Timothy Leary

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

“Science is all metaphor.”

“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.”

“At the peak of his scientific triumphs, Newton became a 'head,' a student of the inner spiritual world - or in modern terms, a neurologician. Modern physicists do not dwell on this dramatic life-change in their hero.”

“I totally deplore the notion of an M.D. giving pills to patients - a medical doctor giving psychological or psychoactive change agents to another person.”

“In pursuing my fervent goal of relating external stimuli to reports about internal-neural change, we were, paradoxically enough, following the most orthodox tradition in psychology.”

“From my first published paper in 1946, my obsession has been to objectify inner experiences, to demystify the software of human existence. How? By relating changes in external behavior, systematically and lawfully, to changes in the brain.”

“The twentieth century may well find historical status as the epoch in which man began to study himself as a scientific phenomenon.”

“There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.”

“We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.”

“My profession is I'm a dissident philosopher.”

“We seem to inhabit a universe made up of a small number of elements-particles-bits that swirl in chaotic clouds, occasionally clustering together in geometrically logical temporary configurations.”

“Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.”

“The level of intelligence has been tremendously increased, because people are thinking and communicating in terms of screens, and not in lettered books. Much of the real action is taking place in what is called cyberspace. People have learned how to boot up, activate, and transmit their brains.Essentially, there’s a universe inside your brain. The number of connections possible inside your brain is limitless. And as people have learned to have more managerial and direct creative access to their brains, they have also developed matrices or networks of people that communicate electronically. There are direct brain/computer link-ups. You can just jack yourself in and pilot your brain around in cyberspace-electronic space.”

“You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.”

“Think for yourself and question authority.”

“When people criticize the computer generation, the high tech generation, and say they neglect the body - well, just walk through a college campus, and you'll see the healthiest, most physically conscious and alert group of human beings I've ever met. So they're not nerds at all.”

“The universe is an intelligence test.”

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

“The role of anxiety in the development of human personality is central, and it is intricate beyond our understanding.”