People Quotes by Terence McKenna

People are concrescences of ambiguity.

— Terence McKenna

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

— Terence McKenna

I think what we have to do is convince people that matter is tacky.

— Terence McKenna

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

— Terence McKenna

People without plants are in a state of perpetual neurosis, a state of existential wanting.

— Terence McKenna

It is the people who are 'far out' who are gaining advantage in the evolutionary jostling for efficacious strategies.

— Terence McKenna

Closure is a neurotic and infantile demand to make upon reality, other people, or language.

— Terence McKenna

In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.

— 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

I see the psychedelic experience as a birthright, and we can't have a free society until people are free to explore their…

— Terence McKenna

What people notice about [when they are on] LSD is either what's right or wrong with themselves or how freaky the world…

— 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

I think that the whole thing, the crux of the whole psychedelic issue, is that it accentuates personal responsibility by making people…

— Terence McKenna

It's getting funnier because everybody's categories are disintegrating, and the cult of political correctness dictates that we never point out that other…

— Terence McKenna

I discovered early in life a stunning truth that's made my life very complicated in its wake, but that I still think…

— 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

This is what magic is. It's being able to speak in a voice which makes things happen, being able to speak in…

— Terence McKenna

Shamanism is not some obscure concern of cultural anthropologists. Shamanism is how religion was practiced for its first million years. Up until…

— 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

There’s light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is that tunnel is in the back of your mind. And if…

— 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

It puts people who are into this psychedelic thing in an entirely different stance from all other spiritual seekers, because all other…

— Terence McKenna

In other words, all these things you might cling to, Catholicism, democratic ideals, Hasidism, Marxism, Freudianism, all of these things are exposed…

— Terence McKenna

The shaman is a person who is able to transcend the dimensional confines of cultural existence. They know more than the people…

— Terence McKenna

The smart people who are straight are involved in simply the media management of what has turned into a slow apocalypse, spreading…

— Terence McKenna

What they [psychedelics] cause is what I'm advocating, a fundamental revaluation of cultural values, because culture as we're practicing it currently is…

— Terence McKenna

I think it's the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them, and…

— Terence McKenna

By manipulating queuing, by manipulating expectation, you can lead people to a fundamental confrontation, not only with themselves, but with the Other.

— Terence McKenna

Culture is a simplification and a lie. It's the currency by which fools navigate the world. Smart people get beyond it.

— Terence McKenna

One of the things that people don't do enough of when they do psychedelic work is spend time in the library.

— Terence McKenna

A lot of people pass through the thinking I'm a guru and take enough trips to understand that no, I was just…

— Terence McKenna

The psychedelic sets you at the beginning of the path, and then people do all kinds of things with it.

— Terence McKenna

Anything which must be understood by millions of people is so hopelessly divorced from how it is that it becomes a form…

— Terence McKenna

I have a skeptical and cranky side, and I'm forever puzzled why people believe the, seeming to me, dumb things that they…

— Terence McKenna

There is no hierarchy of elder knowledge in my social region of things. There are only people learning and sharing in a…

— Terence McKenna

I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.

— Terence McKenna

I regard these people who are peddling angst and peddling pessimism and all that stuff as so 'two minutes ago'.

— Terence McKenna

If you go to Paris you know more about reality than people who don't. If you smoke DMT you know more about…

— Terence McKenna

I think that a lot of people are making a lot of money spreading anxiety. Anxiety sells.

— Terence McKenna