Quotes about awareness
page 5

Calvin Coolidge photo
Tjalling Koopmans photo
Vātsyāyana photo
Aldo Capitini photo
Gulzarilal Nanda photo
André Maurois photo
George Boole photo
Aram Manukian photo

“In these conditions, our people can make miracles. I have often had the opportunity to realize that the sense of duty of our villagers is authentic. It is a sign of awareness. One call by the National Council is enough for him to leave his home and to rush to arms, when there is nothing that compels him to do so. At the time, the mobilization by the Russian government was always executed on the force of terror.”

Aram Manukian (1879–1919) Armenian revolutionary, politician and general who managed and led the Van Resistance and instrumented the …

On January 5, 1918, on the eve of Armenian Christmas. Attributed without citation in [Death of Aram Manoukian - January 29, 1919, http://thisweekinarmenianhistory.blogspot.com/2013/01/death-of-aram-manoukian-january-29-1919.html, thisweekinarmenianhistory.com, 29 January 2013, 15 March 2014]

Vanna Bonta photo

“People at large are becoming more aware that there is much more to reality and to themselves than what meets the eye.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks About Quantum fiction: Author Interview (2007)

Derren Brown photo
Oswald Spengler photo
Aldous Huxley photo
Yves Klein photo
Melanie Joy photo
Bryce Dallas Howard photo
Maimónides photo
Hayley Williams photo
Nyanaponika Thera photo
Eric Hoffer photo
Hugo Black photo

“The Establishment Clause, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, does not depend upon any showing of direct governmental compulsion and is violated by the enactment of laws which establish an official religion whether those laws operate directly to coerce nonobserving individuals or not. This is not to say, of course, that laws officially prescribing a particular form of religious worship do not involve coercion of such individuals. When the power, prestige and financial support of government is placed behind a particular religious belief, the indirect coercive pressure upon religious minorities to conform to the prevailing officially approved religion is plain. But the purposes underlying the Establishment Clause go much further than that. Its first and most immediate purpose rested on the belief that a union of government and religion tends to destroy government and to degrade religion. The history of governmentally established religion, both in England and in this country, showed that whenever government had allied itself with one particular form of religion, the inevitable result had been that it had incurred the hatred, disrespect and even contempt of those who held contrary beliefs. That same history showed that many people had lost their respect for any religion that had relied upon the support of government to spread its faith. The Establishment Clause thus stands as an expression of principle on the part of the Founders of our Constitution that religion is too personal, too sacred, too holy, to permit its "unhallowed perversion" by a civil magistrate. Another purpose of the Establishment Clause rested upon an awareness of the historical fact that governmentally established religions and religious persecutions go hand in hand. The Founders knew that only a few years after the Book of Common Prayer became the only accepted form of religious services in the established Church of England, an Act of Uniformity was passed to compel all Englishmen to attend those services and to make it a criminal offense to conduct or attend religious gatherings of any other kind-- a law which was consistently flouted by dissenting religious groups in England and which contributed to widespread persecutions of people like John Bunyan who persisted in holding "unlawful [religious] meetings... to the great disturbance and distraction of the good subjects of this kingdom...."”

Hugo Black (1886–1971) U.S. Supreme Court justice

And they knew that similar persecutions had received the sanction of law in several of the colonies in this country soon after the establishment of official religions in those colonies. It was in large part to get completely away from this sort of systematic religious persecution that the Founders brought into being our Nation, our Constitution, and our Bill of Rights with its prohibition against any governmental establishment of religion.
Writing for the court, Engel v. Vitale, 370 U.S. 421 (1962).

Margaret Cho photo

“We are more aware and politicized than ever before. There is very little ambiguity as to which side you are on.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

From Her Books, I Have Chosen To Stay And Fight, ACTIVISM

Albert Camus photo

“With rebellion, awareness is born.”

As quoted in The Estranged God : Modern Man's Search for Belief (1966) by Anthony T. Padovano, p. 109
The Rebel (1951)

Elia M. Ramollah photo
Plutarch photo

“When Hermodotus in his poems described Antigonus as the son of Helios, "My valet-de-chambre," said he, "is not aware of this."”

Plutarch (46–127) ancient Greek historian and philosopher

Of Isis and Osiris
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919)

Charles Stross photo

“Well, moving swiftly sideways into cognitive neuroscience…In the past twenty years we’ve made huge strides, using imaging tools, direct brain interfaces, and software simulations. We’ve pretty much disproved the existence of free will, at least as philosophers thought they understood it. A lot of our decision-making mechanics are subconscious; we only become aware of our choices once we’ve begun to act on them. And a whole lot of other things that were once thought to correlate with free will turn out also to be mechanical. If we use transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt the right temporoparietal junction, we can suppress subjects’ ability to make moral judgements; we can induce mystical religious experiences: We can suppress voluntary movements, and the patients will report that they didn’t move because they didn’t want to move. The TMPJ finding is deeply significant in the philosophy of law, by the way: It strongly supports the theory that we are not actually free moral agents who make decisions—such as whether or not to break the law—of our own free will.
“In a nutshell, then, what I’m getting at is that the project of law, ever since the Code of Hammurabi—the entire idea that we can maintain social order by obtaining voluntary adherence to a code of permissible behaviour, under threat of retribution—is fundamentally misguided.” His eyes are alight; you can see him in the Cartesian lecture-theatre of your mind, pacing door-to-door as he addresses his audience. “If people don’t have free will or criminal intent in any meaningful sense, then how can they be held responsible for their actions? And if the requirements of managing a complex society mean the number of laws have exploded until nobody can keep track of them without an expert system, how can people be expected to comply with them?”

Source: Rule 34 (2011), Chapter 26, “Liz: It’s Complicated” (pp. 286-287)

John McCain photo
Jane Roberts photo
Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Davey Havok photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“People in new environments always produce the new preceptual modality without any difficulty or awareness of change. It is later that the psychic and social realignments baffle societies.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

ARTnews annual, Volume 31, Art Foundation, 1966, p. 56
1960s

Newton Lee photo
David Attenborough photo
Henry Suso photo
Ernesto Che Guevara photo
Reinhard Selten photo
Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
William Saroyan photo

“A man's ethnic identity has more to do with a personal awareness than with geography.”

William Saroyan (1908–1981) American writer

"The Armenian and the Armenian".
Inhale and Exhale (1936)

Jane Roberts photo
Thanissaro Bhikkhu photo
Noel Coward photo

“On the silverscreen
He melts my foolish heart in every single scene
Although I'm quite aware that here and there are traces of the cad
About the boy”

Noel Coward (1899–1973) English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer

Mad About the Boy (1932)

Freeman Dyson photo
William O. Douglas photo

“As nightfall does not come all at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air — however slight — lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.”

William O. Douglas (1898–1980) Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

Letter to Young Lawyers Section of the Washington State Bar Association (10 September 1976), The Douglas Letters : Selections from the Private Papers of Justice William O. Douglas (1987), edited by Melvin I. Urofsky and Philip E. Urofsky, p. 162
Other speeches and writings

Albert Einstein photo

“I just want to explain what I mean when I say that we should try to hold on to physical reality.
We are … all aware of the situation regarding what will turn out to be the basic foundational concepts in physics: the point-mass or the particle is surely not among them; the field, in the Faraday-Maxwell sense, might be, but not with certainty. But that which we conceive as existing ("real") should somehow be localized in time and space. That is, the real in one part of space, A, should (in theory) somehow "exist" independently of that which is thought of as real in another part of space, B. If a physical system stretches over A and B, then what is present in B should somehow have an existence independent of what is present in A. What is actually present in B should thus not depend the type of measurement carried out in the part of space A; it should also be independent of whether or not a measurement is made in A.
If one adheres to this program, then one can hardly view the quantum-theoretical description as a complete representation of the physically real. If one attempts, nevertheless, so to view it, then one must assume that the physically real in B undergoes a sudden change because of a measurement in A. My physical instincts bristle at that suggestion.
However, if one renounces the assumption that what is present in different parts of space has an independent, real existence, then I don't see at all what physics is supposed to be describing. For what is thought to be a "system" is after all, just conventional, and I do not see how one is supposed to divide up the world objectively so that one can make statements about parts.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

"What must be an essential feature of any future fundamental physics?" Letter to Max Born (March 1948); published in Albert Einstein-Hedwig und Max Born (1969) "Briefwechsel 1916-55"<!-- p. 223 Nymphenburger, Munich-->, and in Potentiality, Entanglement and Passion-at-a-Distance: Quantum Mechanical Studies for Abner Shimony, Volume Two edited by Robert Cohen, Michael Horn, and John Stachel (1997), p. 121 http://books.google.com/books?id=DsNoIcQemTsC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA121#v=onepage&q&f=false
1940s

Diana, Princess of Wales photo
Angela Merkel photo

“We can only shape a bright future if we are aware of Germany's enduring responsibility for the ultimate betrayal of all civilised values that was the Shoah.”

Angela Merkel (1954) Chancellor of Germany

Angela Merkel's speech about Holocaust (Shoah).
Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 24.04.2017 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6jEkBPcVj4
2017

“At the top of the ladder is awareness, or pure experience - the edge of yourself, and possibly the beginning of God.”

Barry Long (1926–2003) Australian spiritual teacher and writer

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)

Angelique Rockas photo
Milton Friedman photo
Chris Hedges photo
Alex Salmond photo

“I am well aware that in theological and democratic terms I am, no more than "God's silly vassal"”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Scotland in the World Forum (February 4, 2008), Church of Scotland (May 25, 2009)

Israel Kirzner photo

“A piece of knowledge about boat-building, about whose correctness Crusoe has no doubts at all, will not be seen as a hunch and will be valued according to Menger's Law. It may be said that Crusoe is well aware that he possesses this kind of information; he will deploy and value it in the same way as he may be imagined to deploy and value other resources he believes are definitely at his disposal. But concerning Crusoe's hunches and his visions in the face of a changing, uncertain environment, it cannot be said at all that Crusoe knows he has a hunch or a vision of the future. He does not act by deliberately utilizing his hunch about the future; instead, he finds that his actions reflect his hunches…In other words, it turns out, the essence of entrepreneurial vision, and what sets it apart from knowledge as a resource, is reflected in Crusoe's lack of self-consciousness concerning it…Crusoe may…gradually come to be aware of his vision. When he does, that vision ceases to be entrepreneurial and comes to be a resource. Moreover, Crusoe's realization that he possesses this definite information resource may itself be entrepreneurial. As soon as he 'knows' that he possesses an item of knowledge, that item ceases to correspond to entrepreneurial vision; instead, as with all resources, it is Crusoe's belief that he has the resources at his disposal that may now constitute his entrepreneurial hunch.”

Israel Kirzner (1930) American economist

Israel Kirzner, (1979: 168-169); as cited in: " Israel Kirzner's Entrepreneurship http://www.constitution.org/pd/gunning/subjecti/workpape/kirz_ent.pdf" by the Constitution Society, May 31, 2004

Dennis Kucinich photo
André Maurois photo
Bran Ferren photo

“Trying to assess the true importance and function of the Internet now is like asking the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk if they were aware of the potential of American Airlines Advantage miles.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Quoted by Kevin Roberts (CEO of Saatchi & Saatchi), in Strategies for Peak Performance, September 8, 2013 http://www.saatchikevin.com/Strategies_for_Peak_Performance/,, and Arthur Ochs Sulzberger (publisher of the New York Times), in NYT publisher Sulzberger spoke yesterday about journalism's future, 2007-10-17, The Tufts Daily, en-US, 2017-01-17 http://tuftsdaily.com/archives/2007/10/17/nyt-publisher-sulzberger-spoke-yesterday-about-journalisms-future/,

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Jean Piaget photo

“If a baby really has no awareness of himself and is totally thing-directed and at the same time all his states of mind are projected onto things, our second paradox makes sense: on the one hand, thought in babies can be viewed as pure accommodation or exploratory movements, but on the other this very same thought is only one, long, completely autistic waking dream.”

Jean Piaget (1896–1980) Swiss psychologist, biologist, logician, philosopher & academic

The First Year of Life of the Child (1927), "The Egocentrism of the Child and the Solipsism of the Baby", as translated by Howard E. Gruber and J. Jacques Vonèche

Willem de Sitter photo
Tony Blair photo
Paul Krugman photo
Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“Just observe what you are. What you are is the fact: the fact that you are jealous, anxious, envious, brutal, demanding, violent. That is what you are. Look at it, be aware; don’t shape it, don’t guide it, don’t deny it, don’t have opinions about it. By looking at it without condemnation, without judgement, without comparison, you observe; out of that observation, out of that awareness comes affection. Now, go still further. And you can do this in one flash. It can only be done in one flash — not first from the outside and then working further and deeper and deeper and deeper; it does not work that way, it is all done with one sweep, from the outermost to the most inward, to the innermost depth. Out of this, in this, there is attention — attention to the whistle of that train, the noise, the coughing, the way you are jerking your legs about; attention whereby you listen to what is said, you find out what is true and what is false in what is being said, and you do not set up the speaker as an authority. So this attention comes out of this extraordinarily complex existence of contradiction, misery and utter despair. And when the mind is attentive, it can then give focus, which then is quite a different thing; then it can concentrate but that concentration is not the concentration of exclusion. Then the mind can give attention to whatever it is doing, and that attention becomes much more efficient, much more vital, because you are taking everything in.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Vol. XIV, p. 301
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works

“We become aware of the void as we fill it.”

Antonio Porchia (1885–1968) Italian Argentinian poet

Percibimos el vacío, llenándolo.
Voces (1943)

Julia Stiles photo
Charles Stross photo
Sarah Schulman photo
Edvard Munch photo
Colin Wilson photo
Ervin László photo
Lalu Prasad Yadav photo

“Why should I tell you where I am going to get funds from? If I were to do that then all the vested interests would get alerted. You must be aware that railways are full of such elements and my fight is against them.”

Lalu Prasad Yadav (1948) Indian politician

When an interviewer asked him from where is he going to get resources to implement the tall promises that he made in the railway budget of 2004. ([Railway Budget, The Times of India, July 7, 2004]).

Albert Jay Nock photo
Morrissey photo

“If I die, then I die. And if I don’t, then I don’t. Right now I feel good. I am aware that in some of my recent photos I look somewhat unhealthy, but that’s what illness can do. I’m not going to worry about that, I’ll rest when I’m dead.”

Morrissey (1959) English singer

from an interview for El Mundo (2014), regarding the announcement of Morrissey's cancer diagnosis
In interviews etc., About life and death

Nisargadatta Maharaj photo
Aung San Suu Kyi photo
Johan Huizinga photo

“The awareness of the all-surpassing importance of social groups is now general property in America.”

Johan Huizinga (1872–1945) Dutch historian

Life and Thought in America, ch. 2 (1972).

Benjamin R. Barber photo
Indro Montanelli photo
Rollo May photo
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain photo

“The momentous meaning of this occasion impressed me deeply. I resolved to mark it by some token of recognition, which could be no other than a salute of arms. Well aware of the responsibility assumed, and of the criticisms that would follow, as the sequel proved, nothing of that kind could move me in the least. The act could be defended, if needful, by the suggestion that such a salute was not to the cause for which the flag of the Confederacy stood, but to its going down before the flag of the Union. My main reason, however, was one for which I sought no authority nor asked forgiveness. Before us in proud humiliation stood the embodiment of manhood: men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve; standing before us now, thin, worn, and famished, but erect, and with eyes looking level into ours, waking memories that bound us together as no other bond;—was not such manhood to be welcomed back into a Union so tested and assured? Instructions had been given; and when the head of each division column comes opposite our group, our bugle sounds the signal and instantly our whole line from right to left, regiment by regiment in succession, gives the soldier's salutation, from the "order arms" to the old "carry"—the marching salute. Gordon at the head of the column, riding with heavy spirit and downcast face, catches the sound of shifting arms, looks up, and, taking the meaning, wheels superbly, making with himself and his horse one uplifted figure, with profound salutation as he drops the point of his sword to the boot toe; then facing to his own command, gives word for his successive brigades to pass us with the same position of the manual, honor answering honor. On our part not a sound of trumpet more, nor roll of drum; not a cheer, nor word nor whisper of vain-glorying, nor motion of man standing again at the order, but an awed stillness rather, and breath-holding, as if it were the passing of the dead!”

Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain (1828–1914) Union Army general and Medal of Honor recipient

The Passing of the Armies: An account of the Army of the Potomac, based upon personal reminiscences of the Fifth Army Corps (1915), p. 260

Kid Cudi photo

“Salutations my niggas, I'm aware that I'm different, you can still keep it hood while you're smoking just listen, it don't matter your race
just take a blunt to the face”

Kid Cudi (1984) American rapper, singer, songwriter, guitarist and actor from Ohio

-Dat New New
Music

Steven M. Greer photo

“We can prove through the testimony and documents that we will be presenting that this subject has been hidden from members of Congress and at least two administrations that we are aware of, two presidential administrations.”

Steven M. Greer (1955) American ufologist

Undated
Source: [Kehnemui, Sharon, Men in Suits See Aliens as Part of Solution, Not Problem, Fox News Channel, May 10, 2001, http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,24364,00.html, 2007-05-10]

Jiddu Krishnamurti photo

“Now, one sees all that by observing, by being aware, watching, one is aware of all this. Then out of that awareness you see there is no division between the observer and the observed.”

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986) Indian spiritual philosopher

Saanen, Switzerland (5 August 1973)
1970s
Context: Now, one sees all that by observing, by being aware, watching, one is aware of all this. Then out of that awareness you see there is no division between the observer and the observed. It is a trick of thought which demands security. Please don't madam, please. And by being aware it sees the observer is the observed, that violence is the observer, violence is not different from the observer. Now how is the observer to end himself and not be violent? Have you understood my question so far? I think so. Right? The observer is the observed, there is no division and therefore no conflict. And is the observer then, knowing all the intricacies of naming, linguistically caught in the image of violence, what happens to that violence? If the observer is violent, can the observer end, otherwise violence will go on? Can the observer end himself, because he is violent? Or what reality has the observer? Right sir? Is he merely put together by words, by experience, by knowledge? So is he put together by the past? So is he the past? Right? Which means the mind is living in the past. Right? obviously. You are living in the past. Right? No? As long as there is an observer there must be living in the past, obviously. And all our life is based on the past, memories, knowledge, images, according to which you react, which is your conditioning, is the past. And living has become the living of the past in the present, modified in the future. That's all, as long as the observer is living. Now does the mind see this as a truth, as a reality, that all my life is living in the past? I may paint most abstract pictures, write the most modern poems, invent the most extraordinary machinery, but I am still living in the past.

Dexter Scott King photo

“Veganism has given me a higher level of awareness and spirituality, primarily because the energy associated with eating has shifted to other areas. … If you're violent to yourself by putting [harmful] things into your body that violate its spirit, it will be difficult not to perpetuate that [violence] onto someone else.”

Dexter Scott King (1961) American civil rights activist

“A King Among Men,” interview with Jill Howard Church in Vegetarian Times, October 1995, Issue 218, p. 128 https://books.google.it/books?id=SgcAAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA128.

Fred Thompson photo

“After sleeping late on Sunday, I was back at my desk that afternoon. I had two prime considerations. First, I wanted to be certain that the tapes were not a trap for the committee or that there was a significant bit of missing information that we lacked; experience taught me that matters of this importance do not usually fall into your lap without more complications that are immediately apparent. Second, if our information was legitimate, I wanted to be sure the White House was fully aware of what was to be disclosed so that it could take appropriate action. Legalisms aside, it was inconceivable to me that the White House could withhold the tapes once their existence was made known. I believed it would be in everyone’s interest if the White House realized, before making any public statements, the probable position of both the majority and the minority of the Watergate committee. Even though I had no authority to act for the committee, I decided to call Fred Buzhardt at home. Buzhardt was the only White House staff member with whom I had had any substantial contact. He had been unassuming and straightforward in his dealings with me. He never tried to enlist me in any White House strategy, to suggest that I relay confidential information, or to so any of the things that were probably assumed by many of the so-called sophisticates in Washington.”

Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor

page 86
At That Point in Time, Warning the White House about the Watergate tapes

Newton Lee photo
Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Thandie Newton photo