Terence McKenna Quotes

Perhaps the challenge is to invent the political structure that will give conscience a better chance against authority.

The enormous social change involved in a sexual revolution is basically a matter of altered consciousness, the exposure and elimination of social and psychological realities underlying political and cultural structures. We are speaking, then, of a cultural revolution, which, while it must necessarily involve the political and economic reorganization traditionally implied by the term revolution, must go far beyond this as well.

Something really serious has shifted in the minds of Republicans and certainly others.

The only way I've learned to change anyone's mind politically is to make them laugh. My whole career has been about that.

And science, when it examines psychedelics, as it will and must, is going to discover a revolution, I believe, that will put all the previous revolutions in perspective.

There must exist a paradigm, a practical model for social change that includes an understanding of ways to transform consciousness that are linked to efforts to transform structures.

A society which makes provision for participation in its good of all its members on equal terms and which secures flexible readjustment of its institutions through interaction of the different forms of associated life is in so far democratic. Such a society must have a type of education which gives individuals a personal interest in social relationships and control, and the habits of mind which secure social changes without introducing disorder.

Revolution starts in the mind. Question everything!

Where psychedelics comes together with that is that it's going to require a transformation of human language and understanding to stop the momentum of the historical process, to halt nuclear proliferation, germ warfare, infantile 19th century politics, all these things. It cannot be accomplished through a frontal assault upon it by political means.

Psychedelics are not flashlights into the chaos of the Freudian unconscious, they are tools for mathematically unpacking your mind into a higher dimensional space. In the Newtonian and print created space that we are walking around in you, are like a self extracting archive, that hasn't self extracted itself yet.

Total revolution of consciousness and our entire social, political and economic system is what interests me, but that's not on the ballot.

Severe opposition is a measure of success (because) one inevitable result of winning a majority change in consciousness is a backlash from those forces whose power depended on the old one.

All of this strife on the political front might just be the death throes of another set of [less-honorable] American beliefs, that have, at their core, the notion that equality is something the privileged group "gives" to those not so privileged - a reaching down, as it were.

How very important it is to bring about in the human mind the radical revolution. The crisis is a crisis in consciousness, a crisis that cannot anymore accept the old norms, the old patterns, the ancient traditions. Considering what the world is now with all the misery, conflict, destructive brutality, aggression and so on... man is still as he was, is still brutal, violent, aggressive, acquisitive, competitive and has built a society along these lines.

Political change and academic change and intellectual change are obviously crucial, but they don't necessarily change society. They can change a particular class and give everybody in that class great arguments, but that doesn't necessarily translate into the body of the culture.

The quieting of our mind is a political act.

It's always great to do a movie that you find is entertaining, but also can give some sort of political or social message.

I also see an undercurrent - and perhaps the Indigo Children are another aspect of this â€" that's moving in the right direction that I thought was really predominant during the last 35 years since I started Noetics. So we do see quite a few people bucking the tides. At the moment, however, the political system, in my opinion, is going in the wrong direction.

In our current frame of mind, or paradigm, or whatever you want to call it, we like to think that marshalling government policy is the way to get things done.

That was all part of giving someone a piece of your heart; they ended up taking a whole chunk of your mind and reserving it all for themselves.

the novel is inherently a political instrument, regardless of its subject. It invites you - more than invites you, induces you - to live inside another person's skin. It creates empathy. And that's the antidote to bigotry. The novel doesn't just tell you about another life, which is what a newspaper would do. It makes you live another life, inhabit another perspective. And that's very important.

The religious need of the human mind remains alive, never more so, but it demands a teaching which can be understood. Slowly an apprehension of the intimate, usable power of God is growing among us, and a growing recognition of the only worth-while application of that power-in the improvement of the world.

If we are to change our world view, images have to change.

... reform the environment and not man; being absolutely confident that if you give man the right environment, he will behave favorably.

What does it mean when something changes how it's always been?