What we really mean by free will, of course, is the visualizing of alternatives and making a choice between them. In my view, which not everyone shares, the central problem of human consciousness depends on this ability to imagine.
Jacob Bronowski (1908-1974) Polish-English humanist and mathematician
The Origins of Knowledge and Imagination, ch. 1 “The Mind as an Instrument for Understanding” (1978)
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Quotations about:
consciousness
Note not all quotations have been tagged, so Search may find additional quotes on this topic.
The concentration of a small child at play is analogous to the concentration of the artist of any discipline. In real play, which is real concentration, the child is not only outside time, he is outside himself. He has thrown himself completely into whatever it is that he is doing. A child playing a game, building a sand castle, painting a picture, is completely in what he is doing. His self-consciousness is gone; his consciousness is wholly focused outside himself.
Perhaps no other animal is so torn between alternatives. Man might be described fairly adequately, if simply, as a two-legged paradox. He has never become accustomed to the tragic miracle of consciousness. Perhaps, as has been suggested, his species is not set, has not jelled, but is still in a state of becoming, bound by his physical memories to a past of struggle and survival, limited in his futures by the uneasiness of thought and consciousness.
The mind is like a well-endowed museum, only a small fraction of its holdings on view at any one time.
James Richardson (b. 1950) American poet
Vectors: Aphorisms and Ten-Second Essays, #407 (2001)
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HAMLET: Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o’er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprises of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action.William Shakespeare (1564-1616) English dramatist and poet
Hamlet, Act 3, sc. 1, l. 91ff (3.1.91-96) (c. 1600)
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"Conscience" in this case is used in its archaic form, as consciousness, awareness.
