Timothy Leary Quotes

I think if I'm controversial it's not because I set out to be. It's because I've never felt comfortable being part of someone else's mainstream community.

I guess if you have an original take on life, or something about you is original, you don't have to study people who came before you. You don't have to mimic anybody. You just have a gut feeling inside, an instinct that tells you what's right for you, and you can't do it in any other way.

I don't follow what is in fashion now; I just listen to myself and what I like... I wait for the right occasion or see how I feel each day.

I think I'm true to myself - you hear that actors have like plans. I'm gonna do this type of movie, then I'm gonna play this kind of character, and that'll get me from A to B. I've never done that. I honestly just follow my gut and I don't think you can go wrong with that.

To hell with the rules. If it sounds right, then it is.

I'mma just do me, when it feel right.

I don’t follow fashion and I don’t follow trends, I just follow my instincts...

Whenever I start to really think about what I'm playing, I may play it better musically, but the feeling isn't there.

I try to live the moment and not obey laws, rules, conventions, or norms; to react to a sensation, a feeling, or an emotion. You can't program emotion.

My advice to female directors is not to wait until you feel like your ideas have been pre-certified or until you think you've gotten some approval for them. Then it's too late! Follow your gut. That's hard to do, but the only way to be original.

People relate to the spirit of the band, which is to live your way and succeed on your own terms. There's no hypocrisy in being successful and still railing against conformity.

To refrain from imitation is the best revenge.

I never do anything that doesn't feel natural to me. I wake up in the morning and I know what to put on - it's my sixth sense, really.

What I always try to do is to respond to the song; I've always rebelled against theory.

If I'm in the middle of a take and I start to think about what I'm doing, I just mess up and I have to stop and so I find that for me, you really need to trust your instinct.

I'm not a manufactured artist. Nobody taught me how to be a proper artist.

Where's your will to be weird?

I think that's the thing I learned at 'Saturday Night Live' - any time I would try and strategize, I would always, always fall on my face. Things worked out when I tried to make it about what I was feeling at that moment and what I was into in that moment of my life.

The most daring thing is to be yourself and to do exactly what you want to do at that point in time and not to be worried with what other people are doing or what's popular.

I have always moved by intuition alone. I have no system, literary or political. I have no guiding political idea.

I have never felt the constraints of social acceptability.

I honestly can't characterize my style in words. It seems that whatever comes to me naturally, I play.

My manner of thinking, so you say, cannot be approved. Do you suppose I care? A poor fool indeed is he who adopts a manner of thinking for others!

We are too quick to put labels on things. It is my profession. I get up and paint. Everyone wants to put a label on it, but I am a free spirit, so I fight against that.

I always wanted to go against hat grain because it was too restricting.