Robert Anton Wilson citations

Page 3

“The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you'll see that they're all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.”

“Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot.”

“Reality is what you can get away with.”

“The fear of death is the beginning of slavery.”

“On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break.”

“The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want.”

“ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE.”

“We're trapped in linguistic constructs… all that is is metaphor.”

“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.”

“You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.”

“We have been told over and over that "you can't change human nature", but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become "human nature" if society defines it as such.”

“Belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.”

“How many times… have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens. The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice.”

“The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.”

“help conquer the IQ shortage worry less and think more”

“Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.”

“Having a spine is overrated. If everybody squealed and ran away, there'd be no more wars.”

“Stupidity is like bumping into a wall all the time. After a while you get tired of it and try to look the situation over and see if there’s a doorway somewhere. I think most people eventually do look for the doorway and stop bumping into the wall”

“there are robots among us. There are also Magicians among us. I think we take turns playing each role, as a matter of fact. The Magician defines a reality-mesh and the robot lives in it. Grok?”

“The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences.”

“Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.”

“Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence (which has no size…)”

“The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.”

“Encounters with death and danger are onlyto the survivors.”

“Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway," the priest added cynically, "which is why the church locks them all up in mental hospitals and euphemistically calls these institutions monasteries.”

“A true initiation never ends.”

“Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.”

“Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.”

“Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.”