American psychologist & author (1920-1996)
The general direction of evolution is to produce a serially imprinting, multibrained creature able to decipher its own program, create the technology to leave the planet and live in post-terrestrial mini-worlds, decode the aging sectors of the DNA code--thus assuring immortality, and act in harmony with stages of evolution to come.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Musings on Human Metamorphoses
Fundamentalist Christianity appeals to pre-civilized, prudish tribal people who are not ready for urban feudal pleasures.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Evolutionary Agents
We translated the basic Hindu teaching that everything is illusion into the modern neurological truth that everything is a figment of your own brain.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
The universe is an intelligence test.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, Cosmic Trigger
Higher has always been the trajectory of intelligent evolution.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain is God
Of course, the drug does not produce the transcendent experience. It merely acts as a chemical key -- it opens the mind, frees the nervous system of its ordinary patterns and structures.
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Psychedelic Experience
Each religion has got their own way of making you feel like a victim. The Christians say "you are a sinner", and you better just zip up your trousers and give the money to the pope and we'll give you a room up in the hotel in the sky.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Timothy Leary's Last Trip
If you listen to neurologists and psychiatrists, you'd never fall in love.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Changing My Mind, Among Others
To the elitist hedonist, life is the avoidance of boredom and routine.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Musings on Human Metamorphoses
Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, Still Casting Shadows
My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.
TIMOTHY LEARY
The Politics of Ecstasy
Seven million people I turned on, and only one hundred thousand have come by to thank me.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, The Harvard Psychedelic Club
Nobody ever understands what a pioneer is doing.
TIMOTHY LEARY
interview, Far Gone
Prayer is ecstatic communication with your innernavigational computer.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
In the Eleusinian mysteries, they would always warn people, "if you go in here, your ego will die. You're going to have to confront all your past hang-ups, strip them off, and be a changed person." One emperor of Rom who wanted to be initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries said, "That's interesting, I approve of what you're doing, but I don't want to be changed."
TIMOTHY LEARY
Your Brain Is God
The mission of DNA is to evolve nervous systems able to escape from the doomed planet and contact manifestations of the same amino-acid seeding that have evolved in other solar systems. The mission is the message--to escape and come home.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Musings on Human Metamorphoses
I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, Shout!
To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.
TIMOTHY LEARY
Change Your Brain
There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body. Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity.
TIMOTHY LEARY
"Leary calls LSD sacrament", The Tech, November 8, 1966
I've left specific instructions that I do not want to be brought back [to life] during a Republican administration.
TIMOTHY LEARY
attributed, The Nastiest Things Ever Said About Republicans