The real history of consciousness starts with one's first lie.
Interpretation
Consciousness begins to evolve when we start deceiving ourselves or others.
Joseph Brodsky suggests that the moment we tell our first lie, we initiate a complex relationship with truth and self-awareness. This act marks the beginning of a more nuanced understanding of our own consciousness, as lies create a divide between reality and perception, pushing us to grapple with moral ambiguity and self-deception.
In practice
In a speech about integrity, one might use this quote to discuss the importance of honesty.
Basically, it's hard for me to assess myself, a hardship not only prompted by the immodesty of the enterprise, but because one is not capable of assessing himself, let alone his work. However, if I were to summarize, my main interest is the nature of time. That's what interests me most of all. What time can do to a man.
One always pulls the trigger out of self-interest and quotes history to avoid responsibility or pangs of conscience.
On the whole, infinity is a fairly palpable aspect of this business of publishing, if only because it extends a dead author's existence beyond the limits he envisioned, or provides a living author with a future he cannot measure. In other words, this business deals with the future which we all prefer to regard as unending.
The invention of ethical and political doctrines, which blossomed into our own social sciences, is a product of times when things appeared manageable. The same goes for the criticism of those doctrines, though as a voice from the past, this criticism proved prophetic.
Try not to pay attention to those who will try to make life miserable for you. There will be a lot of those - in the official capacity as well as the self-appointed.
To put it in plain language, Russia is that country where the name of a writer appears not on the cover of his book, but on the door of his prison cell.
Hell is the backdrop that reveals the profound and unbelievable grace of the cross. It brings to light the enormity of our sin and therefore portrays the undeserved favor of God in full color.
If we desire a society of peace, then we cannot achieve such a society through violence. If we desire a society without discrimination, then we must not discriminate against anyone in the process of building this society. If we desire a society that is democratic, then democracy must become a means as well as an end.
If we must not act save on a certainty, we ought not to act on religion, for it is not certain. But how many things we do on an uncertainty, sea voyages, battles!
Men are naturally most impressed by diseases which have obvious manifestations, yet some of their worst enemies creep on them unobtrusively.
It is day by day that we go forward; today we are as we were yesterday and tomorrow we shall be like ourselves today. So we go on without being aware of it, and this is one of the miracles of Providence that I so love.
You have certainly observed the curious fact that a given word which is perfectly clear when you hear it or use it in everyday language, and which does not give rise to any difficulty when it is engaged in the rapid movement of an ordinary sentence becomes magically embarrassing, introduces a strange resistance, frustrates any effort at definition as soon as you take it out of circulation to examine it separately and look for its meaning after taking away its instantaneous function.
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