People think of these eureka moments and my feeling is that they tend to be little things, a little realisation and then a little realisation built on that.
Roger PenroseIf you didn’t have any conscious beings in the world, there really wouldn’t be morality but with consciousness that you have it.
Roger PenroseSome years ago, I wrote a book called the Emperor’s New Mind and that book was describing a point of view I had about consciousness and why it was not something that comes about from complicated calculations.
Roger PenroseThere are considerable mysteries surrounding the strange values that Nature's actual particles have for their mass and charge. For example, there is the unexplained 'fine structure constant' ... governing the strength of electromagnetic interactions.
Roger PenroseWhat right do we have to claim, as some might, that human beings are the only inhabitants of our planet blessed with an actual ability to be "aware"? The impression of a "conscious presence" is indeed very strong with me when I look at a dog or a cat or, especially, when an ape or monkey at the zoo looks at me. I do not ask that they are "self-aware" in any strong sense (though I would guess that an element of self-awareness can be present). All I ask is that they sometimes simply feel!
Roger Penrose