Terence McKenna Quotes

The backwardness of our religious and social developments is undoubtedly holding back the development of the intellectual and political levels.

Perhaps the main, as well as the least obvious, achievement of the Middle Ages, was the creation of the experimental spirit, or more exactly its slow incubation. This was primarily due to Muslims down to the end of the twelfth century, then to Christians.

At a certain age some people's minds close up; they live on their intellectual fat.

The age of ignorance commenced with the Christian system.

Jesus is the purest among the mighty, and the mightiest among the pure, who, with his pierced hand has raised empires from their foundations, turned the stream of history from its old channel, and still continues to rule and guide the ages

There is nothing as dull as an intellectual ally after a certain age.

America didn’t bypass or escape civilization. It did something far more profound, far cleverer: it simply changed what civilization could be.

We are at that very point in time when a 400-year old age is rattling in its death bed and another is struggling to be born.

The mediocrity of everything in the great world of today is simply appalling. We live in intellectual slums.

Blind belief can be comforting, but it can easily cripple reason and productivity, and stop intellectual progress.

if we were forced to choose just one, there would be no way to deny that Judaism is the most important intellectual development in human history.

Great men stamp their mind upon their age and nation.

The entire human race faced a singularity when one small group discovered, ooh, technology. We can live a different way. Eventually, that spelled the death of the old way of life.

Each nation has a main current in life; in India it is religion. Make it strong and the waters on either side must move along with it. This is one phase of my line of thought. In time, I hope to bring them all out, but at present I find I have a mission in this country also. Moreover, I expect help in this country and from here alone. But up to date I could not do anything except spreading my ideas. Now I want that a similar attempt be made in India.

When I go to the movies, and I have to sit through ten previews of films that look [alike] and tell the whole story, you know that we've reached an age of consensus. And consensus is the worst thing for us. We all agree to agree. That's where we lose it as a culture. We have to move away from that.

Every man who speaks out loud and clear is tinting the "Zeitgeist." Every man who expresses what he honestly thinks is true is changing the Spirit of the Times. Thinkers help other people to think, for they formulate what others are thinking. No person writes or thinks alone--thought is in the air, but its expression is necessary to create a tangible Spirit of the Times.

Consistency in opinion is the slow poison of intellectual life, the destroyer of its vividness and energy.

Each nation has a main current in life; in India it is religion. Make it strong and the waters on either side must move along with it.

Our poets do not write about it; our artists do not try to portray this remarkable thing. I don't know why. Is nobody inspired by our present picture of the universe? The value of science remains unsung by singers... This is not yet a scientific age.

In two senses: One is that you cannot go on the street and shout that you are an atheist, the other is that you are never given the intellectual framework for calling your faith into question.

Just for being a religion at all you're as complicit as the rest in the retardation of the human intellectual progress.

Any political situation has many sides... We intellectualize the whole situation any way... We make our intellectual decisions based on our cultural background and how we live.

In every age of transition men are never so firmly bound to one way of life as when they are about to abandon it.

Darwin has done more to change human thought than all the priests who have existed.

About the scientific revolution: it "outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes".