Top 223 Quotes & Sayings by Robert Anton Wilson

Only the madman is absolutely sure.

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.

The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking.

Consciousness itself is an infinite regress. This explains coincidences.

Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.

Nobody sees the obvious, nobody observes the ordinary. There are more miracles in a square yard of earth than in all the fables of the Church.

All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense.

We live in our fantasies and endure our realities.

Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.

It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it.

Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.

Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves.

The border between the Real and the Unreal is not fixed, but just marks the last place where rival gangs of shamans fought each other to a standstill.

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.

The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now.

There is no complete theory of anything.

The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.

An Enlightened Master is ideal only if your goal is to become a Benighted Slave.

I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread.

Philadelphia merely seems dull because it's next to exciting Camden, New Jersey.

The path up is the path down. The way forward is the way back. The universe inside is outside but the universe outside is inside.

Belief is the death of intelligence.

History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce's view of Everyman as victim.

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves.

Size is not a reality, but a construct of the mind; and space a construct to contain constructs.

The Right's view of government and the Left's view of big business are both correct.

If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.

The totally convinced and the totally stupid have too much in common for the resemblance to be accidental.

Everyone look around and see if you can spot the NARCS. They're the ones who look like hippies.

The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.

You know, I have found a new way to get high and stay spaced out for hours on end, and the government can't stop me... It's called senility.

Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.

Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

There is one universal sex law: Sex shall not be unregulated.

A monopoly on the means of communication may define a ruling elite more precisely than the celebrated Marxian formula of monopoly in the means of production.

There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually.

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.

Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.

The average is that which no person quite ever is.

Humans live through their myths and only endure their realities.

Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals.

Of course I'm crazy, but that doesn't mean I'm wrong.

A true initiation never ends.

The Grail is the womb of the beloved.

It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.

I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here.

I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal.

When the rose and the cross are united the alchemical marriage is complete and the drama ends. Then we wake from history and enter eternity.

I have never experienced another human being. I have experienced my impressions of them.

Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame.

Pregnancy is a kind of miracle. Especially so in that it proves that a man and woman can conspire to force God to create a new soul.

In conlusion, there is no conclusion. Things will go on as they always have, getting weirder all the time.

You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends.

The function of law and theology are the same: to keep the poor from taking back by violence what the rich have stolen by cunning.

The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.

To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine.

Intelligence is the capacity to receive, decode and transmit information efficiently. Stupidity is blockage of this process at any point. Bigotry, ideologies etc. block the ability to receive; robotic reality-tunnels block the ability to decode or integrate new signals; censorship blocks transmission.

Governments are based pincipally on force and deception. Democratic governments are based chiefly on deception, other governments on force. And democratic governments, if you get too uppity, give up on the deception and resort to brute force, as a lot of us found out in the sixites. Those who didn't find out in the sixites will find out in the near future because we're going to have a rerun.