Date: 1947, 1958

"Religion, ethics, metaphysics – these are merely the 'spiritual' and 'inner' festivals of human anguish, ways of channelling the black waters of anxiety – and towards what abyss?"

— Lefebvre, Henri (1901-1991)

Date: 1949

"The inner life is a stream of consciousness of such a sort that it would be absurd to suggest that the mind whose life is that stream might be unaware of what is passing down it."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"True, the evidence adduced recently by Freud seems to show that there exist channels tributary to this stream, which run hidden from their owner."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"Rather, to relapse perforce into simile, it is supposed that mental processes are phosphorescent, like tropical sea-water, which makes itself visible by the light which it itself emits."

— Ryle, Gilbert (1900-1976)

Date: 1949

"It was as though their two minds had opened and the thoughts were flowing from one into the other through their eyes."

— Orwell, George (1903-1950)

Date: 1951

"And in her ears the little Seashells, the thimble radios tamped tight, and an electronic ocean of sound, of music and talk and music and talk coming in, coming in on the shore of her unsleeping mind."

— Bradbury, Ray (1920-2012)

Date: 1958

"Consciousness is like a bottomless lake in which ideas are suspended at different depths."

— Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839-1914)

Date: 1959

"Still beneath / Live skin stone breathes, about which fires but play, / Fierce heart that is the iced brain's to command / To judgment -- studied reflex, contained breath) -- / Their best of worlds since, on the ordained day, / This world went spinning from Jehovah's hand."

— Hill, Geoffrey (b. 1932)

Date: 1975

"But at a certain age, the age at which promotions and Chairs begin to occupy a man's thoughts, he may look back with wistful nostalgia to the day's when his wits ran fresh and clear, directed to a single, positive goal."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)

Date: 1975

"In the preceding months he had prepared himself with meticulous care, filling his mind with distilled knowledge, drop by drop, until, on the eve of the first paper (Old English Set Texts) it was almost brimming over."

— Lodge, David (b. 1935)