“For all we know, we know nothing.”

What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.

These allies are the hallucinogenic plants and the mysterious teaching entities, luminous and transcendental, that reside in that nearby dimension of ecstatic beauty and understanding that we have denied until it is now nearly too late.

There is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives.

The absurdity of that assertion would be self-evident, but in our case we make an exception.

The Imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.

Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window.

Astonishment is the proper response to reality.

Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.

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.

Because we all fail – and I’m ready, I’ll take up carpentry.

it was actually mummified, skin and all – but in a fit of space-saving zeal, they actually cut off the head and they cut off the feet and they burned the rest in a bonfire.

All we have is our vote. But it’s powerful.

We didn’t see [the NBA lockout] as a victory at all.

Be nice to everyone and all that.

Normally, you have all this knowledge from all the films that you’ve done that you’ve accumulated over the years

All of it has an effect.

I love Obama. He’s my favorite president of all time. I have a giant picture in my apartment in New York that is of his Chicago Tribune cover, Mr. President.