Drug Quotes by Terence McKenna

Television is, to my mind, the most insidious drug that the 20th Century has had to deal with.

— Terence McKenna

The danger is [in using psychedelic drugs], just to put it out there, is madness.

— Terence McKenna

One way of assessing the toxicity of a drug is how do you feel the next day?

— Terence McKenna

What we drug people have, that you don't, is repeatability.

— Terence McKenna

I'm as against restricting access to drugs as I am to burning books. It offends me in the same way.

— Terence McKenna

The drug may not be toxic, but you may be self-toxic, and you may discover this in the drug experience.

— Terence McKenna

What foods are, essentially, are idea-neutral drugs.

— Terence McKenna

The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.

— Terence McKenna

The state in the matter of drugs should not, any more than in the matter of sex, act as the secret agent…

— Terence McKenna

I can't think of a society on Earth where people don't take drugs that any of us would want anything to do…

— Terence McKenna

The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is…

— Terence McKenna

Escape into the dream. Escape, a key thing charged against these drugs, that they are for escapists. I think the people who…

— Terence McKenna

In 1948, television was introduced, and millions and millions of people lead larval, low-awareness, warehoused lives mainlining an electronic drug straight into…

— Terence McKenna

An interesting thing about drugs is often, when a new drug is discovered, it takes a long time to figure out how…

— Terence McKenna

Apparently, in the Avesta classical period no one would have dreamed of having a spiritual experience without resort to drugs.

— Terence McKenna

Television, while chemically non-invasive, nevertheless is every bit as addicting and physiologically damaging as any other drug.

— Terence McKenna

Marcel Eliade took the position that hallucinogenic shamanism was decadent, and Gordon Wasson, very rightly I believe, contravened this view and held…

— Terence McKenna

If I can paraphrase Teilhard de Chardin for a moment, he said, or I will paraphrase in this way, 'When the human…

— Terence McKenna

I really think there is a very large distinction between synthetic and naturally occurring drugs. ... I think that these plants 'take…

— Terence McKenna

I started out in psychedelic drugs, and people said it was a flight from reality. It still is a flight from reality,…

— Terence McKenna

Psychedelic drugs, especially psilocybin, allow a searchlight to be thrown on these deeper levels of the psyche, as Jung correctly stated. But…

— Terence McKenna

Drugs are about dulling perception, about addiction and about behavioral repetition...What *psychedelics* are about is pattern- dissolving experiences of an extraordinarily high…

— Terence McKenna

I don't think that mass drug taking is a good idea. But I think that we must have a deputized minority, a…

— Terence McKenna

The idea of psychedelic societies is something new. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone takes the drug. It merely means that…

— Terence McKenna

The war on drugs was never meant to be won. Instead, it will be prolonged as long as possible in order to…

— Terence McKenna

Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of…

— Terence McKenna

The drugs of the future will be computers. The computers of the future will be drugs.

— Terence McKenna

Drugs induce paranoia and psychosis in people who have never taken any.

— Terence McKenna

I'm not an advocate of drugs. I'm an advocate of psychedelics.

— Terence McKenna

The only difference between a drug and a computer is that one is slightly too large to swallow. ... And our best…

— Terence McKenna

The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That's the odd paradox of it.

— Terence McKenna

Transformation of language through psychedelic drugs is a central factor of the evolution of the social matrix of the rest of the…

— Terence McKenna

This is in fact what shamanism is all about, what the end of history is all about, what psychedelic drugs are all…

— Terence McKenna

'Drugs' and psychedelics are not two members of a family, they are antithetically opposed to each other. The pro-psychedelic position is an…

— Terence McKenna

Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a…

— Terence McKenna

Safety is really a concern of mine, and what I've been telling people recently is that until there's animal and human data…

— Terence McKenna

[DMT] raises all the questions in a hurry. It's so intense and so oriented toward the other and the visual and the…

— Terence McKenna

LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never…

— Terence McKenna

The pro-psychedelic plant position is clearly an antidrugs position. Drug dependencies are the result of habitual, unexamined, and obsessive behavior; these are…

— Terence McKenna

The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit…

— Terence McKenna