Terence McKenna quotes - page 4

People had group values, because the children were group-owned. and that made a tremendous difference in the way the society imaged it self. people lived for the group, and in the core of the group were the children, and people always put them first. So everyone identified with the children, everybody was willing to face risk to preserve the younger gene pool. This concern for male paternity is really a poisonous factor... (Terence McKenna)
The psychedelic community has not yet recognized or named itself as a community. We are well behind gays and black people and all those other mi-... we are still trying to figure out if we are a community. And if we are a community, and we have a domain of action, I think where it lies - it's not that we are all supposed to become dope dealers, it's that we are all supposed to become artists; that the transformation of culture through art is the proper understanding of what you can do with psychedelics besides blow your own mind. And I really think, you know, what we need to do is put the art-pedal to the floor, and understand that this is art - we are involved in some kind of enormous piece of performance art called Western civilization and, you know, it's been a C-minus performance so far... And they are just about to reach out with the hook and drag us offstage, unless we begin pulling rabbits out of the hat pretty furiously. View quote
Terence McKenna
If you don't have a plan, you become part of somebody else's plan. View quote
Terence McKenna
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on. View quote
Terence McKenna
Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control. View quote
Terence McKenna
The problem is not to find the answer, it's to face the answer. View quote
Terence McKenna
If you believe something, you're automatically precluded from believing in the opposite, which means that a degree of your human freedom has been forfeited in the act of this belief. View quote
Terence McKenna
Culture is a kind of mass hallucination, designed for middle-aged people. Because culture works best for them, you know, when you're less than middle-aged you're trying to figure out the rules of this collective hallucination, if you're past middleage and you have been paying attention you know it's bullshit so you don't care anymore. View quote
Terence McKenna
Somehow I was finding out that thing that you cheerfully assume you can't find out. But it felt like I was finding out. And it felt.. and then I can't remember what it felt like because the little self-transforming tykes interrupted me and said, "Don't think about it. Don't think about who we are... Think about doing what we're doing. Do it! Do it! DO IT NOW!!! View quote
Terence McKenna
There are times when everything seems to go right, and times when everything seems to go wrong. View quote
Terence McKenna
What we need to do is transcend these localized grids of fate, which make us what we are but don't want to be. (Terence McKenna)
Computer networks, paradoxically enough, are a deeply feminizing influence on society, where, in hardware, the unconscious is actually being created. View quote
Terence McKenna
This is where we came from. This is where we are going. And it is only to be approached through cognitive activity. View quote
Terence McKenna
The moral life does not consist of wheat grass diet, or affirmation, or any of that. The moral life is. View quote
Terence McKenna
What you see, I think is the morphogenetic field. The invisible world that holds everything together. Not the net of matter and light, but the net of casuistry - of intentionality, of caring, of hope of dream - of thought. View quote
Terence McKenna
The global destiny of the species is somehow unfolding with the logic of a dream. View quote
Terence McKenna
We humans may be released into a realm of pure self-engineering. The imagination is everything. View quote
Terence McKenna
What needs to be done is that fundamental, ontological conceptions of reality need to be redone. We need a new language, and to have a new language we must have a new reality... View quote
Terence McKenna
I am convinced that if there were no shamanic pipeline, there would be no higher life, as we know it, on this planet. ... We are all cells of a much larger body, and like the cells of our own body it is hard for us to glimpse the whole pattern of the whole of what is happening, and yet we can sense that there is a purpose, and there is a pattern... View quote
Terence McKenna
I think that people don't understand. As the Firesign Theater used to say, 'Everything you know is wrong.' But that is a very liberating understanding, because if everything you know is wrong, then all the problems you thought were insoluble can be framed differently. View quote
Terence McKenna
Stop consuming images and start producing them. (Terence McKenna)
Conspiracy theory, in my humble opinion ... is a kind of epistemological cartoon about reality. View quote
Terence McKenna
I believe that the truth of the matter is far more terrifying, that the real truth that dare not speak itself, is that no one is in control, absolutely no one. View quote
Terence McKenna
The world is whatever you say it is if you know how to say it right. View quote
Terence McKenna
We can will the perfect future into being by becoming microcosms of the perfect future, and no longer casting blame outward on institutions or hierarchies of responsibility and control, but by realizing the opportunities here, the responsibilities here, and the two may never be congruent again, and the salvation of your immortal soul may depend on what you do with the opportunity. View quote
Terence McKenna