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Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Philosophical literature2 quotes
What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. — Shunryu Suzuki · 1970Our whole past experience is continually in our consciousness, though most of it sunk to a great depth of dimness. I think of consciousness as a bottomless lake, whose waters seem transparent, yet into which we can clearly see but a little way. — Charles Sanders Peirce · 1966Psychological literature2 quotes
Consciousness, then, does not appear to itself chopped up in bits…It is nothing jointed; it flows. A "river" or a "stream" are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. — William James · 1890Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. — William James · 1902Religious literature1 quote
What we call "I" is just a swinging door which moves when we inhale and when we exhale. — Shunryu Suzuki · 1970Scientific literature1 quote
Consciousness... Is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known. — Roger Penrose · 1989