Top 153 Quotes & Sayings by Timothy Leary

The twentieth century may well find historical status as the epoch in which man began to study himself as a scientific phenomenon.

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.

When our systematic knowledge of human expressive behavior is more advanced, it will be possible to study the literary and historical documents of the past and to determine the expressed and implied views of personality that determined the behavior of our ancestors.

At the peak of his scientific triumphs, Newton became a 'head,' a student of the inner spiritual world - or in modern terms, a neurologician. Modern physicists do not dwell on this dramatic life-change in their hero.

Think for yourself and question authority.

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.

My profession is I'm a dissident philosopher.

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

Science is all metaphor.

I totally deplore the notion of an M.D. giving pills to patients - a medical doctor giving psychological or psychoactive change agents to another person.

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.

From my first published paper in 1946, my obsession has been to objectify inner experiences, to demystify the software of human existence. How? By relating changes in external behavior, systematically and lawfully, to changes in the brain.

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.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

Philosophy is a performance sport - you have to play it with somebody back and forth.

Current psychological priesthoods ignore the fact that the profession of psychology was originated by Gustav Theodor Fechner, a physicist who recognized that the key to understanding human nature was the relationship between external stimuli and the brain.

In pursuing my fervent goal of relating external stimuli to reports about internal-neural change, we were, paradoxically enough, following the most orthodox tradition in psychology.

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

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

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

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

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

When people criticize the computer generation, the high tech generation, and say they neglect the body - well, just walk through a college campus, and you'll see the healthiest, most physically conscious and alert group of human beings I've ever met. So they're not nerds at all.

The role of anxiety in the development of human personality is central, and it is intricate beyond our understanding.

The universe is an intelligence test.

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.

Trust your instincts. Do the unexpected. Find the others.

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

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

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.

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.

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

Take responsibility for making your own life beautiful.

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"

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.

Intelligence is the ultimate aphrodisiac

Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.

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

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

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.

You cannot use butterfly language to communicate with caterpillars

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.

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.

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.

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.

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

The Caterpillar cannot understand the butterfly

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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