TIMOTHY LEARY’S QUOTES

 We always have urged people: Don't take LSD unless you are very
well prepared, unless you are specifically prepared to go out of
your mind. Don't take it unless you have someone that's
very experienced with you to guide you through it. And don't take
it unless you are ready to have your perspective on yourself and
your life radically changed, because you're gonna be a different
person, and you should be ready to face this possibility.
o CBC Documentary: How To Go Out of Your Mind: The LSD
Crisis (1966)
 People use the word "natural" … What is natural to me is these
botanical species which interact directly with the nervous system.
What I consider artificial is four years at Harvard, and the Bible,
and Saint Patrick's cathedral, and the sunday school teachings.
o LSD: Methods of Control (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.
o In a Stanley Siegel interview (c. 1977), with phone commentary
by Art Linkletter who blamed his daughter's death on her
involvement with LSD.
 I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes
of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with
a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race
of laughingfreemen.
o As quoted in Shout! (1981) by Philip Norman, p. 365; and in An
Encyclopedia of Quotations about Music (1981) by Nat Shapiro, p.
303
 To describe externals, you become a scientist. To
describe experience, you become an artist. The old distinction
between artists and scientists must vanish. Every time we teach a child
 correct usage of an external symbol, we must spend as much time
teaching him how to fission and reassemble external grammar to
communicate the internal. The training of artists and creative
performers can be a straightforward, almost mechanical process. When
you teach someone how to perform creatively (ie, associate dead
symbols in new combinations), you expand his potential for
experiencing more widely and richly.
o Changing My Mind, Among Others : Lifetime Writings (1982), p. 76;
also in Change Your Brain (2000), p. 72
 If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the
way you respond to people.
o Changing My Mind, Among Others (1982)
 "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."
o Flashbacks (1983)
 Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
o As quoted in Third and Possibly the Best 637 Best Things Anybody
Ever Said (1987) by Robert Byrne, #40
 We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. They
are a hundred times better educated than their grandparents, and ten
times more sophisticated. There has never been such an open-minded
group. The problem is that no one is giving them anything
fresh. They've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.
 o Interview by David Sheff in Rolling Stone Twentieth Anniversary
Issue (1987)
 Think for yourself and question authority.
o Timothy Leary's track on Sound Bites from the Counter
Culture (1989)
 That’s the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA.
o Discussing CNN’s Crossfire as quoted in Rolling Stone (14
December 1989)
 I have always considered myself, when I learned what
the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.
o At the Neo-Pagan Starwood Festival (July 1991), recorded
on Timothy Leary Live at Starwood (2001) by the Association for
Consciousness Exploration ISBN 1-59157-002-6
 The universe is an intelligence test
o As quoted in Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the
Illuminati (1977) by Robert Anton Wilson, p. 170
 Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening,
terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going
in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities — the political, the
religious, the educational authorities — who attempted to comfort us by
giving us order, rules, regulations, informing — forming in our minds —
their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority
and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness,
chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.
o How to Operate Your Brain (1994), a guided meditation spoken by
Timothy Leary and set to music.
 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.
o Chaos and Cyber Culture (1994)
 A psychedelic experience is a journey to new realms of consciousness.
The scope and content of the experience is limitless, but its
characteristic features are the transcendence of verbal concepts, of
space-time dimensions, and of the ego or identity. Such experiences of
enlarged consciousness can occur in a variety of ways: sensory
deprivation, yoga exercises, disciplined meditation, religious or
aesthetic ecstasies, or spontaneously. Most recently they have become
available to anyone through the ingestion of psychedelic drugs such as
LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, DMT, etc. Of course, the drug does not
produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical
key — it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary
patterns and structures.
o The Psychedelic Experience (1995)
 He's basically a romantic comedian. …. He was a government agent
entering our bedroom at midnight. We had every right to shoot him. But
I've never owned a weapon in my life, and I have no intention of owning
a weapon, although I was a master sharpshooter at West Point on both
the Garand, the Springfield rifle and the machine-gun. I was a howitzer
expert. I know how to operate these lethal gadgets but I have never had
and never will have a gun around.
o Commenting on G. Gordon Liddy's 1994 remarks on shooting
intruding ATF agents, and a 1966 raid by Liddy in which Leary
had been arrested, in "Timothy Leary Revisited" a 1995 interview,
in Paul Krassner's Impolite Interviews (1999) by Paul Krassner, p.
304
 Monotheism is the primitive religion which centers human
consciousness on Hive Authority. There is One God and His Name is
_______ (substitute Hive-Label). If there is only One God then there is no
choice, no option, no selection of reality. There is only Submission or
Heresy. The word Islam means "submission". The basic posture
of Christianity is kneeling. Thy will be done.
o The Intelligence Agents (1996)
You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
 Each religion has got their own way of making you feel like
a victim. The Christians say "you are a sinner", and you better just zip
up your trousers and give the money to the pope and we'll give you a
room up in the hotel in the sky.
o Timothy Leary's Last Trip (1997)
 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.
o On the Castalia Institute in Millbrook, New York; quoted
in Storming Heaven : LSD and the American Dream (1998) by Jay
Stevens, p. 208
 You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
o As quoted in Office Yoga : Simple Stretches for Busy People (2000)
by Darrin Zeer, p. 52
 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.
o As quoted in The Best Advice Ever for Teachers (2001) by Charles
McGuire and Diana Abitz, p. 57
 Why not?
 o Said repeatedly, with various inflections, these were among his
last words before his death (31 May 1996), as quoted in "Timothy
Leary's Last Moments" by Carol Rosin. Some have stated his final
intelligible word was "Beautiful".
 At one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and
telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that
psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer
into bits and zones of Chaos.
o As quoted in Pronoia Is the Antidote for Paranoia : How the Whole
World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings (2005), by Rob
Brezsny, p. 8
 Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.
o 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.
o 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
 Seven million people I turned on, and only one hundred thousand have
come by to thank me.
o Don Lattin, The Harvard Psychedelic Club (2010), p. 202
 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.
o The Psychedelic Experience (1964), p. 12
 Giger’s work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous
evolutionary time span. It shows us, all too clearly, where we come
from and where we are going.
o Commenting on surrealist H. R. Giger. Martin, Douglas (14 May
2014). "H. R. Giger, Swiss Artist, Dies at 74; His Vision Gave Life to
‘Alien’ Creature". New York Times. Retrieved on 14 May 2014.
Harvard Law School Forum (1966)[edit]
As quoted in "Leary calls LSD 'sacrament'" in The Tech (8 November 1966), p.
6

The language of God is not Englishor Latin; the language of God is cellular and
molecular.
 The only abuse of drugs is the control of drugs by other people. ...The
only control is self-control.
  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.
 There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is
internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and
the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body.
Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which
impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body.
Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which
change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and
tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity.
 The language of God is not English or Latin; the language of God is
cellular and molecular.
 Anything that affects your senses … is your business. If you want to kill
yourself through nicotine or cyanide, it's your business.
Start your own Religion (1967)[edit]
Later re-published in The Politics of Ecstasy (1968) and Turn On, Tune In, Drop
Out (1999)

That intermediate manifestation of the divine process which we call

the DNA code has spent the last 2 billion years making this planet a Garden of
Eden.
  That intermediate manifestation of the divine process which we
call the DNA code has spent the last 2 billion years making this
planet a Garden of Eden. An intricate web has been woven, a delicate
fabric of chemical-electrical-seed-tissue=organism=species. A dancing,
joyous harmony of energy transactions is rooted in the 12 inches of
topsoil which covers the rock
metal
fire
core of this planet.
 The Purpose of Life is Religious Discovery
 Individual societies begin in harmonious adaptation to the
environment and, like individuals, quickly get trapped into
nonadaptive, artificial, repetitive sequences.
When the individual's behavior and consciousness get hooked to a
routine sequence of external actions, he is a dead robot, and it is
time for him to die and be reborn. Time to "drop out," "turn on,"
and "tune in." This period of robotization is called the Kali Yuga, the
Age of Strife and Empire...
o The Purpose of Life is Religious Discovery
 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.
o Drop Out, Turn On. Tune In.
The Politics of Ecstasy (1968)[edit]
This was republished as two volumes: Ch. 1 -11 as Politics of Ecstasy (1999)
and Ch. 12 - 22 as Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out (1999)
By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular,
external social games.
 Drugs Are the Religion of the People — The Only Hope is Dope
o Section title in "The Seven Tongues of God"
 If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit
yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use
psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first century.
Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like
studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in
the first century A.D., and besides telescopes are unnatural.
o "The Seven Tongues of God"
 My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young
people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to
detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But
the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally.
I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their
jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and
tuning in.
o A Trip with Paul Kassner
 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.
o "Neurological Politics"'
Flashbacks, An Autobiography (1983)[edit]
"Come Together"
 John asked what he could do to help my campaign for governor.
"Write a campaign song," I replied.
"Okay," said John, "what's the theme?"
"Our campaign slogan is 'Come together, join the party.'"
"Great title," said John. He grabbed his guitar and started improvising.
Come together right now.
Don't come tomorrow, don't come alone,
Come together right now,
Over me.
 On first proposing that John Lennon write a song for his California
gubernatorial campaign; this eventually developed into
the Beatles song, "Come Together", p. 281
 While sitting in my prison cell, I was astonished to hear the local
rock station play a new song by the Beatles entitled "Come
Together." Although the new version was certainly a musical and
lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that
Lennon had passed me over this way. (I must explain that even the
most good-natured persons tend to be a bit touchy about social neglect
while in prison). When I sent a mild protest to John, he replied with
typical Lennon charm and wit: that he was a tailor and I was a customer
who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone
else.
o p. 388