Quotes about subconscious

A collection of quotes on the topic of subconscious, mind, use, thinking.

Quotes about subconscious

Masiela Lusha photo

“Poetry is a lyrical insinuation. Often, its melodic subtlety kisses the subconscious mind.”

Masiela Lusha (1985) Albanian actress, writer, author

LaGuardia, Gina (October 2004). "Masiela's Musings". College Bound Teen (USA): p. 2.

Joseph Murphy photo

“As you sow in your subconscious mind, so shall you reap in your body and environment.”

Joseph Murphy (1898–1981) American writer

Source: The Power of Your Subconscious Mind -

Teal Swan photo
Carlos Ruiz Zafón photo
Neville Goddard photo

“Nothing comes from without; all things come from within - from the subconscious”

Neville Goddard (1905–1972) American author and lecturer

Source: Resurrection

Aaron Copland photo
H.P. Lovecraft photo

“In infancy I was afraid of the dark, which I peopled with all sorts of things; but my grandfather cured me of that by daring me to walk through certain dark parts of the house when I was 3 or 4 years old. After that, dark places held a certain fascination for me. But it is in dreams that I have known the real clutch of stark, hideous, maddening, paralysing fear. My infant nightmares were classics, & in them there is not an abyss of agonising cosmic horror that I have not explored. I don't have such dreams now—but the memory of them will never leave me. It is undoubtedly from them that the darkest & most gruesome side of my fictional imagination is derived. At the ages of 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, & 8 I have been whirled through formless abysses of infinite night and adumbrated horrors as black & as seethingly sinister as any of our friend Fafhrd's [a nickname Lovecraft used for Fritz Leiber] "splatter-stencil" triumphs. That's why I appreciate such triumphs so keenly, I have seen these things! Many a time I have awaked in shrieks of panic, & have fought desperately to keep from sinking back into sleep & its unutterable horrors. At the age of six my dreams became peopled with a race of lean, faceless, rubbery, winged things to which I applied the home-made name of night-gaunts. Night after night they would appear in exactly the same form—& the terror they brought was beyond any verbal description. Long decades later I embodied them in one of my Fungi from Yuggoth pseudo-sonnets, which you may have read. Well—after I was 8 all these things abated, perhaps because of the scientific habit of mind which I was acquiring (or trying to acquire). I ceased to believe in religion or any other form of the supernatural, & the new logic gradually reached my subconscious imagination. Still, occasional nightmares brought recurrent touches of the ancient fear—& as late as 1919 I had some that I could use in fiction without much change. The Statement of Randolph Carter is a literal dream transcript. Now, in the sere & yellow leaf (I shall be 47 in August), I seem to be rather deserted by stark horror. I have nightmares only 2 or 3 times a year, & of these none even approaches those of my youth in soul-shattering, phobic monstrousness. It is fully a decade & more since I have known fear in its most stupefying & hideous form. And yet, so strong is the impress of the past, I shall never cease to be fascinated by fear as a subject for aesthetic treatment. Along with the element of cosmic mystery & outsideness, it will always interest me more than anything else. It is, in a way, amusing that one of my chief interests should be an emotion whose poignant extremes I have never known in waking life!”

H.P. Lovecraft (1890–1937) American author

Letter to Harry O. Fischer (late February 1937), in Selected Letters V, 1934-1937 edited by August Derleth and Donald Wandrei, pp. 416-417
Non-Fiction, Letters

Sukirti Kandpal photo
Yeshayahu Leibowitz photo
Thelonious Monk photo

“All musicians are subconsciously mathematicians.”

Thelonious Monk (1917–1982) American jazz pianist and composer

Interview in Down Beat magazine (28 October 1971)

Fernando Pessoa photo

“Smell is a strange sight. It evokes sentimental landscapes through a sudden sketching of the subconscious.”

Ibid., p. 238
The Book of Disquiet
Original: O olfacto é uma vista estranha. Evoca paisagens sentimentais por um desenhar súbito do subconsciente.

Sachin Tendulkar photo
Emile Coué photo
Kazimir Malevich photo

“The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive reason. The face of the new art. The square is a living, regal infant. The first step of pure creation in art.”

Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935) Russian and Soviet artist of polish descent

Quote in 'From Cubism and Futurism to Suprematism: The New Realism in Painting', Kazimir Malevich, November 1916
1910 - 1920

Jawaharlal Nehru photo

“A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (1889–1964) Indian lawyer, statesman, and writer, first Prime Minister of India

On Mahatma Gandhi<!-- p. 506 (1949) / p. 310 (1961) -->
Autobiography (1936; 1949; 1958)
Context: I knew that Gandhiji usually acts on instinct (I prefer to call it that than the "inner voice" or an answer to prayer) and very often that instinct is right. He has repeatedly shown what a wonderful knack he has of sensing the mass mind and of acting at the psychological moment. The reasons which he afterward adduces to justify his action are usually afterthoughts and seldom carry one very far. A leader or a man of action in a crisis almost always acts subconsciously and then thinks of the reasons for his action.

Alan Moore photo
Jack Kerouac photo

“I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

Letter to Ed White (5 July 1950) as published in The Missouri Review, Vol. XVII, No. 3, 1994, page 137, and also quoted in Jack Kerouac: Angelheaded Hipster (1996) by Steve Turner, p. 117

Joseph Heller photo
Nora Ephron photo
Joseph Heller photo
Steven Wright photo

“Sometimes I talk to myself fluently in languages I'm unfamiliar with… just to screw with my subconscious.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)

Ray Bradbury photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
Deb Caletti photo

“My subconscious speaks in a foreign language.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: The Six Rules of Maybe

Douglas Adams photo
Jeff Lindsay photo
Viktor Schauberger photo
David Icke photo

“Have you ever wondered what your subconscious mind looks like? Well today, I can show you.”

David Icke (1952) English writer and public speaker

Source: You want to change your life? Then change the way you think! in Bridge of love magazine

Rollo May photo
Jane Roberts photo
Bhakti Tirtha Swami photo
Brian W. Aldiss photo
Martin Amis photo
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)

Cornelia Parker photo

“I think your subconscious knows far more than your conscious, so I trust it. I just make it first and then it becomes much clearer to me why.”

Cornelia Parker (1956) English artist

Source: Simon Hattenstone. "Cornelia Parker: a History of Violence." in: The Guardian. May 25, 2010.

Boris Sidis photo
Stanley Baldwin photo
Warren Farrell photo
Piero Manzoni photo
Andrew Solomon photo
Edvard Munch photo
Jane Roberts photo
China Miéville photo
Lawrence Durrell photo
Nyanaponika Thera photo
Joseph Beuys photo
Douglas Adams photo
Jeremy Soule photo

“My secret desire is for the whole world to eventually play games and for games to have the kind of influence that books and movies do. Games are a great place for the planet's collective subconscious to grow as we further our understanding of each other.”

Jeremy Soule (1975) American composer

Jeremy Soule Interview https://web.archive.org/web/20021026151734/http://www.stratosgroup.com/features/interviews.php?selected=200206jsbh (June 04, 2002).
Attributed

Christopher Golden photo

“Instead, it had slipped into her subconscious, and worked its way beneath her skin.”

Christopher Golden (1967) American writer

Page 280 Last Breath
Body of Evidence

Georg Brandes photo
A. J. Muste photo
Julie Christie photo

“All women are aware of that moment when suddenly the boys don’t look at you. It’s a fairly common thing, when suddenly you no longer attract that instant male attention because of the way you look. I never really knew how to enjoy beauty, but it took the form of a subconscious arrogance, expecting things, all muddled up with celebrity.”

Julie Christie (1940) British actress and activist

As quoted in "A Role About Winter for Julie Christie, a Star in Eternal Spring http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/movies/18chri.html?_r=0" by Alan Riding in The New York Times (18 April 2007)]

Marcel Duchamp photo
Edward Carpenter photo
Jane Roberts photo
Pat Condell photo

“When people are afraid of the truth they've got nowhere to turn. All they have at their disposal is censorship and denial. And Swedish politicians are so deep in denial you can only feel pity for them, because you know that in some dark chamber of their subconscious these wretched people know what a terrible thing they're doing, and they know that history is going to revile them and their entire generation for it. But they just can't face up to it. Psychologically, they are simply not big enough as people to acknowledge, let alone confront, the enormity of their mistake. They've backed themselves into an ideological corner where their only option now is to double down on the insanity and brazen it out until the bitter end, while criminalising anyone who draws attention to it. Whatever social upheaval it may cause, and whatever the cost to Sweden's women, mass Islamic immigration must continue. Any restriction would be an admission that there's a problem, and that would fatally undermine everything they're so desperately pretending to believe in… If you say there's a problem, you'll be treated as a criminal – which means that there are now two problems. One: the Swedish people have an aggressive social cancer growing in their midst; and two: they're not allowed to talk about it.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"Sweden Goes Insane" (19 May 2014) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o_znVnOizU8
2014

Warren Farrell photo
David Fincher photo
Stephen King photo
P.G. Wodehouse photo
J. R. D. Tata photo
Bill Bryson photo
Tomas Kalnoky photo
Boris Sidis photo
Jane Roberts photo

“I have told you that upon physical death the ego becomes the subconscious in the next existence, and that its conscious knowing is retained electromagnetically.”

Jane Roberts (1929–1984) American Writer

Session 218, Page 142
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 5

Jane Roberts photo
China Miéville photo
Anaïs Nin photo
Wassily Kandinsky photo

“If until now colour and form were used as inner agents, it was mainly done subconsciously. The subordination of composition to geometrical form is no new idea (cf. the art of the Persians). Construction on a purely spiritual basis is a slow business, and at first seemingly blind and unmethodical. The artist must train not only his eye but also his soul, so that it can weigh colours in its own scale and thus become a determinant in artistic creation. If we begin at once to break the bonds that bind us to nature and to devote ourselves purely to combination of pure colour and independent form, we shall produce works that are mere geometric decoration, resembling something like a necktie or a carpet. Beauty of form and colour is no sufficient aim by itself, despite the assertions of pure aesthetes or even of naturalists obsessed with the idea of "beauty". It is because our painting is still at an elementary stage that we are so little able to be moved by wholly autonomous colour and form composition. The nerve vibrations are there (as we feel when confronted by applied art), but they get no farther than the nerves because the corresponding vibrations of the spirit which they call forth are weak. When we remember however, that spiritual experience is quickening, that positive science, the firmest basis of human thought is tottering, that dissolution of matter is imminent, we have reason to hope that the hour of pure composition is not far away. The first stage has arrived.”

Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) Russian painter

Quote from Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky, Munich, 1912; as cited in Kandinsky, Frank Whitford, Paul Hamlyn Ltd, London 1967, p. 15
1910 - 1915

Ursula K. Le Guin photo
William F. Buckley Jr. photo

“I've always subconsciously looked out for the total Christian and when I found him he turned out to be a non-practicing Jew.”

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925–2008) American conservative author and commentator

Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches (2000) ISBN-13: 978-0761525516
Referring to Richard M. Clurman (1924 - 1996), a journalist, editor and administrator best known for his long association with Time magazine. http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1996/06/03/1996_06_03_056_TNY_CARDS_000376587

Louis Sullivan photo
Henry Moore photo
Edward Hopper photo

“So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle.”

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) prominent American realist painter and printmaker

Quote in Hopper's letter to Charles H. Sawyer, October 29, 1939; as cited in Edward Hopper, Lloyd Goodrich; New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1971, p. 164
1911 - 1940

Revilo P. Oliver photo
P. D. James photo

“Every novelist write what he or she needs to write, a subconscious compulsion to express and explain his unique view of reality.”

P. D. James (1920–2014) English crime writer

Time to be Earnest - a Fragment of Biography Faber & Faber, London 1999.
Time to be Earnest - a Fragment of Biography

Jane Roberts photo
Robert Englund photo
George F. Kennan photo
Gaston Bachelard photo

“The subconscious is ceaselessly murmuring, and it is by listening to these murmurs that one hears the truth.”

Gaston Bachelard (1884–1962) French writer and philosopher

Source: La poétique de la rêverie (The Poetics of Reverie) (1960), Ch. 2, sect. 2

John McCarthy photo
Eugene J. Martin photo

“Because of subconscious guilt, people spend half their lives in self-punishment and the other half taking on more guilt.”

Eugene J. Martin (1938–2005) American artist

Annotated Drawings by Eugene J. Martin: 1977-1978

Steven Wright photo

“I need one of those baby-monitors for my subconscious to my consciousness so I can know what the hell I'm really thinking about.”

Steven Wright (1955) American actor and author

When the Leaves Blow Away (2006), I Still Have a Pony (2007)

Karl Barth photo
John Maynard Keynes photo