62 Quotes On Building Awareness

In a world that often feels overstimulated and fast-paced, building awareness remains a vital tool for personal growth and meaningful connections. Whether you're looking to deepen your understanding of yourself, foster better relationships, or create impactful change in your surroundings, cultivating awareness can set the foundation for a more mindful existence. This collection of 62 carefully chosen quotes invites you to explore the many dimensions of awareness, offering insights and inspiration from thinkers, leaders, and visionaries. As you journey through these words, may you find the encouragement to pause, reflect, and embrace the power that comes with truly being present.

1. “There are a thousand thoughts lying within a man that he does not know till he takes up the pen to write.” - William Makepeace Thackeray

2. “As nightfall does not come at once, neither does oppression. In both instances, there is a twilight when everything remains seemingly unchanged. And it is in such twilight that we all must be most aware of change in the air – however slight – lest we become unwitting victims of the darkness.” - William O. Douglas (ed.)

3. “Whenever you are examining someone else's belongings, you are bound to learn many interesting things about the person of which you were not previously aware.” - Lemony Snicket

4. “The WakingI wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.I learn by going where I have to go.We think by feeling. What is there to know?I hear my being dance from ear to ear.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Of those so close beside me, which are you?God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,And learn by going where I have to go.Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.Great Nature has another thing to doTo you and me, so take the lively air,And, lovely, learn by going where to go.This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.What falls away is always. And is near.I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.I learn by going where I have to go.” - Theodore Roethke

5. “I have often reflected upon the new vistas that reading has opened to me. I knew right there in prison that reading had changed forever the course of my life. As I see it today, the ability to read awoke inside me some long dormant craving to be mentally alive.” - Malcolm X

6. “Perfect love casts out fear. Where there is love there are no demands, no expectations, no dependency. I do not demand that you make me happy; my happiness does not lie in you. If you were to leave me, I will not feel sorry for myself; I enjoy your company immensely, but I do not cling.” - Anthony de Mello

7. “Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding, to be more aware? To be more alert, to be more alive?” - Osho

8. “These things will destroy the human race: politics without principle, progress without compassion, wealth without work, learning without silence, religion without fearlessness, and worship without awareness.” - Anthony de Mello

9. “If you can't feel anything, it doesn't mean it's not hurting.” - Katerina Stoykova Klemer

10. “It's easier to take than to give. It's nobler to give than to take. The thrill of taking lasts a day. The thrill of giving lasts a lifetime.” - Joan Marques

11. “Awareness is the enemy of sanity, for once you hear the screaming, it never stops.” - Emilie Autumn

12. “In still moments by the sea life seems large-drawn and simple. It is there we can see into ourselves.” - Rolf Edberg

13. “Live to learn to love. Learn to love to live. Love to live to learn so that you may live the life that you yearn.” - Rico Dasheem

14. “The moment you become aware of the ego in you, it is strictly speaking no longer the ego, but just an old, conditioned mind-pattern. Ego implies unawareness. Awareness and ego cannot coexist.” - Eckhart Tolle

15. “Each one's no longer consciousOf the high wall, or the rest:Since the one enduring fortress,Is the soldier's iron breast.If you’d live unconquered,Quickly arm, and fight the real foe:Every wife an Amazon bred,And every child a hero.” - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

16. “Instinct's aware of reflex when mind ain't yet.” - Toba Beta

17. “The music was more than music- at least what we are used to hearing. The music was feeling itself. The sound connected instantly with something deep and joyous. Those powerful moments of true knowledge that we have to paper over with daily life. The music tapped the back of our terrors, too. Things we'd lived through and didn't want to ever repeat. Shredded imaginings, unadmitted longings, fear and also surprisingly pleasures. No, we can't live at that pitch. But every so often something shatters like ice and we are in the river of our existence. We are aware. And this realization was in the music, somehow, or in the way Shamengwa played it.” - Louise Erdrich

18. “Insecurities have the ability to shape and mold our minds to live with everything that’s bad; like crying on the inside, while smiling on the outside…thus creating pain…but, alas, I have the answer; forget about what you thought and enjoy (embrace) what you feel” - Jeremy Aldana

19. “Each time a man looks into your eyes, he is only searching to find himself; for he knows already, that he is part of you” - Jeremy Aldana

20. “All it takes for generosity to flow is awareness. By actively pursuing awareness and knowledge, we can make choices that cause less harm and greater good to others in the global community of our shared earth.” - Zoe Weil

21. “How can I know for sure if it's my son speaking and not you?""You never can, my lord. Just as no man can ever be sure that he alone is a thinking and feeling creature and everyone else a machine that only pretends to feel and think.” - Paul Hoffman

22. “It’s a hard thing to explain to somebody who hasn’t felt it, but the presence of death and danger has a way of bringing you fully awake. It makes things vivid. When you’re afraid, really afraid, you see things you never saw before, you pay attention to the world. You make close friends. You become part of a tribe and you share the same blood- you give it together, you take it together.” - Tim O'Brien

23. “Seemingly minor yet persistent things penetrate the mind over time making it difficult to ever realize the impact; hence, though quite unfortunate, the most dangerous forms of corruption are those that are subtle and below the radar.” - Criss Jami

24. “Feel what it's like to truly starve, and I guarantee that you'll forever think twice before wasting food.” - Criss Jami

25. “Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness.” - John Cage

26. “Awareness requires living in the here and now, and not in the elsewhere, the past or the future.” - Eric Berne

27. “To be able to possess a machine in such a way is the ultimate show of determination and awareness. It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.” - Garth Stein

28. “We all operate on different levels of awareness. Half the time I don't know what I'm doing.” - Sebastian Faulks

29. “And in that moment, everything I knew to be true about myself up until then was gone. I was acting like another woman, yet I was more myself than ever before.” - Robert James Waller

30. “On a long flight, after periods of crisis and many hours of fatigue, mind and body may become disunited until at times they seem completely different elements, as though the body were only a home with which the mind has been associated but by no means bound. Consciousness grows independent of the ordinary senses. You see without assistance from the eyes, over distances beyond the visual horizon. There are moments when existence appears independent even of the mind. The importance of physical desire and immediate surroundings is submerged in the apprehension of universal values.For unmeasurable periods, I seem divorced from my body, as though I were an awareness spreading out through space, over the earth and into the heavens, unhampered by time or substance, free from the gravitation that binds to heavy human problems of the world. My body requires no attention. It's not hungry. It's neither warm or cold. It's resigned to being left undisturbed. Why have I troubled to bring it here? I might better have left it back at Long Island or St. Louis, while the weightless element that has lived within it flashes through the skies and views the planet. This essential consciousness needs no body for its travels. It needs no plane, no engine, no instruments, only the release from flesh which circumstances I've gone through make possible.Then what am I – the body substance which I can see with my eyes and feel with my hands? Or am I this realization, this greater understanding which dwells within it, yet expands through the universe outside; a part of all existence, powerless but without need for power; immersed in solitude, yet in contact with all creation? There are moments when the two appear inseparable, and others when they could be cut apart by the merest flash of light.While my hand is on the stick, my feet on the rudder, and my eyes on the compass, this consciousness, like a winged messenger, goes out to visit the waves below, testing the warmth of water, the speed of wind, the thickness of intervening clouds. It goes north to the glacial coasts of Greenland, over the horizon to the edge of dawn, ahead to Ireland, England, and the continent of Europe, away through space to the moon and stars, always returning, unwillingly, to the mortal duty of seeing that the limbs and muscles have attended their routine while it was gone.” - Charles A. Lindbergh

31. “To live without love for others is to live in aridity, to be self-serving and fruitless. To live without understanding is to live without sense or purpose. To live without awareness is to live as the deaf, blind and dumb in a world of vibrant light and sound.” - Belsebuub

32. “When you are soul-centered, you can focus your attention where and when you want to, easily, without distraction. You know to look for what you want to see and experience. You know that what you seek you shall find, and what you focus on in life will be more prominent in your awareness. You know your awareness is powerful and creative." ~ Sarah McLean” - Sarah McLean

33. “My next fight would not be measured in rounds, but throughout a lifetime. It would sustain and fulfill me longer than anything in the cage could. My opponent, my fight, would be against the slipping aspects of American society.” - Cameron Conaway

34. “Though you recite much scripture, If you are unaware and do not act accordingYou are like a cowherd counting others' cattle, Not a sharer in the wanderer's life.” - Anonymous

35. “The very desire to be certain,to be secure,is the beginning of bondage.It's only when the mind is not caught in the net of certainty,and is not seeking certainty, that it is in a state of discovery.” - J.Krishnamurti

36. “A 65 year old woman questioning herself is no different than a 15 year old girl launching herself.” - Linda Robinson

37. “Our physical world seems ready and able to accommodate the needs of the spiritually awakened new Superhuman. The constraints or demands of our material world are not the real problem; it is our own spiritual awareness and philosophical wisdom that is lagging behind.” - Anthon St. Maarten

38. “A falling star fell from your heart and landed in my eyes.I screamed aloud, as it tore through them, and now it's left me blind.The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out.You left me in the dark.No dawn, no day, I'm always in this twilight.In the shadow of your heart.And in the dark, I can hear your heartbeat.I tried to find the sound.But then it stopped, and I was in the darkness,So darkness I became.I took the stars from my eyes, and then I made a map.And knew that somehow I could find my way back.Then I heard your heart beating, you were in the darkness too.So I stayed in the darkness with you.” - Florence Welch Isabella Summers

39. “Stay positive, all other choices are pointless punishments to your psyche.” - Joe Peterson

40. “Our tomorrows must be met at the time of their arrival... with the HOPE they are as BEAUTIFUL as today!” - Joe Peterson

41. “Each of us is an artist of our days; the greater our integrity and awareness, the more original and creative our time will become.” - John O'Donohue

42. “You can bail water 24/7, and no matter how good you are at not sinking, you still have a hole in your boat.” - Kelli Jae Baeli

43. “Engagement is the conscious inhabitation of your body and mind. Practice is happening when your open awareness is moving with, in and through your embodied activity. Intrinsic to practice is your conscious participation with your life. Engagement is the conduction of your free and open awareness through your activities, whatever they may be.” - McNamara, Robert

44. “We humans are prone to err, and to err systematically, outrageously, and with utter confidence. We are also prone to hold our mistaken notions dear, protecting and nourishing them like our own children. We defend them at great cost. We surround ourselves with safe people, people who will appreciate our cherished views. We avoid those who suggest that our exalted ideas, our little emperors, have no clothes.” - Valerie Tarico

45. “The biggest enemies of willpower: temptation, self-criticism, and stress. (...) these three skills —self-awareness, self-care, and remembering what matter most— are the foundation for self-control.” - Kelly McGonigal

46. “After all, what is suffering but an awareness of suffering?” - Nancy Farmer

47. “Empowerment is being aware that there is no one to blame for my choices and actions; that I have a personal choice and responsibility for my life.” - Steve Maraboli

48. “A fish cannot be aware of the ocean, before jumping up out of water.” - Rixa White

49. “Self-pity imprisons us in the walls of our own self-absorption. The whole world shrinks down to the size of our problem, and the more we dwell on it, the smaller we are and the larger the problem seems to grow. Awareness of others is a healthy antidote to this self-focus.” - Kevin Malarkey

50. “The great gift of a spiritual path is coming to trust that you can find a way to true refuge. You realize that you can start right where you are, in the midst of your life, and find peace in any circumstance. Even at those moments when the ground shakes terribly beneath you—when there’s a loss that will alter your life forever—you can still trust that you will find your way home. This is possible because you’ve touched the timeless love and awareness that are intrinsic to who you are.” - Tara Brach

51. “It is not many things that modern psychology agress upon, but all the different approaches of psychology agrees on one thing: that people in groups become more stupid. Individually people are more intelligent, because they have to take their own responsibility, but in a group they do not have to take the same responsibility. The two basic power strategies to try to manipulate and gain control over another person are: silencing and attacking. Silencing means to not listen to, to exclude or ignore and not respect a person. Attack can both mean to attack a person directly or to try to discredit a person through lies, to ridicule a person or by spreading malicious rumours. All organizations are more or less dysfunctional. In a dysfunctional group, the members of the group play three different roles: agressor, denier and victim. The agressor is the role that attack and ridicule people, the denier never knows what is going on, there is “no body at home”, and the victim is the resultat of these two roles. It is always easier to follow a group without awareness, than to follow your own heart, to trust your own intelligence, love, truth, silence and creativity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

52. “Life is like playing “hide the key” with God. God has hidden the key and now it is up to us to find the key again. It also takes us a while to realize that the key is hidden in our own heart. Our heart is the door to allow life to guide us. Our heart is the door to say “yes” to life. Our heart is the door to surrender to life.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

53. “The human heart operates from two premises: "I Am Responsible" and "Only Love Works.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

54. “Intuition is a trust that if we follow our heart, if we follow our love, joy and truth, the Whole becomes enriched.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

55. “Emptiness and the not-“I” is the quality that arises when the therapist consciously moves out of his own way without hindering the therapeutic process through his own ideas, attitudes, expectations and concepts. He is present, available and responds with the truth in the moment.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

56. “When we have developed a trust in both our inner man and woman and they can nourish, support, communicate and cooperate with each other, a love begins to flow between them.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

57. “Through becoming aware of how the inner man and woman relates and communicates inside ourselves, it creates a joy and satisfaction in the three life areas that they influence: our meditation and inner growth, our relationships and our work and creativity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

58. “It is when our inner male and female sides meets within ourselves that a new spark of love, joy, and wholeness arises within ourselves.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

59. “Awareness is a choiceless consciousness. Awareness is the capacity to embrace, accept and include both joy and sadness, love and aloneness, light and darkness, male and female qualities and life and death. Through saying “yes” and accepting both tendencies and including whatever aspect that happens in the moment, we meet our unlimited and boundless inner being. The inner man and woman need to find their own independence and integrity.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

60. “Christ awareness is imperative."~R. Alan Woods [2013]” - R. Alan Woods

61. “Silence is the invisible door to God. Silence is the inner door to become one with God.” - Swami Dhyan Giten

62. “The most powerful tools of revolution through intention are humility and consciousness.” - Bryant McGill