Importance Of Consciousness Quotes & Sayings

My position concerning God is that of an agnostic. I am convinced that a vivid consciousness of the primary importance of moral principles for the betterment and ennoblement of life does not need the idea of a law-giver, especially a law-giver who works on the basis of reward and punishment. — Albert Einstein

Having arrived at this point, he had found no direction in which to go save that of further withdrawal into a subjectivity which refused existence to any reality or law but its own. During these postwar years he had lived in solitude and carefully planned ignorance of what was happening in the world. Nothing had importance save the exquisitely isolated cosmos of his own consciousness. Then little by little he had had the impression that the light of meaning, the meaning of everything was dying. Like a flame under a glass it had dwindled, flickered and gone out, and all existence, including his own hermetic structure from which he had observed existence, had become absurd and unreal. — Paul Bowles

[Schulz] came to see that the better part of his shyness was really vanity, or self-centeredness. "Shyness is an illusion," he would say, late in life. "If you get out and do something and talk to people, you don't have to be shy. Shyness is the overtly self-conscious thinking that you are the only person in the world; that how you look and what you do is of any importance. — David Michaelis

Client-therapist disagreement about the goals and tasks of therapy may impair the therapeutic alliance. This issue is not restricted to group therapy. Client-therapist discrepancies on therapeutic factors also occur in individual psychotherapy. A large study of psychoanalytically oriented therapy found that clients attributed their successful therapy to relationship factors, whereas their therapists gave precedence to technical skills and techniques.84 In general, analytic therapists value the coming to consciousness of unconscious factors and the subsequent linkage between childhood experiences and present symptoms far more than do their clients, who deny the importance or even the existence of these elements in therapy; instead they emphasize the personal elements of the relationship and the encounter with a new, accepting type of authority figure. — Irvin D. Yalom

Man often accords the sexual urge a merely biological significance and does not fully realize its true, existential significance - its link with existence. It is this link with the very existence of man and of the species Homo that gives the sexual urge its objective importance and meaning. This importance only emerges into consciousness when man is moved by love to take on himself the natural purpose of the sexual urge. — Pope John Paul

Outside our consciousness there lies the cold and alien world of actual things. Between the two stretches the narrow borderland of the senses. No communication between the two worlds is possible excepting across the narrow strip. For a proper understanding of ourselves and of the world, it is of the highest importance that this borderland should be thoroughly explored. — Heinrich Hertz

The value of a life is but your consciousness of its importance. — Westley Tusa

A sub-clerk in the post office is the equal of a conqueror if consciousness is common to them. All experiences are indifferent in this regard. There are some that do either a service or a disservice to man. They do him a service if he is conscious. Otherwise, that has no importance: a man's failures imply judgment, not of circumstances, but of himself. — Albert Camus

Man is important in one sense only. He was made in the image of God: That is his importance. He is not important for his body, ego, or personality. His constant affirmation of ego-consciousness is the source of all his problems. — Paramahansa Yogananda

Man - a little, eccentric species of animal, which - fortunately - has its day; all on earth a mere moment, an incident, an exception without consequences, something of no importance to the general character of the earth; the earth itself, like every star, a hiatus between two nothingnesses, an event without plan, reason, will, self-consciousness, the worst kind of necessity, stupid necessity ... — Friedrich Nietzsche

This dry definition, accurate as it is, does not fully suggest the importance of what it conveys. Since for us outside events do not exist unless we are aware of them, consciousness corresponds to subjectively experienced reality. While everything we feel, smell, hear, or remember is potentially a candidate for entering consciousness, the experiences that actually do become part of it are much fewer than those left out. Thus, while consciousness is a mirror that reflects what our senses tell us about what happens both outside our bodies and within the nervous system, it reflects those changes selectively, actively shaping events, imposing on them a reality of its own. The reflection consciousness provides is what we call our life: the sum of all we have heard, seen, felt, hoped, and suffered from birth to death. Although we believe that there are "things" outside consciousness, we have direct evidence only of those that find a place in it. As — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The same thing is true of the experience of art. Here the scholarly research pursued by the "science of art" is aware from the start that it can neither replace nor surpass the experience of art. The fact that through a work of art a truth is experienced that we cannot attain in any other way constitutes the philosophic importance of art, which asserts itself against all attempts to rationalize it away. Hence, together with the experience of philosophy, the experience of art is the most insistent admonition to scientific consciousness to acknowledge its own limits. — Hans-Georg Gadamer

Gnosticism is a system of thought based on interior, psychospiritual experience. This being the case, it is not surprising that Gnosticism emphasizes states of mind and regards actions as secondary in nature and importance. Gnostics have always held that consciousness, rather than external action, is the true indicator of moral worth. — Stephan A. Hoeller

Fixed ideas, so frequent and of such importance among hystericals, are generally isolated in their minds. Whether they constitute attacks, or develop in a subconscious manner, they do not disturb the whole thought of the ' SoUier, Guide pratique des maladies mentales, 1893. ' Regis, Manuel de me'd/cine mentale, 1892, p. 490. 30 patients. Yet it is easy to understand how the neighbourhood of these fixed ideas, these parasites, may be very dangerous to normal consciousness, and that in many circumstances general disturbances of the whole thought may be the result of the development of fixed ideas. — Anonymous

Birth and death: there was the same consciousness of heightened existence and of her own elevated importance — J.K. Rowling

What happened was simple, even banal: I became naked, died, lost parts of my flesh and most of my ego along with a few illusions such as a belief in the uniqueness of my personal scrap of consciousness and the cosmic importance therof, and went on from there. — MacDonald Harris

With all respect to the Buddha and to the early Christian celibates, I sometimes wonder if all this teaching about nonattachment and the spiritual importance of monastic solitude might be denying us something quite vital. Maybe all that renunciation of intimacy denies us the opportunity to ever experience that very earthbound, domesticated, dirt-under-the-fingernails gift of the difficult, long-term, daily forgiveness {...} Maybe creating a big enough space within your consciousness to hold and accept someone's contradictions - someone's idiocies, even - is a kind of divine act. Perhaps transcendence can be found not only on solitary mountaintops or in monastic settings, but also at your own kitchen table, in the daily acceptance of your partner's most tiresome, irritating faults. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Peter Koestenbaum also elaborated on the importance of others, particularly romantic lovers, in the existential context. Love is the choice to create and reflect each other mutually, verifying and illuminating each other's uniqueness because this is how we learn that we exist and who we are. A key theme of authentic love is resistance between, but welcoming of, two independent consciousness acting like positive and negative magnets within a single magnetic field. — Skye Cleary

In an old model, the way a film would imprint itself on the public's consciousness is to get a theatrical run. But now there are more documentaries and more films in general being released than ever before. There are weeks when the New York Times is reviewing 15 films, so it's harder to leave an impression on the public. A lot of these films are seeing their financial future on digital platforms. Because viewers aren't hearing as much about films in theatrical release, I think the festival circuit is going to have increasing importance for the life of a film. — Thom Powers

Religion is not a fractional thing that can be doled out in fixed weekly or daily measures as one among various subjects in the school syllabus. It is the truth of our complete being, the consciousness of our personal relationship with the infinite; it is the true center of gravity of our life. This we can attain during our childhood by daily living in a place where the truth of the spiritual world is not obscured by a crowd of necessities assuming artificial importance; where life is simple, surrounded by fullness of leisure, by ample space and pure air and profound peace of nature; and where men live with a perfect faith in the eternal life before them. — Rabindranath Tagore

And here lies the vast importance of the novel, properly handled. It can inform and lead into new places the flow of our sympathetic consciousness, and it can lead our sympathy away in recoil from things gone dead. Therefore, the novel, properly handled, can reveal the most secret places of life: for it is in the passional secret places of life, above all, that the tide of sensitive awareness needs to ebb and flow, cleansing and freshening. — D.H. Lawrence

From the point of view of a spiritual life, it is not what you do that matters most, but the way in which it is done and the
consciousness you put into it. Remember always the Divine and all you do will be an expression of the Divine Presence.
When all your actions are consecrated to the Divine, there will be no longer activities that are superior and activities that
are inferior; all will have an equal importance - the value given them by the consecration. — The Mother

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

You're instantly in a bind once you arrive here on earth, of need, self-will, a body and a separate personality, even before teh crippling self-consciousness kicks in, even before the seventh grade ... you're fucked at cell division ... it's all downhill from there. After that, it's all survival, and trying to keep yourself either entertained or convinced that the things you're obsessed with are of any importance at all in the big scheme. — Anne Lamott

When we say we understand something, but we do not experience it, we do not understand it.

Understanding and experiencing are the same thing.

For example, we may say: I understand the importance of forgiveness BUT I can't do it.

Firstly, replace "I can't do it" with:
I am choosing to remain in the state of being of ignorance (misinformation), because I believe it to be the best option I can choose from.

Secondly, replace "I understand the importance of forgiveness" with:
"I do not understand the importance of forgiveness".

Being honest with oneself is the first step to self-understanding. — Raphael Zernoff

Our awareness about ourselves and the world around us is so limited that we are ready to destroy ourselves. For the survival of humanity, an evolution of consciousness is essential. — Debasish Mridha

In the light of consciousness all sorts of things happen and one need not give special importance to any. The sight of a flower is as marvelous as the vision of God. Let them be. Why remember them and then make memory into a problem? Be bland about them; do not divide them into high and low, inner and outer, lasting and transient. Go beyond, go back to the source, go to the self that is the same whatever happens. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

Through discussions, reading, contemplation, and practice I've come to recognize the importance of subtle feelings and symbols. By paying attention to subtle energy, typically in the form of thoughts and feelings, we began to tap into our inner capacity to commune with those we've loved and lost, as well as other streams of consciousness and information. — Mark Ireland

Women's propaganda must touch upon all those questions which are of great importance to the general proletarian movement. The main task is, indeed, to awaken the women's class consciousness and to incorporate them into the class struggle. — Clara Zetkin

Liquid water has importance as a solvent, a solute, a reactant and a biomolecule, structuring proteins, nucleic acids, cells and controlling our consciousness. In the meanwhile, water makes up over about half of us and the most abundant solid material and fundamental to start formation. There is a hundred times as many water molecules in our bodies as the sum of all the other molecules. Life cannot evolve or continue, or in other words, everything is nothing without water. Thus, we say that water plays a central role in many of the human activities. However, we nearly always overlook deep researches in the structure and properties of water and the special relationship it has with our lives. — Xiao Feng Pang

You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book
if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise, to have set loose in them the consciousness that's otherwise conditioned and hemmed in by all that isn't fiction. This is something that every child, smitten by books, understands immediately, though it's not at all a childish idea about the importance of reading. — Philip Roth

Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all...And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity -- oh, the tediousness of it...Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all. — Kiran Desai

Scientists may study mainly matter but they cannot ignore the human mind, or consciousness: spiritual practitioners may be engaging mainly in developing the mind but they cannot completely ignore their physical needs. It is for this reason that I have always stressed the importance of combining both mental and the material approach to achieving happiness for humankind. — Dalai Lama

If you are in a country that is progressive, the woman is progressive. If you're in a country that reflects the consciousness toward the importance of education, it's because the woman is aware of the importance of education. But in every backward country you'll find the women are backward, and in every country where education is not stressed its because the women don't have education. — Malcolm X

Since ancient times the term awakening has been used as a kind of metaphor that points to the transformation of human consciousness. There are parables in the New Testament that speak of the importance of being awake, of not falling back to sleep. — Eckhart Tolle

What got repressed-sometimes viciously repressed-by the strategy-concept makers, consultants, and data gatherers was a consciousness of people and their importance in the creation and execution of any strategy. — Walter Kiechel