Quotessence
Home / Authors / Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna Quotes

Philosopher

Filter quotes by topic

AllPsychedelicHumansIfsThinkingPeopleWorldMindCulturePsychedelic ExperienceKindMind BlowingKnowsDrugLanguageWayImaginationMeanPlanetsIdeasMatter

Famous Terence McKenna Quotes

“The planet has a kind of intelligence, it can actually open a channel of communication with an individual human being. The message that nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind”

HumansKindIdeasCultureIndividualLanguageUnderstandingImaginationHuman BeingsPlanetsCommunicationMessagesIntuitionBoundariesPsychedelicSynergy
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“Cultivate an ongoing stream of self-description, telling yourself what is happening. Get used to the idea that mind can penetrate the immediate surface of being and reveal the tactile density of it as a manifold whose measure cannot be immediately taken by the eyes, that it's deep, it's connected, it's complex. Everything holds within itself the anticipation and the memory of everything else.”

MindIdeasSelfEyeUsedMemoriesTakenHappeningsComplexesConnectedSurfaceStreamsDescriptionAnticipationOngoingPenetrateDensityManifoldTactile
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“No one yet understands the mysterious intelligence within plants or the implications of the idea that nature communicates in a basic chemical language that is unconscious but profound. We do not yet understand how hallucinogens transform the message in the unconscious into revelations beheld by the conscious mind.”

MindIdeasLanguageMessagesConsciousPlantProfoundCommunicateMysteriousRevelationsUnconsciousChemicalsImplicationsConscious MindHallucinogens
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

“Modernity is a desert, and we are jungle monkeys. And so new evolutionary selective pressures are coming to bear upon the human situation, new ideas are coming to the fore. Psilocybin is a selective filter for this. The wish to go to space is a selective filter for this. Just the wish to know your own mind is a selective filter for this.”

KnowsMindHumansIdeasWishSpaceSituationBearsPressureDesertNew IdeasMonkeysJungleModernityFiltersSelectivePsilocybin
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“On these matters of specific fact, like is the mushroom an extraterrestrial and that sort of thing, I haven't the faintest idea. The mushroom itself is such a mercurial, elusive, Zen sort of personality that I never believe a word it says. I simply entertain its notions and try and sort through them, and I found that to be the most enriching approach to it.”

TryingBelieveIdeasMatterFactsFoundHavensPersonalityApproachNotionElusiveMushroomsEnrichingExtraterrestrial
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“So what needs to be done is to spread the idea that anxiety is inappropriate. It's sort of like we who are psychedelic have to function as sitters for society, because society is going to thrash, and resist, and think it's dying, and be deluded, and regurgitate unconscious material, and so forth and so on. And the role then, I think, for psychedelic people is to try and spread calm.”

PeopleThinkingNeedsTryingIdeasDoneRolesDyingMaterialsAnxietyFunctionCalmSpreadUnconsciousPsychedelicInappropriateDeluded
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image

“We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.”

WantHumansIdeasGamesGrowthSunJourneyMovementKingsMoonPlantWeatherIdeologyCyclesPopeCompassConstraintsDrought
Author:Terence McKenna
Create image