Pure States

Famous quotes containing the words pure and/or states:

    Who knows whither the clouds have fled?
    In the unscarred heaven they leave no wake,
    And the eyes forget the tears they have shed,
    The heart forgets its sorrow and ache;
    The soul partakes the season’s youth,
    And the sulphurous rifts of passion and woe
    Lie deep ‘neath a silence pure and smooth,
    Like burnt-out craters healed with snow.
    James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)

    The line that I am urging as today’s conventional wisdom is not a denial of consciousness. It is often called, with more reason, a repudiation of mind. It is indeed a repudiation of mind as a second substance, over and above body. It can be described less harshly as an identification of mind with some of the faculties, states, and activities of the body. Mental states and events are a special subclass of the states and events of the human or animal body.
    Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)