“And what is the primary datum? It’s the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.”

Don’t worry. You don’t know enough to worry. . . . Who do you think you are that you should worry, for cryin’ out loud. It’s a total waste of time. It presupposes such a knowledge of the situation that it is, in fact, a form of hubris.

Your memories are eroding away. The futures you anticipate, will mostly not come to pass, and the real richness is in the moment. And it’s not necessarily some kind of ‘Be Here Now’ feel-good thing because it doesn’t always feel good. But it always feels. It is a domain of feeling. It’s primary.

Behind us: the unknown. Before us: the secret.

Notice that the whole story of Eden is the story of the struggle over a woman’s relationship to a psychoactive plant.

Chaos is what we’ve lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.

You are not naked when you take off your clothes. You still wear your religious assumptions, your prejudices, your fears, your illusions, your delusions.

Being imposes some kind of obligation to find out what’s going on.

There is no knowledge without risk taking.

It is true that when you smoke DMT, for example, at a sufficiently high and prepared dose, you get elves, everybody does. All you need do, is inhale deeply three times, and you know… You want contact? You want elves? You want alien contact? You’ll have that!

The psychedelic inner astronaut sees things which no human being has ever seen before, and no other human being will ever see again. But in fact this has no meaning unless it is possible to carry it back into the collectivity.

Every click of the cosmic clock brings us closer to the process for which the planet called us into existence.

The overriding problems are brought on by the existence of the ego, a maladaptive behavioral complex in the psyche that gets going like a tumor. If it’s not treated – if there’s not pharmacological intervention – it becomes the dominant constellation of the personality.

The real secret of magic is that the world is made of words, and that if you know the words that the world is made of you can make of it whatever you wish.

Nature is not mute, it is a man who is deaf.

The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.

We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.

The analysis of data will not by itself produce new ideas.

Soon I knew the craft of experimental physics was beyond me – it was the sublime quality of patience – patience in accumulating data, patience with recalcitrant equipment – which I sadly lacked.

I was really intrigued by the idea of using live streams of data that’s relevant to real people, and that would allow us to reflect and learn about ourselves.

Data can actually make us more human.

Experts often possess more data than judgment.

Just as modern man consumes both too many calories and calories of no nutritional value, information workers eat data both in excess and from the wrong sources.

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.

It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts.