Irving Howe Quotes

In the heart of consciousness is subjectivity, this sense of having a self that observes one's own organism and the world around that organism. That is really the heart of consciousness.

I--this thought which is called I--is the mould into which the world is poured like melted wax.

You know, mind allows us to portray in different sensory modalities, visual, auditory, olfactory, you name it, what we are like and what the world is like. But this very, very important quality of subjectivity, this quality that allows us to take a distant view and say, "I am here, I exist, I have a life and there are things around me that refer to me." That me-ness, M-E-hyphen, that is what really constitutes consciousness.

I'm your mind", it claims. "You can't parse ME into dendrites and synapses

The mind self-edits. The mind airbrushes. It's a different thing to be inside a body than outside. From outside, you can look, inspect, compare. From inside there is no comparison.

In the end, we self-perceiving, self-inventing, locked-in mirages are little miracles of self-reference.

You don't really see yourself doing things, of course, but you feel.

I don't think I'm tangible to myself.

Most everything you think you know about me is nothing more than memories.

I believe that it is made out of the same cloth of mind, but it is an add-on, it was something that was specialized to create what we call the self. And it exists for very special purposes and it has very special, and I think by and large good consequences, although not only good consequences.

The true self is not aware that it is a self. A bird, as it sings, sings itself. But not according to a picture. It has no idea of itself.

A conscious mind is a mind with a self in it.

I know myself as mortal, but this raises the question: "What is I?" Am I an individual, or am I an evolving life stream composed of countless selves?

I am unable, when I turn to myself, to recognize any of my faculties or my capacities. The inner sensation which I have of myself informs me that I am, that I think, that I will, that I have sensory awareness, that I suffer, and so on; but it provides me with no knowledge whatever of what I am - of the nature of my thought, my sensations, my passions, or my pain - or the mutual relations that obtain between all these things ... I have no idea whatever of my soul.

Of all the thoughts that rise in the mind, the thought 'I' is the first thought.

All thought of something is at the same time self-consciousness [...] At the root of all our experiences and all our reflections, we find [...] a being which immediately recognises itself, [...] and which knows its own existence, not by observation and as a given fact, nor by inference from any idea of itself, but through direct contact with that existence. Self-consciousness is the very being of mind in action.

We are not passive exhibitors of visual or auditory or tactile images. We have selves. We have a Me that is automatically present in our minds right now.

If the will did not exist, neither would there be that centre of the world, which we call the I.

An 'I' without a body is a possibility. But a body without an 'I' is utterly impossible.

There is the mind itself. It is like a smooth lake which when struck, say by a stone, vibrates. The vibrations gather together and react on the stone, and all through the lake they will spread and be felt. The mind is like the lake; it is constantly being set in vibrations, which leave an impression on the mind; and the idea of the Ego, or personal self, the "I", is the result of these impressions. This "I" therefore is only the very rapid transmission of force and is in itself no reality.

Now man cannot live without some vision of himself. But still less can he live with a vision that is not true to his inner experience and inner feeling.

The illusion of self-awareness. Happy automatons, running on trivial programs. I'll bet you never guess. From the inside, how can you?

It is wrong to say: I think. One ought to say: I am thought. I is someone else.

The physical body is conceived and constructed in consciousness as are time and space. All happens within our self.

Life is but thought.