the players.