William James Quotes

Consciousness... does not appear to itself chopped up in bits. Such words as 'chain' or 'train' do not describe it fitly as it presents itself in the first instance. It is nothing jointed; it flows. A 'river' or a 'stream' are the metaphors by which it is most naturally described. In talking of it hereafter, let us call it the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life. Source of the expression 'stream of consciousness'.

Most of my bits are long stream-of-consciousness- type things, and when I'm doing them onstage, other places to take the theme or idea will hit me, and I just go with it.

A single thought is that which it is from other thoughts as a wave of the sea takes its form and shape from the waves which precede and follow it.

We can be more or less conscious when you create grades of focus on a subject that is flowing in our stream of consciousness.

When people use that stream of consciousness, it's kind of just a term they use for anything that looks slightly different on the page.

As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.

It was thought, perception, sensations that interested her, the conscious mind as a river through time, and how to represent its onward roll, as well as all the tributaries that would swell it, and the obstacles that would divert it. If only she could reproduce the clear light of a summer's morning.

As far as ideology or political beliefs are concerned, countries are very different.

A Buddha is not a man of concentration, he is a man of awareness. He has not been trying to narrow down his consciousness; on the contrary, he has been trying to drop all barriers so that he becomes totally available to existence. Watch... existence is simultaneous. I am speaking here and the traffic noise is simultaneous. The train, the birds the wind blowing through the trees - in this moment the whole of existence converges. You listening to me, I speaking to you, and millions of things going on - it is tremendously rich.

Regain your senses, call yourself back, and once again wake up. Now that you realize that only dreams were troubling you, view this 'reality' as you view your dreams.

Body and soul. Two different things

Now the stream of our common consciousness seems to be obliterating its own banks, losing its central direction and purpose, flooding the lowlands, disconnecting and isolating the highlands and to no particular purpose other than the wasteful fulfillment of its own internal momentum

In my experience everyone will have a different view of the right level of tax so governments need to provide clear guidance that conforms to a set of international standards that all governments accept.

There are manifold tones of mental life, or, in other words, our psychic life may be lived at different heights, now nearer to action, now further removed from it, according to the degree of our attention to life.

I can only display what I've been nurtured with, which is this worldview which has become my view. If I displayed anything different from it in my work, I wouldn't deserve this heritage.

Thoughts are going by like a river; awareness simply is.

Show us not the aim without the way. For ends and means on earth are so entangled That changing one, you change the other too; Each different path brings other ends in view

Of Rhetoric various definitions have been given by different writers; who, however, seem not so much to have disagreed in their conceptions of the nature of the same thing, as to have had different things in view while they employed the same term.

Whole idea is really intriguing to me. If you took snapshots of ourselves throughout the day, the way that our mind is twisting and turning, then at the moment of death, the mind would be twisting and turning in the same way. But the Buddhists say it's super-sized because there's no bodily damper on it.

I look at my job as looking at the world from points of view that are different from mine - sometimes radically different from mine.

The universe is in the experience. It's not just out there. What's out there, we don't know. But for humans it's an experience just like the universe for a dolphin or an insect with 100 eyes is a different experience. Our universe is a human universe experienced in human consciousness and, unless we understand how consciousness operates, we will never actually be able to participate in the creation of our personal and collective reality.

Life always is now, but the form the now takes changes continuously. Most people equate the form the now takes with the now itself, and so they believe there are many different moments.

I was born and grew up in the Deep South, and I must say it wasn't easy for me. I always marched to a drummer, I had different views about politics and religion and I had them relatively young.

Raphael and Titian seem to have looked at Nature for different purposes; they both had the power of extending their view to the whole; but one looked only for the general effect as produced by form, the other as produced by colour.

There is only one of us. One consciousness manifesting into different forms.