Quotessence
Home / Authors / Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllPsychedelicHumansIfsThinkingPeopleWorldMindCulturePsychedelic ExperienceKindMind BlowingKnowsDrugLanguageWayImaginationMeanPlanetsIdeasMatter

Famous Terence McKenna Quotes

“Drugs are about dulling perception, about addiction and about behavioral repetition...What *psychedelics* are about is pattern- dissolving experiences of an extraordinarily high or different awareness. They are the exact opposite of drugs. They promote questioning , they promote consciousness, they promote value examinations, they promote the reconstruction of behavioral patterns.”

DifferentValuesConsciousnessAwarenessDrugPerceptionOppositesAddictionPatternsQuestioningRepetitionExaminationReconstructionDissolving
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“I don't think that mass drug taking is a good idea. But I think that we must have a deputized minority, a shamanic professional class if you will, whose job is to bring ideas out of the deep black water and show them off to the rest of us and perform for our culture some of the cultural functions that shaman perform in pre-literate cultures.”

IfsThinkingIdeasShowsJobsCultureBlackWaterClassDrugMassFunctionMinoritiesGood IdeasDrug Taking
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“Psychedelic drugs, especially psilocybin, allow a searchlight to be thrown on these deeper levels of the psyche, as Jung correctly stated. But it is not a museum of archetypes or psychic constructs, as he seemed to assume. It is a frontier of wholeness into which any person, so motivated and so courageous as to wish to do it, can go and leave the mundane plane far behind.”

PersonsWishLevelsBehindsDrugAssumingDeeperPlanesThrownCourageousMotivatedMuseumsWholenessConstructsPsychicsFrontiersMundanePsychedelicArchetypeJungPsychedelic DrugsPsilocybin
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they’re willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff.”

ThinkingShouldJoyStuffUnderstandingEmotionWillingComfortDrugElementsComfortableEmpathyComplexesNotionTerrorSurrenderTriumphNosesEcstasyToysReplacedContainingPrehistoricEscapists
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“I think the real test of psychedelics is what you do with them when you're not on them, what kind of culture you build, what kind of art, what kind of technologies... What's lacking in the Western mind is the sense of connectivity and relatedness to the rest of life, the atmosphere, the ecosystem, the past, our children's future. If we were feeling those things we would not be practicing culture as we are.”

IfsThinkingLifeMindKindChildrenArtRealFeelingsPastCultureTechnologyDrugTestsOur ChildrenWesternAtmosphereLackingEcosystemsRest Of Life
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to allow various intelligence operations to wring the last few hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit profits from the global drug scam; then defeat will have to be declared. "Defeat" will mean, as it did in the case of the Vietnam War, that the media will correctly portray the true dimensions of the situation and the real players, and that public revulsion at the culpability, stupidity and venality of the Establishment's role will force a policy review.”

MeanLongWarRealLastsOrderForceSituationRolesMillionsCasesPlayerMediaPolicyDrugDollarsDefeatProfitVariousStupidityOperationsDimensionsMeant To BeReviewsVietnamEstablishmentVietnam WarWar On DrugsScamsRevulsionCulpability
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“The pro-psychedelic plant position is clearly an antidrugs position. Drug dependencies are the result of habitual, unexamined, and obsessive behavior; these are precisely the tendencies in our psychological makup that the psychedelics mitigate. The plant hallucinogens dissolve habits and hold motivations up to inspection by a wider, less egocentric, and more grounded point of view within the individual.”

MotivationIndividualResultsViewsPositionHabitDrugBehaviorPlantPoint Of ViewTendenciesPsychologicalGroundedPsychedelicObsessiveHabitualDependencyEgocentricInspectionHallucinogens
Book:True Hallucinations: And, the Archaic Revival
Create image