Ken Kesey Quotes

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“They wouldn't be so cocky if they knew what me and thehave going.”

“The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.”

“Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.”

“This world… belongs to the strong, my friend! The ritual of our existence is based on the strong getting stronger by devouring the weak.”

“Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another.”

“Take what you can use and let the rest go by.”

“The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.”

“I can't help it. I was born a miscarriage. I had so many insults I died. I was born dead. I can't help it…. I'm tired.”

“God… your book is beautiful!”

“Once upon a time a young man of American background thought he had discovered the Great Secret, the Skeleton Key to the Cosmos, the Absolute Answer to the Age Old Question asked by every Wizard, and Alchemist and Mystic that ever peered curiously into the Perplexing Heavens, by every Doctor and Scientist and Explorer that ever wondered about the Winding Ways of this world, by every Philosopher and Holyman and Politician that ever listened for the Mysterious Song beneath the beat of the Human Heart… the answer to "What Makes It All Go?"”

“Along the western slopes of the Oregon Coastal Range... come look: the hysterical crashing of tributaries as they merge into the Wakonda Auga River...”

“But if they don't exist, how can a man see them?”

“What worries me, Billy," she said — I could hear the change in her voice — "is how your mother is going to take this.”

“What we hoped was that we could stop the coming end of the world.”

“He gave a cry. At the last, falling backward, his face appearing to us for a second upside down before he was smothered on the floor by a pile of white uniforms, he let himself cry out: A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance, that if you ever trailed coon or cougar or lynx is like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesn't care any more about anything but himself and his dying.”

“I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.”

“LSD lets you in on something. When you're tripping, the idea of race disappears; the idea of sex disappears; you don't even know what species you are sometimes. And I don't know of anybody who hasn't come back from that being more humane, more thoughtful, more understanding.”

“You can't trust the quality any more…”

“NEVER GIVE A INCH!”

“I watched and tried to figure out what he would have done. I was only sure of one thing: he wouldn't have left something like that sit there in the day room with his name tacked on it for twenty or thirty years so the Big Nurse could use it as an example of what can happen if you buck the system. I was sure of that.”

“It's still hard for me to have a clear mind thinking on it. But it's the truth even if it didn't happen.”

“But just as soon as we got to the pool he said he did wish something mighta been done, though, and dove into the water.”

“One flew east, One flew west, One flew over the cuckoo's nest.”

“I thought for a minute there I saw her whipped. Maybe I did. But I see now that it don't make any difference…. To beat her you don't have to whip her two out of three or three out of five, but every time you meet. As soon as you let down your guard, as soon as you lose once, she's won for good. And eventually we all got to lose. Nobody can help that.”

“Damn, what a sorry-looking outfit. You boys don't look so crazy to me.”

“You can't bomb for a humane reason. What we should do is just Mother Teresa them to death with love. It's that old hippie nonsense but it's still the best stuff there is.”

“The Grateful Dead are faster than light drive.”

“They're out there.
Black boys in white suits up before me to commit sex acts in the hall and get it mopped up before I can catch them.”

“The real crazies who are looking for a messiah… after an hour or so they realise I'm not it and go off and look somewhere else.”

“I been away a long time.”

“Alla you! Quit bugging me, goddammit!”