We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat.
TERENCE MCKENNAWe are so much the victims of abstraction that with the Earth in flames we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat.
TERENCE MCKENNAOur ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.
TERENCE MCKENNAI think ideology is toxic, all ideology. It’s not that there are good ones and bad ones. All ideology is toxic, because ideology is a kind of insult to the gift of human free thinking.
TERENCE MCKENNAWhen we free ourselves we are not freed into a void. When we free ourselves we are freed into a dimension in which Art is an obligation.
TERENCE MCKENNAWe do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.
TERENCE MCKENNAAstonishment is the proper response to reality.
TERENCE MCKENNAHow can we know who is the other until we know who is the self?
TERENCE MCKENNAEgo is a structure that is erected by a neurotic individual who is a member of a neurotic culture against the facts of the matter. And culture, which we put on like an overcoat, is the collectivized consensus about what sort of neurotic behaviors are acceptable.
TERENCE MCKENNAThere is no liberation to compare with freeing oneself from the illusions and delusions of the age in which one lives.
TERENCE MCKENNAI don’t believe consciousness is generated in the brain any more than television programs are made inside my TV. The box is too small.
TERENCE MCKENNAThis is the message of your life and my life – it’s that nothing lasts. Heraclitus said it: Panta Rhei. All flows, nothing lasts. Not your enemies, not your fortune, not who you sleep with at night, not the books, not the house in Saint-Tropez, not even the children – nothing lasts.
TERENCE MCKENNAReality is made of words.
TERENCE MCKENNAI see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can’t have a free society until people are free to explore their own mind.
TERENCE MCKENNAThe drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.
TERENCE MCKENNADon’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.
TERENCE MCKENNAThere is no knowledge without risk taking.
TERENCE MCKENNA