Timothy Leary: Trending quotes

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Timothy Leary: 108 quotes29 likes

“I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.”

At the Neo-Pagan Starwood Festival (July 1991), recorded on Timothy Leary Live at Starwood (2001) http://www.freetimes.com/story/3493 by the Association for Consciousness Exploration ISBN 1-59157-002-6

“What I feel or believe or experience is my business, and what I do is all our businesses; and reward or punish me according to whether I play the game well — ethically and rightly — or unethically.”

Timothy Leary

Harvard Law School Forum (1966)

“Art's certainly made a lot of money, and got on a lot of shows — he got himself into the Nixon White House riding on the death of his daughter. And I think that's ghoulish! That's ghoulish.”

Timothy Leary

In a Stanley Siegel interview (c. 1977) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3HrdNRvJ7-8, with phone commentary by Art Linkletter who blamed his daughter's death on her involvement with LSD.

“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”

Timothy Leary

As quoted in The Best Advice Ever for Teachers (2001) by Charles McGuire and Diana Abitz, p. 57

“Actions which are conscious expressions of the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out rhythm are religious.
The wise person devotes his life exclusively to the religious search — for therein is found the only ecstasy, the only meaning.
Anything else is a competitive quarrel over (or Hollywood-love sharing of) studio props.”

Timothy Leary

Drop Out, Turn On. Tune In.
Start your own Religion (1967)

“Turn on" meant go within to activate your neural and genetic equipment. Become sensitive to the many and various levels of consciousness and the specific triggers that engage them. Drugs were one way to accomplish this end. "Tune in" meant interact harmoniously with the world around you — externalize, materialize, express your new internal perspectives. Drop out suggested an elective, selective, graceful process of detachment from involuntary or unconscious commitments. "Drop Out" meant self-reliance, a discovery of one's singularity, a commitment to mobility, choice, and change. Unhappily my explanations of this sequence of personal development were often misinterpreted to mean "Get stoned and abandon all constructive activity.”

Timothy Leary book Flashbacks

Flashbacks (1983)

“I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.”

Timothy Leary

Chaos and Cyber Culture (1994)

“Drugs Are the Religion of the People — The Only Hope is Dope”

Timothy Leary

Section title in "The Seven Tongues of God"
The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)

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

Timothy Leary

As quoted in Still Casting Shadows : A Shared Mosaic of U.S. History (2006) by B. Clay Shannon, p. 376

“I've left specific instructions that I do not want to be brought back during a Republican administration.”

Timothy Leary

On being brought back to life, during the period in which he considered putting his body into cryonic suspension, as quoted in The Nastiest Things Ever Said About Republicans (2006) by Martin Higgins, p. 130

“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

"Neurological Politics"'
The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)

“We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.”

Timothy Leary

On the Castalia Institute in Millbrook, New York; quoted in Storming Heaven : LSD and the American Dream (1998) by Jay Stevens, p. 208

“The Tibetan Book of the Dead is ostensibly a book describing the experiences to be expected at the moment of death, during an intermediate phase lasting forty-nine (seven times seven) days, and during rebirth into another bodily frame. This however is merely the exoteric framework which the Tibetan Buddhists used to cloak their mystical teachings. … The esoteric meaning, as it has been interpreted in this manual, is that it is death and rebirth of the ego that is described, not of the body. Lama Govinda indicates this clearly in his introduction when he writes: "It is a book for the living as well as the dying." The book's esoteric meaning is often concealed beneath many layers of symbolism. It was not intended for general reading. It was designed to be understood only by one who was to be initiated personally by a guru into the Buddhist mystical doctrines, into the pre-mortem-death-rebirth experience. These doctrines have been kept a closely guarded secret for many centuries, for fear that naive or careless application would do harm.”

Timothy Leary

The Psychedelic Experience (1964), p. 12

“The mark of a basic shit is that he can’t mind his own business.”

Timothy Leary

Though at times attributed to Leary on the internet, no published source of this has been located. It is a misquote of a William S. Burroughs reading entitled M.O.B. from the Giorno Poetry Systems boxed set. M.O.B. was an extension of Burroughs' expression in The Place of Dead Roads (1983), p. 155:
You are a Shit Spotter. It's satisfying work. … We have observed that most of the trouble in the world has been caused by ten to twenty percent of folks who can't mind their own business, because they have no business of their own to mind, any more than a smallpox virus … The mark of a basic shit is that he has to be right.
Misattributed