Interview in Speaking of Science Fiction: The Paul Walker Interviews (1978)
Context: When I talk of the purpose of life, I am thinking not only of human life, but of all life on Earth and of the life which must exist upon other planets throughout the universe. It is only of life on Earth, however, that one can speak with any certainty. It seems to me that all life on Earth, the sum total of life upon the Earth, has purpose. If the means were available, we could trace our ancestry — yours and mine — back to the first blob of life-like material that came into being on the planet. The same thing could be done for the spider that spun his web in the grass, and of the grass in which the web was spun, the bird sitting in the tree and the tree in which he sits, the toad waiting for the fly beneath the bush, and for the fly and bush. We are all genetic brothers. The chain of life, tracing back to that primordial day of life's beginning, is unbroken...
“Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.”
Shamanism and the Archaic Revival http://www.matrixmasters.net/blogs/?p=1242
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Terence McKenna 111
American ethnobotanist 1946–2000Related quotes
Quine's response in 1988 when asked his philosophy of life. (He invented the word "agid".) It makes up the entire Chapter 54 in Quine in Dialogue (2008).
1980s and later
“To live is to experience things, not sit around pondering the meaning of life.”
Source: Aleph (2011)
“Total absence of humor renders life impossible.”
Chance Acquaintances (1952)
Source: Chance Acquaintances and Julie de Carneilhan
“A happy life consists not in the absence, but in the mastery of hardships.”
The Simplest Way to be Happy (1933)
“It's just another day in the life of apes with ego trips.”
Lyrics, A Crow Left of the Murder... (2004)