To be happy is to be able to become aware of oneself without fright.
~ Walter Benjamin

To see, to hear, means nothing. To recognize (or not to recognize) means everything. Between what I do recognize and what I do not recognize there stands myself. And what I do not recognize I shall continue not to recognize.
~ Andre Breton

The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
~ Henry Miller

Open-mindedness should not be fostered because, as Scripture teaches, Truth is great and will prevail, nor because, as Milton suggests, Truth will always win in a free and open encounter. It should be fostered for its own sake.
~ Richard Rorty

Most people grow old within a small circle of ideas, which they have not discovered for themselves. There are perhaps less wrong-minded people than thoughtless.
~ Marquis De Vauvenargues

The man who is aware of himself is henceforward independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness.
~ Virginia Woolf