Top 166 Quotes & Sayings by Ken Kesey

People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

The trouble with super heroes is what to do between phone booths.

Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.

I've been to too many Dead concerts. There've been smokin' holes where my memory used to be.

Tricker the Squirrel is the best piece I ever wrote. It's intricate.

Fascism wants Baptism coast to coast.

It's time to move on to the next step in the psychedelic revolution. We've reached a certain point, but we're not moving any more.

The '60s aren't over; they won't be over until the Fat Lady gets high.

You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.

To hell with facts! We need stories!

The Haight is just a place; the '60s was a spirit.

Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.

When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it.

Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

I used to think we were going to win in the '60s. Nixon went out and I thought we won.

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

When you're around the whole Dead scene, they're there as a tribal thing; they're there as part of a rendezvous and a pow-wow.

You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously.

Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

There's a lot of people who don't understand the circle crops in England. Pure enigma.

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

There's something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.

Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

The Republican consciousness has no integrity and it falls apart once you check it out. If you're a Christian, why would you want to fry this dude?

Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that's in your audience's eye.

Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.

The Grateful Dead are our religion. This is a religion that doesn't pay homage to the God that all the other religions pay homage to.

Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.

There's no disgrace in failing, lad, Though friends and foes deride; In fact, a failure's not so bad As never having tried.

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

If you've got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you've got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK.

You can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.

All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.

There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus.

The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

It is just as much an offense to take offense as it is to give offense.

I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil ? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it ? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control.

When you love someone it is forever, or it was never really love at all.

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

To be just without being mad (and the madder you get the madder you get), to be peaceful without being stupid, to be interested without being compulsive, to be happy without being hysterical... smoke grass.

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

To hell with facts! We need stories.

I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.

You can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.

It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.

The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.

Since we don't know where we're going, we have to stick together in case someone gets there.

The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.

I've enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.