Nature of Consciousness Quotes

Our mind is a machine, it is not a mystery. And the mind always wants to know the how, the why. And because of this persistent inquiry about how and why, it goes on missing all that is beyond the boundaries of machines. Life is beyond the boundaries of machines.

How can mirrors be real if our eyes aren't real?

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

And yet I am convinced that man will never give up true suffering- that is, destruction and chaos. Why, suffering is the sole root of consciousness.

Is Life itself a dream, I wonder?

Whether consciousness is implanted in us by something divine, or whether it is created by the efforts of our brains, the end result is the same. We are.

It's the nature of human consciousness to look for trouble constantly, and we find it. We find it.

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

Talking to a peasant one day, I suggested to him the hypothesis that there might indeed be a God who governs heaven and earth, a Consciousness or Conscience of the Universe, but that even so it would not be sufficient reason to assume that the soul of every man was immortal in the traditional and concrete sense. And he replied, "Then what good is God?

I could never figure out or probably did not take the trouble to figure out what the great philosophical problems are about. The momentous statements I come across are at best a storm in a teacup. There are quite a number of people who have a vested interest in the stuff, make a noble living out of it, and they conspire with one another to keep it alive.

Knowledge does not mean mastering a great quantity of different information, but understanding the nature of mind. This knowledge can penetrate each one of our thoughts and illuminate each one of our perceptions.

Every advance in knowledge brings us face to face with the mystery of our own being.

It is ironic but true: the one reality science cannot reduce is the only reality we will ever know. This is why we need art. By expressing our actual experience, the artist reminds us that our science is incomplete, that no map of matter will ever explain the immateriality of our consciousness.

A wonderful area for speculative academic work is the unknowable. These days religious subjects are in disfavor, but there are still plenty of good topics. The nature of consciousness, the workings of the brain, the origin of aggression, the origin of language, the origin of life on earth, SETI and life on other worlds...this is all great stuff. Wonderful stuff. You can argue it interminably. But it can't be contradicted, because nobody knows the answer to any of these topics.