Date: 1830

"To grasp intelligence as this night-like mine or pit in which is stored a world of infinitely many images and representations, yet without being in consciousness, is from the one point of view the universal postulate which bids us treat the notion as concrete, in the way we treat, for example, t...

— Hegel, G. W. F. (1770-1831)

Date: 1902

"If it were otherwise, no one could even set down on paper a closely reasoned argument, for the attention would be skipping like a stone hurrying down a sharp incline, or it would be moving hither and thither like a helpless shuttlecock at the mercy of eager players."

— Spiller, Gustav (1864-1940)

Date: 1999

"On its own this trigger, as we can see from the earlier definition, is not going to generate consciousness. Imagine a candyfloss machine with a stick in the centre that then gathers more and more candyfloss as time goes on. Think of the epicentre as the stick in the centre, the burgeoning candy...

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 1999

"Perhaps the consciousness of dreaming is the almost random formation of little groups forming in different configurations like pebbles thrown very gently into the water. One can imagine the gentle ripples easily being displaced by the next pebble as it hits the water."

— Greenfield, Susan (b. 1950)

Date: 2006

"When there is no longer any wobble, then the mind is like an unwavering rock, more immovable than a mountain and harder than a diamond."

— Ajahn Brahm [born Peter Betts] (August 7, 1951)

Date: December 10, 2017

"As this can happen many times in a life, a memory might be described as having a kind of geological history, with different stratifications going back through time, 'representing the psychic achievement of successive epochs of life.'"

— Krauss, Nicole (b. August 18, 1974)

Date: 2018

"Get in the mind shaft."

— White, Jack [John Anthony] (b. July 9, 1975)

Date: February 21, 2019

"Gradually it had become the place where we sounded like each other, through some erosion of wind or water on a self not nearly as firm as stone."

— Lockwood, Patricia