Antonio Gramsci Quotes

A consciousness of history is one of the key factors that distinguishes us from other animals.

If there is any characteristic that is distinctly human, it is the capability for reflective self-consciousness.

I desire therefore I exist.

The civilized man is a larger mind but a more imperfect nature than the savage.

Human consciousness is just about the last surviving mystery... a topic that often leaves even the most sophisticated thinkers tongue-tied and confused. And, as with all of the earlier mysteries, there are many who insist - and hope - that there will never be a demystification of consciousness.

As for morality, well that's all tied up with the question of consciousness.

Man as a pure animal does not exist.

I'm a paleoanthropologist, and my job is to define man's place in nature and explore what makes us human.

You have to look at history as an evolution of society.

The history of mankind is confined within a limited period, and from every quarter brings an intimation that human affairs have had a beginning.

Man is a history—making creature who can neither repeat his past nor leave it behind.

If the ideas of any particular man are determined by his environment, then the ideas of humanity, in their historical development, are determined by the development of the social environment, by the history of social relationships.

I've always had this fascination with the brain. I'm not really much of a religious person, but like anybody, you are at least fascinated by what some call a soul - what I would call the brain - and who we are and how we work.

We humans are still a very primitive culture, and it's one of the traps we've fallen into over the course of our lives - to forget our history. That's why George Orwell's 'Animal Farm' is so profound. It chronicles our short memory.

I want to talk about the nature of human beings or how we're evolving as a race.

History is the action and reaction of these two, nature and thought.

Thought is invisible nature.

Savage peoples are ruled by passion, civilized peoples by the mind. The difference lies not in the respective natures of savagery and civilization, but in their attendant circumstances, institutions, and so forth. The difference, therefore, does not operate in every sense, but it does in most of them. Even the most civilized peoples, in short, can be fired with passionate hatred for each other.

To separate mind from body doesn't make any sense.

Perhaps people need to understand some history here. Rene Descartes, in the late 16th, early 17th century, postulated that body, mind, physicality and spirituality belonged to different realms of reality that didn't interact. On a positive side, it got the Inquisition off the backs of the intellectuals and they quit burning them at the stake for disagreeing with the Church.

What's most interesting about trying to figure out AI is the questions that it forces you to ask about the nature of consciousness.

What is troubling us is the tendency to believe that the mind is like a little man within.

It is just man's turning away from instinct--his opposing himself to instinct--that creates consciousness. Instinct is nature andseeks to perpetuate nature; while consciousness can only seek culture or its denial.

There is no matter as such—mind is the matrix of all matter.

Sensations are nothing but confused modes of thinking.