Quote

The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness.

Robert Anton Wilson

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Robert Anton Wilson
Age: 74 †
Born: 1932
Born: January 18
Died: 2007
Died: January 11
Author
Essayist
Novelist
Philosopher
Playwright
Poet
Psychologist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Flatbush
Long Island
Robert Edward Wilson
Individual
Also
Cornerstone
Authoritarian
Obedience
Weakness
Strength
Society

More quotes by Robert Anton Wilson

Image
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.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
The things that hinder me are opportunities to learn more and develop further.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Reality is what you can get away with.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress ... the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everybody should listen to you.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know all about the rest of space-time.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Once something becomes discernible, or understandable, we no longer need to repeat it. We can destroy it.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence (which has no size).
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Christianity is alone in thinking that sex is entirely the Devil's business and an offence to God, This is a strange doctrine and almost implies that God and the devil must have collaborated on the creation of humanity, God working above the belly button and the Devil below.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
The devil is only a convenient myth invented by the real malefactors of our world.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
The path up is the path down. The way forward is the way back. The universe inside is outside but the universe outside is inside.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
People have murdered each other, in massive wars and guerilla actions, for many centuries, and still murder each other in the present, over Ideologies and Religions which, stated as propositions, appear neither true nor false to modern logicians- meaningless propositions that look meaningful to the linguistically naive.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
The only intelligent way to discuss politics is on all fours.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
In every state of the Union, Fundamentalists still fight to ban all the science they dislike and prosecute all who teach it. To them, 'traditional family values' denotes their right to keep their children as ignorant as their grandparents (and to hate the same folks grand-dad hated.)
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Bad critics judge a work of art by comparing it to pre-existing theories. They always go wrong when confronted with a masterpiece because masterpieces make their own rules.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this world.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want.
Robert Anton Wilson
Image
All that we know is what registers on our brains, so what you perceive (your individual reality-tunnel) is made up of nothing but thoughts—as Sir Humphrey Davy noted when self-experimenting with nitrous oxide in 1819, and as Buddha noticed by sitting alone until all his social imprints atrophied and dropped away.
Robert Anton Wilson