Antonio Damasio Quotes

Consciousness is cerebral celebrity--nothing more and nothing less. Those contents are conscious that persevere, that monopolize resources long enough to achieve certain typical and "symptomatic" effects--on memory, on the control of behavior and so forth.

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'.

Consciousness is nothing but awareness the composite of all the thing we pay attention to.

Consciousness is what makes the mind-body problem really intractable.

I became really interested in the study of consciousness.

The distinguishing characteristics of mind are of a subjective sort; we know them only from the contents of our own consciousness.

Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be much less interesting. With consciousness it seems hopeless.

The quality of our attention determines our experience.

fundamentally an organism has conscious mental states if and only if there is something that it is like to be that organism--something it is like for the organism.

Pain narrows consciousness; pleasure blurs it.

Consciousness is the awareness that emerges out of the dialectical tension between possibilities and limitations.

Consciousness in the individual is that area where the totality of life is located.

Pain and pleasure occur in consciousness and exist only there

Whatever we know without inference is mental.

Consciousness is the foundation of all thinking; and thinking is the foundation of all consciousness.

I am the thought you are now thinking.

At any moment in time, our reality is based on whatever we focus on.

No matter whether "I" feels victorious or defeated, elated or discouraged, these are mere phantoms compared to consciousness itself.

The mind is a kind of theater, where several perceptions successively make their appearence; pass, re-pass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations.

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.

Every morning we awaken from sleep and from our dreams and enter the state we call wakefulness. A continuous stream of thoughts, most of them repetitive, characterizes the normal wakeful state.

I can no longer be sure whether the psyche is in me or whether I'm in the psyche.

Sometimes people feel mind is merely the - in some animal, the energy or something from the brain. Now there are little sort of curiosities or I think doubt sometimes a sheer sort of mental attitude, some change in our brain. So these fields, now scientists are showing some interest.

The secret of achieving prosperity lies in so vividly keeping yourself centered in the inner focus of affluence that you literally exude the consciousness of it.

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.