Terence McKenna Quotes

It is humanity's destiny to explore the universe. When we start thinking and working on that cosmic level, we will transcend our parochial differences and tribal natures and become global creatures, solar system creatures. Then we will figure out where we fit in.

This is the result of six billion years of evolution. Tonight, we have given the lie to gravity.We have reached for the stars.

The sky calls to us. If we do not destroy ourselves, we will one day venture to the stars.

Over the years my religion has changed and my spirituality has evolved. Religion and spirituality are very different, but people often confuse the two. Some things cannot be taught, but they can be awakened in the heart. Spirituality is recognizing the divine light that is within us all. It doesn't belong to any particular religion; it belongs to everyone.

And someday when the descendants of humanity have spread from star to star, they won’t tell the children about the history of Ancient Earth until they’re old enough to bear it; and when they learn they’ll weep to hear that such a thing as Death had ever once existed!

If anything, when you're up in space and you're inside a space ship, which is your home, and without which you would not survive, you know that Earth is your home. This is the only place you can return. In fact we're very meticulous. Part of our job is to maintain the spaceship. If we apply the same kind of model to Earth maybe we'd have a different outlook.

The hearts of men are their books; events are their tutors; great actions are their eloquence.

For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body. This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one of our most thrilling results.

But in my heart I knew that just like the new grass, I wasn't strong enough yet to be walked on

Whether it is under the guise of survival and self-defence or directly expressed through dominion and greed, the failure to recognize the common humanity shared by us all lies at the heart of our difficulties. To overcome it, we should begin to develop, from the level of the individual through that of society to the world at large, what I call a sense of universal responsibility; a deep respect for every living being who lives on this one small planet and calls it home.

I know the stars are my home. I learned about them, needed them for survival in terms of navigation. I know where I am when I look up at the sky. I know where I am when I look up at the Moon; it's not just some abstract romantic idea, it's something very real to me. See, I've expanded my home.

I wonder from these thousand of "me's", which one am I? Listen to my cry, do not drown my voice I am completely filled with the thought of you. Don't lay broken glass on my path I will crush it into dust. I am nothing, just a mirror in the palm of your hand, reflecting your kindness, your sadness, your anger. If you were a blade of grass or a tiny flower I will pitch my tent in your shadow. Only your presence revives my withered heart. You are the candle that lights the whole world and I am an empty vessel for your light. Rumi - "Hidden Music

My job, as an actor, is to entertain people. My contribution to society is to be a respite from everyday life. People go home and watch television or they go to the movies, and they get to escape their reality. But if I can do entertainment that also maybe can educate people, educate myself, move people's hearts and minds, in some way, and bring light to some injustice, that's when entertainment is at its best. And if somebody wants to get more involved in a socially active way, that's when you've done the thing that I've always wanted to be a part of.

The course of human history is determined, not by what happens in the skies, but what takes place in our hearts.

What were we doing here? Traveling hundreds or thousands of light-years, to break our hearts?

I think that the heart is a lot like those wonderful fruit, like coconut and mangoes, you know, you have to break the skin, you have to break it open to get to the good part.

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

It is the thoughts and intents of the heart that shape a person's life.

Existence was bigger than just life. It was everyone's life all together, and even if you lived in Buffalo, New York and had never been more than ten miles from home, you were part of the puzzle, too. It didn't matter how small your life was.

Culture and education have no bounds or limits; now man is in a phase in which he must decide for himself how far he can proceed in the culture that belongs to the whole of humanity.

The sole concern of learning is to seek one's original heart.

We have been to the moon, we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom, but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together.

Heading towards that inner home will take you places-both inside yourself and in the external world-which your heart will recognize as its native environment, even though you have never been there before.

We only have to look at ourselves to see how intelligent life might develop into something we wouldnt want to meet. I imagine they might exist in massive ships, having used up all the resources from their home planet. Such advanced aliens would perhaps become nomads, looking to conquer and colonize whatever planets they can reach.