Terence McKenna (Terence Kemp McKenna) Quotes
Inevitably out of the psychedelic experience emerges not despair, not self-indulgence, but wild-eyed idealism, that's the inevitable product of any psychedelically driven social process.
Quotes to Explore
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My books are character-driven. They're not driven by the story.
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I am not driven.
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I was driven completely by a desire to understand how cells worked.
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For me, it's not an option to despair. The question is: what can we do to make someone's life better? Take the unimaginable strides made in places like Bosnia, where I cut my teeth, and Rwanda. Their stories aren't perfect, but I wouldn't have dreamt they could happen in a million years.
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I have a hard time doing anything someone else tells me to do! I've always been driven to follow my own path and not be pushed down another lane because some executive thought I could be more commercially successful or whatever.
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What I have in me... it's not hard, and it's not cold, and it's not fierce ambition, that's not what it is. It's a drive [for success], but it's not a drive...it's being driven, it's something I have no control over. It's something pushing me, I'm not pushing myself.
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I'm not great with money. I'd go crazy if I were left to my own devices. My mum and girlfriend sort it out. I'm not driven by it, but I love to be generous.
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To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.
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She wore far too much rouge last night and not quite enough clothes. That is always a sign of despair in a woman.
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I'm a very melody-driven writer and I have a rule that I don't write anything down because if I can't remember the melody than it wasn't worth remembering. So it's my way to test myself in the studio. When I was a kid I could sing pretty well so melody always made a lot of sense to me.
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I like to think that it isn't weakness or evasion, but a final act of kindness, a stand against oblivion and despair.
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Teach hope to all, despair to none.
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Despair often breeds disease.
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Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle. The modern industrial proletariat does not belong to the category of such classes.
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As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable.
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Conceit is vanity driven from all other shifts, and forced to appeal to itself for admiration.
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When human hearts break and human hearts despair, then from the twilight of the past the great conquerors of distress and care, of disgrace and misery, of spiritual slavery and physical compulsion, look down on them and hold out their eternal hands to the despairing mortals.
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The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not; and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our own virtues.
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Part of me wanted something bloody and really fun.
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All objects, all phases of culture are alive. They have voices. They speak of their history and interrelatedness. And they are all talking at once!
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Any work of art makes one very simple demand on anyone who genuinely wants to get in touch with it. And that is to stop. You've got to stop what you're doing, what you're thinking, and what you're expecting and just be there for the poem for however long it takes.
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Science is not marginal. Like art, it is a universal possession of humanity, and scientific knowledge has become a vital part of our species' repertory. It comprises what we know of the material world with reasonable certainty. . . . Thanks to science and technology, access to factual information of all kinds is rising exponentially.
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The message to all young Americans is that it's great to have a dream; it's great to have goals.
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Inevitably out of the psychedelic experience emerges not despair, not self-indulgence, but wild-eyed idealism, that's the inevitable product of any psychedelically driven social process.
