“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.”

— Thomas Ligotti

The Conspiracy Against the Human Race: A Contrivance of Horror (2010)

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Thomas Ligotti 37

American horror author 1953

Julian Jaynes book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind

Book I, Chapter 1, p. 23
The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976)

“Flesh of thy flesh, nor yet bone of thy bone.”

Guillaume de Salluste Du Bartas (1544–1590) French writer

Second Week, Fourth Day, Book ii.
La Seconde Semaine (1584)

“Repression is an evolutionary adaptation permitting us to function under the burden of our expanded consciousness. For what we are conscious of could drive us mad.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 16

“What we must not do is surrender to despair and hopelessness and the cynical assumption that there is nothing we can do. What we must do is turn our anger and outrage into a positive force for reforms that can help prevent future tragedies.”

Bernice King (1963) American minister, daughter of Martin Luther King, Jr.

"A Call for Prayer – and Action -- Against Violence in America" (2012)

“Under the conditions of modern life we have more control over our thoughts, and in connection with this there is a special method by which we may work on the development of our consciousness using that instrument which is most obedient to our will; that is, our mind, or the intellectual centre. In order to understand more clearly what I am going to say, you must try to remember that we have no control over our consciousness. When I said that we can become more conscious, or that a man can be made conscious for a moment simply by asking him if he is conscious or not, I used the words "conscious" or "consciousness" in a relative sense. There are so many degrees of consciousness and every higher degree means "consciousness" in relation to a lower degree. But, if we have no control over consciousness itself, we have a certain control over our thinking about consciousness, and we can construct our thinking in such a way as to bring consciousness. What I mean is that by giving to our thoughts the direction which they would have in a moment of consciousness, we can, in this way, induce consciousness.”

P. D. Ouspensky (1878–1947) Russian esotericist

Fourth Lecture, p. 74.
The Psychology of Man's Possible Evolution (1950)

“The Hebrew Bible, as a document, displays an astonishing lack of textual self-consciousness. It alleges to know what God thinks, but it does not know itself. It is not aware that it is called the Hebrew Bible. … Jews and Christians have venerated an unself-conscious artifact, one whose embarrassing gaps in self-knowledge have always had to be filled in by later interpreters.”

Jacques Berlinerblau (1966) Associate Professor, Director of the Program for Jewish Civilization, Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service,…

Source: The Secular Bible: Why Nonbelievers Must Take Religion Seriously (2005), p. 28

“In the creation of comedy, it is paradoxical that tragedy stimulates the spirit of ridicule; because ridicule, I suppose is an attitude of defiance: we must laugh in the face of our helplessness against the forces of nature - or go insane”

Charlie Chaplin book My Autobiography

Source: My Autobiography

“Bone and Skin, two millers thin,
Would starve us all, or near it;
But be it known to Skin and Bone
That Flesh and Blood can't bear it.”

John Byrom (1692–1763) Poet, inventor of a shorthand system

Epigram on Two Monopolists as quoted in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“Not your flesh nor bones shall bejudge in the A'khira (Judgement day), but your brain, the centre of consciousness where you reside. You as a soul shall be judged.”

Muhammad (570–632) Arabian religious leader and the founder of Islam

Narrated by Al-Bukhari and Muslim [citation needed]
Sunni Hadith

“It will not out of the flesh that is bred in the bone.”

John Heywood (1497–1580) English writer known for plays, poems and a collection of proverbs

Part II, chapter 8.
Proverbs (1546), Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

“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.”

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Thomas Ligotti 37

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