TIMOTHY LEARY QUOTES II

American psychologist & author (1920-1996)

Timothy Leary quote

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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

Musings on Human Metamorphoses

Tags: evolution


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

Evolutionary Agents

Tags: Christianity


We translated the basic Hindu teaching that everything is illusion into the modern neurological truth that everything is a figment of your own brain.

TIMOTHY LEARY

Your Brain Is God

Tags: illusion


The universe is an intelligence test.

TIMOTHY LEARY

attributed, Cosmic Trigger

Tags: universe


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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

The Psychedelic Experience


Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution.

TIMOTHY LEARY

Your Brain is God

Tags: evolution


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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

Timothy Leary's Last Trip

Tags: religion


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

Changing My Mind, Among Others

Tags: love


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

Musings on Human Metamorphoses

Tags: boredom


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

attributed, The Harvard Psychedelic Club


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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

The Politics of Ecstasy


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

attributed, Still Casting Shadows

Tags: civilization


Nobody ever understands what a pioneer is doing.

TIMOTHY LEARY

interview, Far Gone


Prayer is ecstatic communication with your innernavigational computer.

TIMOTHY LEARY

Your Brain Is God

Tags: prayer


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."

TIMOTHY LEARY

Your Brain Is God

Tags: change


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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

Musings on Human Metamorphoses

Tags: space travel


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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

attributed, Shout!

Tags: The Beatles


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

Change Your Brain

Tags: artists


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.

TIMOTHY LEARY

"Leary calls LSD sacrament", The Tech, November 8, 1966


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

TIMOTHY LEARY

attributed, The Nastiest Things Ever Said About Republicans

Tags: republicans