Consciousness In Society Quotes & Sayings

Any kind of consciousness that is not related to the production or consumption of material goods is stigmatized in our society today. — Graham Hancock

To hold traumatic reality in consciousness requires a social context that affirms and protects the victim and that joins the victim and witness in a common alliance. For the individual victim, this social context is created by relationships with friends, lovers, and family. For the larger society, the social context is created by political movements that give voice to the disempowered. — Judith Lewis Herman

Exile from society allows person to disengage from meaningless activities and develop conscious awareness. A person's courageous struggle to eliminate the trepidation of social exile produces insights into what it means to be human. We can displace emotional disquiet by living a heightened state of existence. How a person's resolves the tremendous anxiety and dizziness that impetus comes from contemplating the inevitability of death, human freedom of choice, the moral responsibilities attendant to living in a selected manner, existential isolation, and the possibility of nothingness establishes a governing philosophical framework. A person must not rue ouster from society because release from moral and societal constraints spurs learning and advanced consciousness. — Kilroy J. Oldster

Xiii- men must ... find their way from false to true consciousness, from their immediate to their real interest. They can do so only if they live in need of changing their way of life, of denying the positive, of refusing, it is precisely this need which the established society manages to repress using the scientific conquest of nature for the scientific conquest of man.
Xvi-the technological society is a system of domination. — C. Wright Mills

With no blame there's no shame. A human society can't exist without shame. Shame is like handedness or walking upright. It's a central human attribute. In fact, it's the first human quality ever recorded.'
'Where?'
'Genesis, Chapter Three. The covering of nakedness. The acquisition of shame was the first consequence of consciousness, of the speciating moment. Take shame from me and you are calling me pre-human. — Sebastian Faulks

I have to admit we are locked in the most exquisite mysterious muck. This muck heaves and palpitates. It is multi-directional and has a mayor. To describe it takes many hundreds of thousands of words. Our muck is only a part of a much greater muck
the nation-state
which is itself the creation of that muck of mucks, human consciousness. Of course all these things also have a touch of sublimity
as when Moonbelly sings, for example, or all the lights go out. What a happy time that was, when all the electricity went away! If only we could re-create that paradise! By, for instance, all forgetting to pay our electric bills at the same time. All nine million of us. Then we'd all get those little notices that say unless we remit within five days the lights will go out. We all stand up from our chairs with the notice in ours hands. The same thought drifts across the furrowed surface of nine million minds. We wink at each other, through the walls. — Donald Barthelme

Somewhere, on the edge of consciousness, there is what I call a mythical norm, which each one of us within our hearts knows "that is not me." In america, this norm is usually defined as white, thin, male, young, heterosexual, christian, and financially secure. It is with this mythical norm that the trappings of power reside within this society. Those of us who stand outside that power often identify one way in which we are different, and we assume that to be the primary cause of all oppression, forgetting other distortions around difference, some of which we ourselves may be practicing. — Audre Lorde

If only a world-wide consciousness could arise that all division and fission are due to the splitting of opposites in the psyche, then we should know where to begin. — C. G. Jung

It's true: one of the things that I've always thought about American society is that you never get the sort of natural politicisation of class consciousness that you would get in the United Kingdom or even in Australia. — Peter Carey

I like to think about society as being a flock of birds: There seems to be a common consciousness in different time periods, and the new common consciousness reacts to the old standards. — Penelope Spheeris

5. Aware of the suffering caused by unmindful consumption, I vow to cultivate good health, both physical and mental, for myself, my family, and my society by practicing mindful eating, drinking, and consuming. I vow to ingest only items that preserve peace, well-being, and joy in my body, in my consciousness, and in the collective body and consciousness of my family and society. I am determined not to use alcohol or any other intoxicant or to ingest foods or other items that contain toxins, such as certain TV programs, magazines, books, films, and conversations. I am aware that to damage my body or my consciousness with these poisons is to betray my ancestors, my parents, my society, and future generations. I will work to transform violence, fear, anger, and confusion in myself and in society by practicing a diet for myself and for society. I understand that a proper diet is crucial for self-transformation and for the transformation of society. — Thich Nhat Hanh

Atheists as well as theists unconsciously observe society's convention that we must be especially polite and respectful to faith. And I never tire of drawing attention to society's tacit acceptance of the labelling of small children with the religious opinions of their parents. Atheists need to raise their own consciousness of the anomaly: religious opinion is the one kind of parental opinion that - by almost universal consent - can be fastened upon children who are, in truth, too young to know what their opinion really is. There is no such thing as a Christian child: only a child of Christian parents. Seize every opportunity to ram it home. — Richard Dawkins

Habit is the enormous flywheel of society, its most precious conservative agent. There is no more miserable human being than one in whom nothing is habitual but indecision. Full half the time of such a man goes to the deciding, or regretting, of matters which ought to be so ingrained in him as practically not to exist for his consciousness at all. — William James

A cultured society that has fallen away from its religious traditions expects more from art than the aesthetic consciousness and the 'standpoint of art' can deliver. The Romantic desire for a new mythology ... gives the artist and his task in the world the consciousness of a new consecration. He is something like a 'secular saviour' for his creations are expected to achieve on a small scale the propitiation of disaster for which an unsaved world hopes. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

If we get away from the lazy and fuzzy thinking that is like a poison in our society - if we get away from all the bad television that we tend to watch - and begin to take up serious meditation and other sacred exercises, we will have a real revolution of consciousness. If that happens, the world will change by itself. — Marianne Williamson

To stop the drug traffic is not the best way to prevent people from using drugs. The best way is to practice the Fifth Precept and to help others practice. Consuming mindfully is the intelligent way to stop ingesting toxins into our consciousness and prevent the malaise from becoming overwhelming. Learning the art of touching and ingesting refreshing, nourishing, and healing elements is the way to restore our balance and transform the pain and loneliness that are already in us. To do this, we have to practice together. The practice of mindful consuming should become a national policy. It should be considered true peace education ... Those who are destroying themselves, their families, and their society by intoxicating themselves are not doing it intentionally. Their pain and loneliness are overwhelming, and they want to escape. They need to be helped, not punished. Only understanding and compassion on a collective level can liberate us (78-79). — Thich Nhat Hanh

We live in a society that will send us to prison if we make use of time-honored sacred plants to explore our own consciousness. Yet surely the exploration and expansion of the miracle of our consciousness is the essence of what it is to be human? By demonstrating and persecuting whole areas of consciousness, we may be denying ourselves the next vital step in our own evolution. — Graham Hancock

Health is being in harmony with the world view. Health is an intuitive perception of the universe and all its inhabitants as being of one fabric. Health is maintaining communication with the animals and plants and minerals and stars. It is knowing death and life and seeing no difference. It is blending and melding, seeking solitude and seeking companionship to understand one's many levels. Unlike the more "modern" notions, in shamanic society health is not the absence of feeling; no more so is it the absence of pain. Health is seeking out all of the experiences of Creation and turning them over and over, feeling their texture and multiple meanings. Health is expanding beyond one's singular state of consciousness to experience the ripples and waves of the universe. — Jeanne Achterberg

Institutionalized desublimation thus appears to be an aspect of the "conquest of transcendence" achieved by the one-dimensional society. Just as this society tends to reduce, and even absorb opposition (the qualitative difference!) in the realm of politics and higher culture, so it does in the instinctual sphere. The result is the atrophy of the mental organs for grasping the contradictions and the alternatives and, in the one remaining dimension of technological rationality, the Happy Consciousness comes to prevail. — Herbert Marcuse

Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility and sadness in us are strong, then we will experience much suffering. To understand someone, we have to be aware of the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. And we need to remember that his is not solely responsible for those seeds. His ancestors, parents, and society are co-responsible for the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. When we understand this, we are able to feel compassion for that person. With understanding and love, we will know how to water our own beautiful seeds and those of others, and we will recognize seeds of suffering and find ways to transform them. — Thich Nhat Hanh

A class cannot exist in society without in some degree manifesting a consciousness of itself as a group with common problems, interests and prospects - although this manifestation may for long periods be weak, confused, and subject to manipulation by other classes. — Harry Braverman

When it comes to society and human consciousness, Darwinism still exists in its primal message. — Kat Lahr

The behavioral programme of the post-social society during the post-capitalism interregnum is governed by a neoliberal ethos of competetive self-improvement, of untiring cultivation of one's marketable human capital, enthusiastic dedication to work, and cheerfully optimistic, playful acceptance of the risks inherent in a world that has outgrown government. That this programme is dutifully implemented is essential, as the reproduction of the post-capitalist society lite hangs on the thin thread of an accommodating systematic architecture. Structuralist critique of false institutions may therefore have to be complemented by a renewed culturalist critique of false consciousness. — Wolfgang Streeck

There needs to be a shift in consciousness; there needs to be an absolute wake-up call before society can actually make the kind of incredibly significant changes that need to happen. — Annie Lennox

The choice-obsessed modern West is probably more accommodating to individuals who choose to eat differently than any other culture has ever been, but ironically, the utterly unselective omnivore - "I'm easy; I'll eat anything" - can appear more socially sensitive than the individual who tries to eat in a way that is good for society. Food choices are determined by many factors, but reason (even consciousness) is not generally high on the list. — Jonathan Safran Foer

Anarchism is the only philosophy which brings to man the consciousness of himself; which maintains that God, the State, and society are non-existent, that their promises are null and void, since they can be fulfilled only through man's subordination. Anarchism is therefore the teacher of the unity of life; not merely in nature, but in man. — Emma Goldman

Sadly, semi-consciousness, along with daydreaming, is a capacity that is actively discouraged among children in schools, and our society is much poorer and harsher as a consequence. The value of liminal space and transitional imagination remain personally and culturally undeveloped. — Michael Leunig

We're attacking all accepted values. Authority, class differences, shared perceptions. We don't care what happens to our social structure -- revolutions are for suckers. Our target is people's collective consciousness. It's like throwing a cream pie in their face. — Fuminori Nakamura

Like tiny islands on the horizon, they can vanish in rough seas. Even in calm weather, their coral gradually erodes, pickled by salt and heat. Yet they form the shoals of a life. Some offer safe lagoons and murmuring trees. Others crawl with pirates and reptiles. Together they connect a self with the mainland and society. Plot their trail and a mercurial past becomes visible.

Memories feel geological in their repose, solid and true, the bedrock of consciousness. — Diane Ackerman

We constantly encounter themes that arouse sexual desire, often coupled with themes of violence. If our collective consciousness is filled with violent sexual seeds, why should we be surprised when there is sexual abuse of children, rape, and other violent acts? — Thich Nhat Hanh

But look, I was born in 1956, the peak year for births in US history. I think I'm very representative of many of the thought processes my generation have been through and, by and large, people of my age have had their imprint planted on the consciousness of western society for a long time. — Tom Hanks

The majority of people in modern society feel separated - from the world, each other, and themselves. This feeling of separation is a resultfrom we humans attempting to separate ourselves from nature, and consequently forgetting who we really are. — Joseph P. Kauffman

As a creative person, you just put something out into the consciousness of the society you live in. — Annie Lennox

We do not want to be reminded that it is we, the indigenous people, who are poor and exploited in the land of our birth. These are concepts which the Black Consciousness approach wishes to eradicate from the black man's mind before our society is driven to chaos by irresponsible people from Coca-cola and hamburger cultural backgrounds. — Steven Biko

This means that, in some sense, free will is a fake. Decisions are made ahead of time by the brain, without the input of consciousness, and then later the brain tries to cover this up (as it's wont to do) by claiming that the decision was conscious. Dr. Michael Sweeney concludes, "Libet's findings suggested that the brain knows what a person will decide before the person does. ... The world must reassess not only the idea of movements divided between voluntary and involuntary, but also the very idea of free will." All this seems to indicate that free will, the cornerstone of society, is a fiction, an illusion created by our left brain. So are we masters of our fate, or just pawns in a swindle perpetuated by the brain? — Michio Kaku

By focusing on reality and treating everything in relation to everything else we can raise our awareness above the narrow perspective of what we experience in our daily lives, and solve our problems using a different level of thinking than the one that created them. As a society our focus should be on health, sustainability, education, and ensuring justice and liberty among all individuals. To achieve this we must inform the public of the situation we are in and encourage a positive change in our behavior. We need to evolve our consciousness and change the way that we look at the world — Joseph P. Kauffman

The media and even, to some degree, leaders of women's organizations don't understand that the women's movement is an absolute part of society now. It is in the consciousness, it is taken for granted. It is part of the way women look at themselves, and women are looked at. — Betty Friedan

Man's feeling of homelessness, of alienation has been intensified in the midst of a bureaucratized, impersonal mass society. He has come to feel himself an outsider even within his own human society. He is trebly alienated: a stranger to God, to nature, and to the gigantic social apparatus that supplies his material wants.
But the worst and final form of alienation, toward which indeed the others tend, is man's alienation from his own self. In a society that requires of man only that he perform competently his own particular social function, man becomes identified with this function, and the rest of his being is allowed to subsist as best it can - usually to be dropped below the surface of consciousness and forgotten. — William Barrett

I live in an unethical society that coarsens the sensibilities and thwarts the capacities for goodness of most people but makes available for minority consumption an astonishing array of intellectual and aesthetic pleasures. Those who don't enjoy (in both senses) my pleasures have every right, from their side, to regard my consciousness as spoiled, corrupt, decadent. I, from my side, can't deny the immense richness of these pleasures, or my addiction to them. — Susan Sontag

We are now in a position to understand the anti-Semite. He is a man who is afraid. Not of the Jews, to be sure, but of himself, of his own consciousness, of his liberty, of his instincts, of his responsibilities, of solitariness, of change, of society, and of the world of everything except the Jews. — Jean-Paul Sartre

The healing of ourselves is the healing of the whole nation. Society is only a manifestation of our collective consciousness and our collective consciousness has a lot of fear, violence and hatred in it ... It is possible to transform our heart ... Not much time is needed ... (the transformation can be born) the moment you vow to go in the direction of peace and service. — Nhat Hanh

The ultimate tyranny in a society is not control by martial law. It is control by the psychological manipulation of consciousness, through which reality is defined so that those who exist within it do not even realize that they are in prison. They do not even realize that there is something outside of where they exist. — Barbara Marciniak

According to a Confucian view, there are four steps in social develpment, wrote Wilhem (Sr.). There are the individual, the family, the state, and mankind. The West had always emphasized the individual and the state. Individual development is extolled, and the single human being is regarded as central and as an atom of society. Over-emphasis on the function of the individual has led to deterioration of the family. Unlike Westerners, the Chinese have given greater weight to family and mankind. The consciousness of the individual is contained in the family, and since traditional China considered itself the world, Chinese considered themselves responsible for humankind rather than for the state. — Hellmut Wilhelm

The base-superstructure metaphor when misunderstood as a causal rather than reciprocal relationship often leads to characterisations of historical materialism as determinist. The superstructure doesn't just reflect the base but has a reciprocal relation with the superstructure often enabling the base, i.e. the forces of production require property rights which are reliant upon political decisions at the level of the superstructure. The material base of every society is capped by an "ideological superstructure" that serves to legitimise and justify the arrangements and institutions in that society. It is from this superstructure that emanates ruling-class ideas and ultimately social consciousness, and thus we can see that the consciousness determined by the superstructure justifies and maintains the economic structure found in the base. — Anonymous

The core political values of our free society are so deeply embedded in our collective consciousness that only a few malcontents, lunatics generally, ever dare to threaten them. — John McCain

The contemporary memoir is playing an important role in at least just bringing certain relationships out into the open in American society, and also it's a place where the novel of development, the novel of consciousness, has gone. — Marco Roth

The romance of circumvention is one of the most destructive forces at work in our society. The American Idol freeway to greatness, Instagramming one's way into popular consciousness with selfies of our ass folds beneath short shorts, human growth hormone and performance-enhancing drugs for athletes, Adderall for the idle mind, reality television that sacrifices our dignity for fifteen lousy minutes ... — Daniel Gillies

The good, say the mystics of spirit, is God, a being whose only definition is that he is beyond man's power to conceive - a definition that invalidates man's consciousness and nullifies his concepts of existence. The good, say the mystics of muscle, is Society - a thing which they define as an organism that possesses no physical form, a super-being embodied in no one in particular and everyone in general except yourself ... The purpose of man's life, say both, is to become an abject zombie who serves a purpose he does not know, for reasons he is not to question. — Ayn Rand

I think a lot of people who were addicts are actually people who had that strong innate need to experience non-ordinary states of consciousness. But because our society has turned into this destructive culture of these horrible drugs that nullify you, they have that experience in a negative way. And then they lose that capacity forever, to have it in a positive way. — Daniel Pinchbeck

(There is) art that states the problems of society and wakes people up to make changes in their lives or in their communities, ... art that offers an alternative, that demonstrates human behavior that can become a model for creativity, cooperation, freedom and playfulness, and ... art that in itself provides glimpses of a larger consciousness or reflects upon the inexplicable. — Meredith Monk

I think that once somebody sees something, or feels it in the consciousness of society, it starts to allow change for other people. — Carla Gugino

To doubt the literal meaning of the words of Jesus or Moses incurs hostility from most people, but it's just a fact that if Jesus or Moses were to appear today, unidentified, with the same message he spoke many years ago, his mental stability would be challenged. This isn't because what Jesus or Moses said was untrue or because modern society is in error but simply because the route they chose to reveal to others has lost relevance and comprehensibility. "Heaven above" fades from meaning when space-age consciousness asks, Where is "above"? But the fact that the old routes have tended, because of language rigidity, to lose their everyday meaning and become almost closed doesn't mean that the mountain is no longer there. It's there and will be there as long as consciousness exists. — Robert M. Pirsig

As a German philosopher writing in the aftermath of the Nazi regime, Marcuse understood the sleep inducing force of indoctrination, its power to make people forget and forfeit their own real interests. "The fact that the vast majority of the population accepts, and is made to accept, this society does not render it less irrational and less reprehensible," he wrote. "The distinction between true and false consciousness, real and immediate interest still is meaningful." — Daniel Pinchbeck

Lucien Goldmann has stated the central problem of Marxist aesthetics in the period of advanced capitalism. If the proletariat is not the negation of the existing society but to a great extent integrated into it, then Marxist aesthetics is confronted with a situation where "authentic forms of cultural creations" exist "though they cannot be attached to the consciousness -even a potential one- of a particular social group." The decisive question therefore is: how the "link is made between the economic structures and literary manifestations in a society where this link occurs outside the collective consciousness, i.e., without being grounded in a progressive class consciousness, without expressing such consciousness? — Herbert Marcuse

Remember, character is not of much value. What is valuable is consciousness - not conscience but consciousness. Conscience is created by the society. The more foolish you are, the more the society is able to create a conscience in you. It gives you an idea how to live your life. It manipulates you in a very subtle way. It hypnotizes you and conditions you. And the conditioning is so long that you forget completely that these are not your ideas. — Rajneesh

What now strikes as remarkable about the new moneyed class of the nineteenth century is their complete irresponsibility;they see everything in terms of individual success, with hardly any consciousness that the community exists. — George Orwell

What makes one Sumerian city better than another one? A bigger ziggurat? A
better football team?"
"Better me."
"What are me?"
"Rules or principles that control the operation of society, like a code of laws,
but on a more fundamental level."
"I don't get it."
"That is the point. Sumerian myths are not 'readable' or 'enjoyable' in the
same sense that Greek and Hebrew myths are. They reflect a fundamentally
different consciousness from ours. — Neal Stephenson

Both for the production on a mass scale of this communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew. — Karl Marx

In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society - the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual processes of life. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but, on the contrary, their social existence determines their consciousness. — Karl Marx

There is not way that you can have a decent life as a man if you aren't awake and aware every moment. Show up for your own life. Don't pass your days in a stupor, content to swallow whatever watery ideas modern society may bottle feed you through the media, satisfied to slumber through life in an instant gratification sugar coma. The most extraordinary gift you've been given is your own humanity, which is about consciousness. So honor that consciousness. — Eustace Conway

What we need, of course, is a language which will allow us to distinguish the normal or routine fuck from the glorious, the rare, or the lousy one - a fack from a fick, a fick from a fock - but we have more names for parts of horses than we have for kinds of kisses, and our earthy words are all ... well ... 'dirty'. It says something dirty about us, no doubt, because in a society which had a mind for the body and other similarly vital things, there would be a word for coming down, or going up, words for nibbles on the bias, earlobe loving, and every variety of tongue track. After all, how many kinds of birds do we distinguish? We have a name for the Second Coming but none for a second coming. In fact our entire vocabulary for states of consciousness is critically impoverished. — William H Gass

As for the problem of overproduction, which has been latent in our society since the development of the machine technique, it is solved by the device of continuous warfare, which is also useful in keying up public morale to the necessary pitch.
...
The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. The consciousness of the masses needs only to be influenced in a negative way. — George Orwell

We're naked under our clothes; we both know what it's like to need to fart and hold it in, or not be able to get a hard-on, or worry that a bloke across the room might be looking at your bird and you might have to fight him but he looks well hard. — Russell Brand

What color is a chameleon placed on a mirror?
...
The chameleon responding to its own shifting image is an apt analog of the human world of fashion. Taken as a whole, what are fads but the response of a hive mind to its own reflection?
In a 21st-century society wired into instantaneous networks, marketing is the mirror; the collective consumer is the chameleon. — Kevin Kelly

I find three basic characteristics that fundamentally distinguish the novel in principle from other genres: (i) its stylistic three-dimensionality, which is linked with the multi-languaged consciousness realized in the novel; (2) the radical change it effects in the temporal coordinates of the literary image; (3) the new zone opened by the novel for structuring literary images, namely, the zone of maximal contact with the present (with contemporary reality) in all its openendedness.
These three characteristics of the novel are all organically interrelated and have all been powerfully affected by a very specific rupture in the history of European civilization: its emergence from a socially isolated and culturally deaf semipatriarchal society, and its entrance into international and interlingual contacts and relationships. — Mikhail Bakhtin

Neuroscience is fast developing the technical and conceptual wherewithal to reveal in fine, bare detail the neurobiological substrates of the mind. Perhaps it will despoil a sacred myth - the myth of selfhood and souls. And, if so, we may be wandering innocently into the opening phase of a dangerous game. Our ethics and systems of justice, our entire moral order, are founded on the notion of society as a collective of individual selves - autonomous, introspective, accountable agents. If this self-reflective, moral agent is revealed to be illusory, then what? — Paul Broks

The desire to transcend one's own ego boundaries, to share completely, even for a moment, the consciousness of another person must be a universal longing. It motivates many of our activities from taking drugs to making love, and lies behind the search for new ways of getting close to one another that is so intense in our society today. — Andrew Weil

A new humanity will be born, fuller in conception and richer in experience and accomplishments in all fields. Joy of life will belong to every man, love will dominate human society, truth and virtue will reign in the world, peace on earth will be permanent and all will live in fulfillment in fullness of life in God Consciousness. — Maharishi Mahesh Yogi

The semimetaphysical problems of the individual and society, of egoism and altruism, of freedom and determinism, either disappear or remain in the form of different phases in the organization of a consciousness that is fundamentally social. — Margaret Mead

The first task in teaching is to bring to consciousness what the students already believe by virtue of their personal experiences about themselves and society. — Paul Wellstone

What Women's Lib might achieve if their 'consciousness raising' - or in plain English, brainwashing - campaign succeeds is a society whose members have identical roles but are perpetually at war with themselves; a society of males made neurotic by suppressed masculinity, of females made miserable by having masculine roles thrust upon them that contradict their feminine impulses. — Arianna Huffington

As young parents of three girls, living in California during the late Sixties and early Seventies, Meredith and I couldn't help but be aware of the rising level of dialogue, debate, commentary, and proclamations about the place of women in society and about how to raise females in light of this raised consciousness. — Tom Brokaw

Socialism is precisely the religion that must overwhelm Christianity. ... In the new order, Socialism will triumph by first capturing the culture via infiltration of schools, universities, churches and the media by transforming the consciousness of society. — Antonio Gramsci

So what was in this building before historical materialism?'
'Before what?'
'You know, back then, under the old regime?'
'Oh. Under the old regime my master lived here.'
'A bourgeois?'
'You're a bourgeois yourself! He wasn't a bourgeois. He was a marshal of the nobility.'
'So he was a proletarian, then?'
'You're a proletarian yourself! I told you loud and clear, a marshal.'
The conversation with the clever dvornik with a vague understanding of the class structure of society would have lasted god knows how long if the young man hadn't made a decisive move. — Ilya Ilf

The focus of all life is its economy, the mode through which every living creature produces its material existence. I know no other criterion for the evaluation of social life except that of social economy. In society, just like anywhere else, the mode of production is the focus around which revolve all the modes of life: in the historical life of conscious beings, it is also the focus of all modes of consciousness. — Moses Hess

How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on ... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Most novels, if they are successful at all, are original in the sense that they report the existence of an area of society, a type of person, not yet admitted to the general literate consciousness. — Doris Lessing

Anarchism ... teaches the possibility of a society in which the needs of life may be fully supplied for all, and in which the opportunities for complete development of mind and body shall be the heritage of all ... [It] teaches that the present unjust organisation of the production and distribution of wealth must finally be completely destroyed, and replaced by a system which will insure to each the liberty to work, without first seeking a master to whom he [or she] must surrender a tithe of his [or her] product, which will guarantee his liberty of access to the sources and means of production ... Out of the blindly submissive, it makes the discontented; out of the unconsciously dissatisfied, it makes the consciously dissatisfied ... Anarchism seeks to arouse the consciousness of oppression, the desire for a better society, and a sense of the necessity for unceasing warfare against capitalism and the State. — Voltairine De Cleyre

To stand alone is to be uncorrupted, innocent, free of all tradition, of dogma, of opinion, of what another says, and so on. Such a mind does not seek because there is nothing to seek; being free, such a mind is completely still without a want, without movement.
But this state is not to be achieved; it isn't a thing that you buy through discipline; it doesn't come into being by giving up sex, or practicing a certain yoga.
It comes into being only when there is understanding of the ways of the self, the 'me', which shows itself through the conscious mind in everyday activity, and also in the unconscious. What matters is to understand for oneself, not through the direction of others, the total content of consciousness, which is conditioned, which is the result of society, of religion, of various impacts, impressions, memories - to understand all that conditioning and be free of it. But there is no "how" to be free. If you ask how to be free, you are not listening. — Jiddu Krishnamurti

Humankind does not submit passively to the power of nature. It takes control over this power. This process is not an internal or subjective one. It takes place objectively in practice, once women cease to be viewed as mere sexual beings, once we look beyond their biological functions and become conscious of their weight as an active social force. What's more, woman's consciousness of herself is not only a product of her sexuality. It reflects her position as determined by the economic structure of society, which in turn expresses the level reached by humankind in technological development and the relations between classes.

The importance of dialectical materialism lies in going beyond the inherent limits of biology, rejecting simplistic theories about our being slaves to the nature of our species, and, instead, placing facts in their social and economic context. — Thomas Sankara

To acquire the full consciousness of self is to know oneself so different from others that no longer feels allied with men except by purely animal contacts: nevertheless, among souls of this degree, there is an ideal fraternity based on differences,
while society fraternity is based on resemblances.
The full consciousness of self can be called originality of soul, -and all this is said only to point out the group of rare beings to which Andre Gide belongs.
The misfortune of these beings, when they express themselves, is that they do it with such odd gestures that men fear to approach them; their life of social contacts must often revolve in the brief circle of ideal fraternities; or, when the mob consents to admit such souls, it is as curiosities or museum objects. Their glory is, finally, to be loved from afar & almost understood, as parchments are seen & read above sealed cases. — Remy De Gourmont

Despite one or two minority appeals our society is not outraged at man's unremitting use of the animal world. Ecologists and environmentalists may talk of "ecological consciousness" or "environmental responsibility" but seldom, if ever, is this responsibility articulated towards other non-human species in particular. — Andrew Linzey

You must find your own quiet center of life, and write from that to the world that holds offices, and all society ... In short, you must write to the human heart, the great consciousness that all humanity goes to make up. Otherwise what might be strength in a writer is only crudeness, and what might be insight is only observation; sentiment falls to sentimentality - you can write about life, but never write life itself ... To work in silence and with all one's heart, that is the writer's lot; he is the only artist who must be a solitary, and yet needs the widest outlook upon the world. — Sarah Orne Jewett

Those who rule have always had an interest in shaping the perceptions of those they wish to rule. But never in the history of humanity has their toolbox been so full. Advances in technology and psychology have enabled the messages of the rulers to permeate our consciousness to a degree no prior society could have imagined. — James Rozoff

The function of a writer is to call a spade a spade. If words are sick, it is up to us to cure them. Instead of that, many writers live off this sickness. In many cases modern literature is a cancer of words ... There is nothing more deplorable than the literary practice which, I believe, is called poetic prose and which consists of using words for the obscure harmonics which reosund about them and which are made up of vague meanings which are in contradiction with the clear meaning ... That is not all: we are living in an age of mystifications. Some are fundamental ones which are due to the structure of society; some are secondary. At any rate, the social order today rests upon the mystification of consciousness, as does disorder as well. — Jean-Paul Sartre

We were not born critical of existing society. There was a moment in our lives (or a month, or a year) when certain facts appeared before us, startled us, and then caused us to question beliefs that were strongly fixed in our consciousness-embedded there by years of family prejudices, orthodox schooling, imbibing of newspapers, radio, and television. This would seem to lead to a simple conclusion: that we all have an enormous responsibility to bring to the attention of others information they do not have, which has the potential of causing them to rethink long-held ideas. — Howard Zinn

Our society values alert, problem-solving consciousness, and it devalues all other states of consciousness. Any kind of consciousness that is not related to the production or consumption of material goods is stigmatized in our society today. Of course we accept drunkenness. We allow people some brief respite from the material grind. A society that subscribes to that model is a society that is going to condemn the states of consciousness that have nothing to do with the alert problem-solving mentality. — Graham Hancock

The novel has become a function of the fragmented society, the fragmented consciousness. Human beings are so divided, are becoming more and more divided, and more subdivided in themselves, reflecting the world, that they reach out desperately, not knowing they do it, for information about other groups inside their own country, let alone about groups in other countries. It is a blind grasping out for their own wholeness, and the novel-report is a means toward it. — Doris Lessing

The historic ascent of humanity, taken as a whole, may be summarized as a succession of victories of consciousness over blind forces - in nature, in society, in man himself. — Leon Trotsky

Consciousness-one level is understanding where we are in space. Consciousness two is where we understand our position in society: who's top dog, who's underdog and who's in the middle. And type-three consciousness is simulating the future. And type-three consciousness, only humans have this ability to see far into the future. — Michio Kaku