"What the thinker thinks, the prover proves."
Read quote
9 likes
Quote collection
Robert Anton Wilson quotes (page 8 of 11)
219 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists."
Read quote
8 likes
"The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences."
Read quote
8 likes
"The function of Theology? The recitation of the incomprehensible by the unspeakable to pick the pockets of the unthinking."
Read quote
8 likes
"The secret to my success has been optimism tempered by anger."
Read quote
8 likes
"The web of life is a beautiful and meaningless dance. The web of life is a process with a moving goal. The web of life is a perfectly finished work of art right where I am sitting now."
Read quote
8 likes
"The things that hinder me are opportunities to learn more and develop further."
Read quote
8 likes
"In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other."
Read quote
8 likes
"... I have developed, over the years, some sense of the difference between real horseshit that you can step in and Ideal Platonic Horseshit that exists, evidently, only in the contemplation of those who worship such abstractions; and I continue to notice that Natural Law bears an uncanny resemblance to ideal Platonic Horseshit."
Read quote
8 likes
"The minority who actually loves its work seems to be made up chiefly of the writers, dancers, actors and other artists, most scientists above the technician-troll level, computer freaks, and the righteous dope-dealers of California."
Read quote
8 likes
"If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind."
Read quote
8 likes
"I regard belief as a form of brain damage."
Read quote
8 likes
"Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat."
Read quote
8 likes
"[My wife] liked to collect old encyclopedias from second-hand bookstores, and at one point we had eight of them. When I wrote my first historical novel---back in 1980, before I was online---I used them often as a research tool. For instance, I learned that the Bastille was either 90 feet high or 100 feet or 120 feet. This led me to formulate Wilson's 22nd Law: 'Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only look in one encyclopedia.'"
Read quote
8 likes
"Ye have cast out yer brothers for devils and now complain ye, lamenting, that ye've been left to fight alone."
Read quote
8 likes
"The Grail is the womb of the beloved."
Read quote
8 likes
"Reality is what you can get away with."
Read quote
8 likes
"In every state of the Union, Fundamentalists still fight to ban all the science they dislike and prosecute all who teach it. To them, 'traditional family values' denotes their right to keep their children as ignorant as their grandparents (and to hate the same folks grand-dad hated.)"
Read quote
7 likes
"If you want to be happy, practise it every day"
Read quote
7 likes
"Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking."
Read quote
7 likes