Top quotes by Timothy Leary

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out. Votes: 27

My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out. Votes: 25

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind. Votes: 24

There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third. Votes: 17

When men set out to kill and bully, they dress up. Suit of armor. Combat boots. Uniform. Votes: 15

Acid is not for every brain .... Only the healthy, happy, wholesome, handsome, hopeful, humorous, high-velocity should seek these experiences. This elitism is totally self-determined. Unless you are self-confident, self-directed, self-selected, please abstain. Votes: 15

The aim of human life is to know thyself. Think for yourself. Question authority. Think with your friends. Create, create new realities. Philosophy is a team sport. Philosophy is the ultimate, the ultimate aphrodisiac pleasure. Learning how to operate your brain, learning how to operate your mind, learning how to redesign chaos Votes: 13

Information is Power. Think For Yourself. CAUTION: proper use of the brain is not endorsed by federal governments nor huge corporations involved in serious financial profit from a brainwashed and enslaved population. Mild discomfort may occur as confusing independent thought challenges popular views of the world. Votes: 13

In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show. Votes: 13

I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen. Votes: 13

Secrecy is the original sin. The fig leaf in the Garden of Eden. The basic crime against love. Votes: 12

Hippy is an establishment label for a profound, invisible, underground, evolutionary process. For every visible hippy, barefoot, beflowered, beaded, there are a thousand invisible members of the turned-on underground. Persons whose lives are tuned in to their inner vision, who are dropping out of the TV comedy of American Life. Votes: 11

The universe is an intelligence test. Votes: 9

Think for yourself and question authority. Votes: 9

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time. Votes: 9

I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life. Votes: 7

In the information-communication civilization of the 21st Century, creativity and mental excellence will become the ethical norm. The world will be too dynamic, complex, and diversified, too cross-linked by the global immediacies of modern (quantum) communication, for stability of thought or dependability of behaviour to be successful. Votes: 7

Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac Votes: 6

The language of God is not English or Latin; the language of God is cellular and molecular. Votes: 6

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go. Votes: 6

Extraterrestrial intelligence could have sent DNA-seed packets out through space to plant life on hospitable planets such as earth. Votes: 6

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition. Votes: 5

At one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos. Votes: 5

Everything we did in the 1960s was designed to fission, to weaken faith in and conformity to the 1950s social order. Our precise surgical target was the Judeo-Christian power monolith, which has imposed a guilty, inhibited, grim, anti-body, anti-life repression on Western civilization. Votes: 5

I despise followers of any kind, especially those who follow me. Votes: 4

Followers do not like themselves, of course; that's why they crawl. And masters have nothing but contempt for their subservants, which is why they impose such colorful embarrassments upon them. Votes: 4

In the Eleusinian mysteries, they would always warn people, "if you go in here, your ego will die. You're going to have to confront all your past hang-ups, strip them off, and be a changed person." One emperor of Rom who wanted to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries said, "That's interesting, I approve of what you're doing, but I don't want to be changed. Votes: 3

Almost everyone today is brain-damaged by our education which is designed to produce docile automatons. Votes: 3

Essentially, there's a universe inside your brain. The number of connections possible inside your brain is limitless. And as people have learned to have more managerial and direct creative access to their brains, they have also developed matrices or networks of people that communicate electronically. There are direct brain/computer link-ups. You can just jack yourself in and pilot your brain around in cyberspace-electronic space. Votes: 2

Drop Out--detach yourself from the external social drama which is as dehydrated and ersatz as TV. Turn On--find a sacrament which returns you to the temple of God, your own body. Go out of your mind. Get high. Tune In--be reborn. Drop back in to express it. Start a new sequence of behavior that reflects your vision. Votes: 2

If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. Votes: 0

To the elitist hedonist, life is the avoidance of boredom and routine. Votes: 0

Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is _______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or Heresy. The word Islam means "submission". The basic posture of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done. Votes: 0

LSD is a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have NOT taken it. Votes: 0

Science is all metaphor. Votes: 0

The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment. Votes: 0

I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Votes: 0

If you listen to neurologists and psychiatrists, you'd never fall in love. Votes: 0

Psychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of reality in politicians that have never taken them. Votes: 0

Recite to yourself some of the traditional attributes of the word 'spiritual': mythic, magical, ethereal, incorporeal, intangible, nonmaterial, disembodied, ideal, platonic. Is that not a definition of the electronic-digital? Votes: 0

The genetic stage of a gene pool can be identified by the personality characteristics of the local God. Jehovah of Genesis is a low-level barbarian macho punk God. He boastfully claims to have created the heaven and the stars and the world, but provides no technical details or replicable blueprints. His preoccupations, whims, anxieties, jealousies, rules and hatred of women are primitive mammalian brain. His petty prides are primate. Votes: 0

Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelics drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D. Votes: 0

Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences. When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is time for him to die and be reborn. Time to "drop out," "turn on," and "tune in. Votes: 0

Remember also: beyond the restless flowing electricity of life is the ultimate reality- The Void. Your own awareness, not formed into anything possessing form or color, is naturally void. The Final Reality. The All Good. The All Peaceful. The light. The Radiance. The movement is the fire of life from which we all come. Join it. It is part of you. Votes: 0

Romantic poetry and fiction of the last 2000 years has blinded us to the fact that emotions are a low form of jungle consciousness. Emotional actions are the most contracted, dangerous form of fanatic stupor. Votes: 0

We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations. Votes: 0

People use the word "natural" ... What is natural to me is these botanical species which interact directly with the nervous system. What I consider artificial is 4 years at Harvard, and the Bible, and Saint Patrick's cathedral, and the Sunday school teachings. Votes: 0

Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others... Votes: 0

Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others. Votes: 0

Tune in, turn on, and drop out. Votes: 0

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top. Votes: 0

You can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. Votes: 0

A man without justice is a beast, and a man who would make himself a beast forgets the pain of being a man. Votes: 0

Actions which are conscious expressions of the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out rhythm are religious.The wise person devotes his life exclusively to the religious search - for therein is found the only ecstasy, the only meaning.Anything else is a competitive quarrel over (or Hollywood-love sharing of) studio props. Votes: 0

After you turn on, don't spend the rest of your life contemplating the inner wonders. Begin immediately expressing your revelation in acts of beauty. Votes: 0

All suffering is caused by being in the wrong place. If you're unhappy where you are, MOVE. Votes: 0

And a new philosophy emerged called quantum physics, which suggest that the individual's function is to inform and be informed. You really exist only when you're in a field sharing and exchanging information. You create the realities you inhabit. Votes: 0

Anything is possible after midnight. Votes: 0

At every level there are eight stages of intelligence. You have to turn your brain on to the circuits that are used at that level of intelligence. And there are ways to change the human brain to different stages. The things that change your brain are called 'drugs'. Votes: 0

By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. Votes: 0

Critics have told me I've ruined the lives of 50 million young people. I can't be certain of this, since only about 10 million have ever come back to thank me. Votes: 0

Despite the campaign rhetoric, the bureaucracies-big business and big government-are here to stay. The centralization effort cannot be checked. but it can be rationally directed towards our species goal: Space Migration, which in turn offers the only way to re-attain individual freedom of space-time and the small-group social structures which obviously best suit our nervous systems. It is another paradox of neuro-genetics that only in space habitats can humanity return to the village life and pastoral style for which we all long. Votes: 0

Don't be intimidated by Caesar's Hollywood fake versions of religiosity. If life has a meaning for you beyond the TV-studio game, you are religious! Spell it out! Votes: 0

Drop out of the public schools. The public schools cannot be compromised with. Votes: 0

Drugs Are the Religion of the People ? The Only Hope is Dope. Votes: 0

Each religion has got their own way of making you feel like a victim. The Christians say "you are a sinner", and you better just zip up your trousers and give the money to the pope and we'll give you a room up in the hotel in the sky. Votes: 0

Express the psychedelic with the cybernetic. Turn on, tune in and boot up. Votes: 0

Fundamentalist Christianity appeals to pre-civilized, prudish tribal people who are not ready for urban feudal pleasures. Votes: 0

Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity. Votes: 0

Giger's work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous evolutionary time span. It shows us, all too clearly, where we come from and where we are going. Votes: 0

Give death a better name or die trying. Votes: 0

Grow within the flow. Votes: 0

Half the things I've done are wrong, mistakes [unintelligible]. The moratorium on pot and LSD a year ago is ridiculous. I shouldn't have done that. I make a blunder at least one out of two times I come to bat. Votes: 0

Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution. Votes: 0

Hippies started the ecology movement. They combated racism. They liberated sexual stereotypes, encouraged change, individual pride, and self-confidence. They questioned robot materialism. In four years they managed to stop the Vietnam War. They got marijuana decriminalized in fourteen states during the Carter Administration. Votes: 0

Human beings have a right to change their consciousness, and it is unconscionable and absolutely wrong for any government or any person to stand in the way of someone choosing to change their consciousness. Votes: 0

I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan. Votes: 0

I learned more about psychology in the five hours after taking these mushrooms than in the preceding 15 years of studying and doing research in psychology. Votes: 0

I think that marijuana makes you stupid but sensual. I've watched many of my friends and loved ones become more erotic and dumber - just going around with a glazed expression on their faces from their last orgasms to the next - and found them really quite boring. Votes: 0

I wanted to scientize myth and mythologize science. Votes: 0

I'd just like to see thinking come back in style. I haven't heard a new idea in eight years. Let's get ordinary people arguing and talking again. I want to trigger new circuits in their nervous systems. That's the philosopher's job and I am the most important philosopher at this time. Votes: 0

If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first century. Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides telescopes are unnatural. Votes: 0

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people. Votes: 0

If you want to move beyond hive-docility, you must become God the Moralist. Votes: 0

In a carefully prepared, loving LSD session, a woman will inevitably have several hundred orgasms. Votes: 0

Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences. Votes: 0

Inner reality is certainly more important than the outer reality. Votes: 0

I've left specific instructions that I do not want to be brought back during a Republican administration. Votes: 0

Living, dying, and thinking... they're all team sports. Votes: 0

LSD is known to induce psychosis, in people who have never used it. Votes: 0

LSD, wisely used by professionals, could reprogram enough nervous systems to accelerate consciousness and intelligence before we laid ourselves and our planet waste."To use your head you have to go out of your mind" "You are a God, act like one" Votes: 0

Man's best friend is his dogma. Votes: 0

My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. Votes: 0

My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in. Votes: 0

My favorite three words in the English language are: 'I don't know', because every time I say them, I learn something new. Votes: 0

My historical reading of the situation is that these great monolithic empires developed, Rome, Turkey, and so forth, and they always break down when enough people, and it's always the young, the creative, and minority groups drop out and go back to a tribal form. Votes: 0

Nobody ever understands what a pioneer is doing. Votes: 0

Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures. Votes: 0

One cannot evolve from one's robothood until one realizes how totally one has been robotized. Votes: 0

One cannot understand the rhythms and meanings of the outer world until one has mastered the dialects of the body. Votes: 0

Our assignment was to topple this prudish, judgmental civilization. And it worked. Votes: 0

People have to go out of their mind before they can come to their senses. Votes: 0

Prayer is ecstatic communication with your innernavigational computer. Votes: 0

Ritual is to the internal sciences what experiment is to the external sciences. Votes: 0

Science fictions are suppressed only when likely to contribute more knowledge and freedom than the defensive orthodoxies they challenge. Votes: 0

Seven million people I turned on, and only one hundred thousand have come by to thank me. Votes: 0

Surfers are the ‘throw-aheads' of mankind, not the dregs; they aren't the black sheep of humanity, but the futurists and they are leading the way to where man ultimately wants to be. The act of the ride is the epitome of ‘be here now', and the tube ride is the most acute form of that. Which is: your future is right ahead of you, the past is exploding behind you, your wake is disappearing, your footprints are washed from the sand. It's a non-productive, non-depletive act that's done purely for the value of the dance itself. And that is the destiny of man. Votes: 0

Take responsibility for making your own life beautiful. Votes: 0

That intermediate manifestation of the divine process which we call the DNA code has spent the last 2 billion years making this planet a Garden of Eden. Votes: 0

The brain is a robot-computer perfectly designed to fabricate any reality we program it to construct. Votes: 0

The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environnement. Votes: 0

The brain is the key, the brain is the source, the brain is God. Everything that humans do is neuroecology. Votes: 0

The Caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly Votes: 0

The first narcotics bust in history is Jehovah busting Adam and Eve for eating of the fruit of the tree of knowledge. Votes: 0

The general direction of evolution is to produce a serially imprinting, multibrained creature able to decipher its own program, create the technology to leave the planet and live in post-terrestrial mini-worlds, decode the aging sectors of the DNA code--thus assuring immortality, and act in harmony with stages of evolution to come. Votes: 0

The mission of DNA is to evolve nervous systems able to escape from the doomed planet and contact manifestations of the same amino-acid seeding that have evolved in other solar systems. The mission is the message--to escape and come home. Votes: 0

The mission of DNA is to evolve nervous systems capable of deciphering the mission of DNA. Votes: 0

The most important thing you do in your life is to die. Votes: 0

The neurogenetic meaning of the cultural revolution is now clear. Neurochemicals are designed to be pursuitist, not escapist. They open the nervous system to the possibilities of future post-terrestrial evolution. Votes: 0

The PC is the LSD of the '90s. Votes: 0

The program is a voyage chart, a series of signals, which, like the pilot's radio, provides the basic orienting information required for the trip... Votes: 0

The word "religion" beautifully defines itself, of course. It translates "to bind" from the Latin--"re" means back and "ligare" means to tie up. All religions are straightjackets, jackets for the straight. Votes: 0

There are no bad drugs. There's simply stupid people who don't know how to use them. Votes: 0

There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body. Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity. Votes: 0

They've outlawed the number one vegetable on the planet. Votes: 0

Think for yourself. Know what you're doing. Question authority. Votes: 0

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself. Votes: 0

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist. Votes: 0

To use your head, you have to go out of your mind. Votes: 0

TURN ON. to contact the ancient energies and wisdoms that are built into your nervous system. They provide unspeakable pleasure and revelation. TUNE IN. to harness and communicate these new perspectives in a harmonious dance with the external world. DROP OUT. detach yourself from the tribal game. current models of social adjustement - mechanized, computerized, socialized, intellectualized, televised, sanforized - make no sense to the new LSD generation who see clearly that American society is becoming an air-conditioned anthill. Votes: 0

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go. Science is all metaphor. In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show. If you don't like what you are doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove. If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out. Votes: 0

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. They are a hundred times better educated than their grandparents, and ten times more sophisticated. There has never been such an open-minded group. The problem is that no one is giving them anything fresh. They've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go. Votes: 0

We cannot study the brain, the instrument for fabricating the realities we inhabit, using the mental constructs of the past. Votes: 0

We live our lives from A-Z, but forget the other 24 letters in between. Votes: 0

What do you think deja vu is for?". Face it, you even want to talk to that girl in the elevator. But what if that girl in the elevator (and the balding man who walks past your cubicle at work) are thinking the same thing? Who knows what you might learn from taking a chance on conversation with a stranger? Everyone carries a piece of the puzzle. Nobody comes into your life by mere coincidence. Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others… Votes: 0

What human beings consciously wish is often quite at variance with the results their reflex patterns automatically create for them. Votes: 0

When you get the message, hang up the phone. Votes: 0

When you teach someone how to perform creatively (ie, associate dead symbols in new combinations), you expand his potential for experiencing more widely and richly. Votes: 0

Whenever in doubt, turn off your mind, relax, float downstream. Votes: 0

You are a God Act like one! Votes: 0

You are a powerful, unlimited and eternal soul who is here to enjoy the experience of creativity and contribute to humanity's evolution. Votes: 0

You cannot use butterfly language to communicate with caterpillars Votes: 0

You simply cannot understand psychedelic drugs, which activate the brain, unless you understand something about computers. Votes: 0