Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,808 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Robert Anton Wilson
58 quotes
“Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977), p. 84
“I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1977 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The 23 Phenomenon" in Fortean Times 23 (1977), also quoted in "The hidden roots of the 23 Enigma" by Theo Paijmans at the Charles Forte Institute (13 May 2010)
“There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled — by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hugh Crane a.k.a. Cagliostro the Great, in Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy : The Trick Top Hat (1979)
“No wife, no horse, no mustache.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1979 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Schrödinger's Cat Trilogy : The Trick Top Hat (1979), p. 79
“Guerrilla ontology The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being; the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how much is a put-on?'”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Illuminati Papers (1980), p. 2
“The persons we think we are have been manufactured out of some shotgun wedding of history and and imagination.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Illuminati Papers (1980), p. 61
“It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Illuminati Papers (1980), p. 111
“A true initiation never ends.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1981 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Masks of the Illuminati (1981), p. 257
“Every national border in Europe," El Eswad added ironically, "marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the others.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1982 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Earth Will Shake: The History of the Early Illuminati (The Historical Illuminatus Chronicles Vol. 1) (1982), p. 100
“Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cosmic Trigger II : Down to Earth (1991)
“Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope. I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the killing must continue.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1991 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth (1991)
“I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut it….”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 2000 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: DragonCon, 2000
“Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities, not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of course, conspiracy theory.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 2003 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Interview in High Times (2003)
“Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“No, they were not exactly automatons, but they did not know what they were doing. They take down a boy’s britches. They stare at his buttocks. They cane him until the buttocks bleed. And they believe this is virtue, because it is done in a school, and it becomes vice only if it is done in a place with a red lantern over the door.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous process of initiation.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence (which has no size...)”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Conspiracy is just another name for coalition.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The illusion of Sin and Guilt, the madness of our species, is the act of cursing the world under the misapprehension that one is cursing only one part of it. To curse the fig tree, as in the funniest and most misunderstood parable of Jesus, is to curse the soil in which it grew, the seed, the rains, the sun; the whole world, eventually — because no part is truly separate from the whole. The fallacy is that one can judge the part in isolation from the whole is "the Lie that all men believe.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Why does the sexual appetite cause so much unspeakable joy and irrational misery, so much suicidal and homicidal madness, and so much absurd theological ranting? Because every sexual choice is going to play a role in determining the temperament and talents of the next generation, and of all future generations who will inherit the earth from us. To be simple about it for once, a single friendly fuck can fill a continent with morons or geniuses in only a few thousand years.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Each mans spills the drink he loves.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behavior.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The I in the Triangle, speech held at a bookstore in Santa Cruz, California (1990)
“The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 2007 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night" final blog entry (6 January 2007)
“There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1988 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Part I : The Eye in the Pyramid p. 176 of 1988 edition
“The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And Spaceship Earth, that glorious and bloody circus, continued its four-billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must admit, was so exquisite that none of the passengers felt any motion at all. Those on the dark side of the ship mostly slept and voyaged into worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next order from above.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief, even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this planet are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of domesticated primate history.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see your own back (without mirrors).”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mind and its contents are functionally identical: My wife only exists, for me, in my mind. Not being a solipsist, I recognize the converse: I only exist, for her, in her mind. Lest the reader exclaim, like Byron of Wordworth, "I wish he would explain his explanation!", let us try it this way: If I am so fortunate as to be listening to the Hammerklavier sonata, the only correct answer, if you ask me suddenly, "Who are you?" would be to hum the Hammerklavier. For, with music of that quality, one is hypnotized into rapt attention: there is no division between "me" and "my experience".”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The A∴A∴ must rank as the most secretive secret society in the world. Perhaps nobody, not even the few writers who have discussed it, knows for sure when the A∴A∴ began, which group claiming to be the A∴A∴ at present is the real A∴A∴, or even what the symbols A∴A∴ stand for — although many claim to know these things of course. … Occult historians generally agree that V.V.V.V.V. signified Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici ("By the force of truth I have conquered the universe"), one of the eleven magic mottoes of Aleister Crowley.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God," but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH, mispronounced Jehovah, later still.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) said by 2007 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview with Jeffrey Elliot (1980)
“My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer, because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal. Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists. Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I don't trust the people as much as anarchists do. I want to see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller. But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't trust the people any more than I trust the government.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1980 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" - interview by Jeffrey Elliot (1980)
“Obviously, the faster we process information, the more rich and complex our models or glosses — our reality-tunnels — will become. Resistance to new information, however, has a strong neurological foundation in all animals, as indicated by studies of imprinting and conditioning. Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds of information — that which does not "fit" their imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel. We generally call this "conservatism" or "stupidity", but it appears in all parts of the political spectrum, and in learned societies as well as in the Ku Klux Klan.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1990 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quantum Psychology : How Brain Software Programs You and Your World (1990), p. 45
“We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and fear. The government has been paying farmers not to grow food for fifty years--while millions starve. Labor unions, business and government conspire to hold back the Microprocessor Revolution--because none of them know how to deal with the massive unemployment it will cause. (Fuller's books could tell them.) The utilities advertise continually that "solar power is at least forty years in the future" when my friend Karl Hess, and hundreds of others, already live in largely solar-powered houses. These propaganda advertisements are just a delaying action, because the utilities still haven't figured out how to put a meter between us and the sun.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1993 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati. Berkeley, CA: Ronin Pub., 1993. p. 144.
“I'm using myself as a typical 20th century model as I'm trying to make sense out of the world around me … typical in the sense of being one of the damn good models around these days. I am typical in the sense that ...a lot of people are on the same wave length as me. I get fan mail from people that are absolutely stunned that there's somebody else besides themselves who thinks this way. So, we're a minority, but there are a lot of us. On a planet this overcrowded, a minority can have a few million numbers. … More scientific than religious. More open than dogmatic. More optimistic than pessimistic. More future oriented than past oriented. And more humorous than serious. I really dread serious people. Especially serious, dogmatic people. I regard them as sort of what Reich called the emotional plague. I regard them as very dangerous.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Anton Wilson on Wilhelm Reich" (March 1995)
“He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse irrational hatred obviously, and that's because his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody, and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history whose books were literally burned by the government. Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned. Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a civil liberties issue. When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who ever lived and discovered the basic secrets of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve further investigation.”
Robert Anton Wilson (1932–2007) first seen 1995 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Robert Anton Wilson on Wilhelm Reich" (March 1995)