Quote

Our ability to destroy ourselves is the mirror image of our ability to save ourselves.

Terence McKenna

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Terence McKenna
Age: 53 †
Born: 1946
Born: November 16
Died: 2000
Died: April 3
Anthropologist
Ethnobotanist
Philosopher
Writer
Paonia
Colorado
Terence Kemp McKenna
Save
Ability
Mirror
Mirrors
Destroy
Image

More quotes by Terence McKenna

Image
What good is a theory of how the universe works if it’s a series of tensor equations that, even when understood, come nowhere tangential to experience? The only intellectual or noetic or spiritual path worth following is one that builds on personal experience
Terence McKenna
Image
Nature has an economy, an elegance, a style, that if we could but emulate it we could rise out of the rubble we are making out of the planet
Terence McKenna
Image
You see, a secret is not something untold. It’s something which can’t be told.
Terence McKenna
Image
One has attained a very fortunate incarnation, I think, to be in a culture, in a place, in a time when psychedelic knowledge is available.
Terence McKenna
Image
I think that understanding man's place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.
Terence McKenna
Image
We are part of a symbiotic relationship with something which disguises itself as an extra-terrestrial invasion so as not to alarm us.
Terence McKenna
Image
What the psychedelic experience really is, is opening the doorway into a lost continent of the human mind, a continent that we have almost lost all connection to, and the nature of this lost world of the human mind is that it is a Gaian entelechy.
Terence McKenna
Image
What they [psychedelics] cause is what I'm advocating, a fundamental revaluation of cultural values, because culture as we're practicing it currently is causing a lot of pain to a lot of people, and animals, and ecosystems, none of whom were ever allowed to vote on whether they wanted this process to go in this direction.
Terence McKenna
Image
Don't diddle the dose. Once you have done your homework, go for it.
Terence McKenna
Image
There is a spiritual obligation, there is a task to be done. It is not, however, something as simple as following a set of somebody else's rules
Terence McKenna
Image
It's a relationship like to a crusty Zen master, or something like that. And it is really like another entity because you cannot predict the answers.
Terence McKenna
Image
No culture on earth is as heavily narcotized as the industrial West in terms of being inured to the consequences of maladaptive behavior. We pursue a business-as-usual attitude in a surreal atmosphere of mounting crises and irreconcilable contradictions.
Terence McKenna
Image
At the interface of the say-able and the unsay-able is the novel, the new, the never before seen, said or done. And that's what I think it's important to try and bring out, ideas. Because I think we are the animals that bring back ideas.
Terence McKenna
Image
I see the psychedelic experience as both the centerpiece of prehistoric life and destined to be the centerpiece of any future that we want to be part of.
Terence McKenna
Image
An interesting thing about drugs is often, when a new drug is discovered, it takes a long time to figure out how do you do it.
Terence McKenna
Image
The same organizational principles which called us forth into self-reflection have called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself. And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion, and be good detectives, and track down the spirit in its lair. And this is what shamans are doing. They are hunters of spirit.
Terence McKenna
Image
The human imagination, in conjunction with technology, has become a force so potent that it really can no longer be unleashed on the surface of the planet with safety.
Terence McKenna
Image
The thing is that it is incredibly frustrating to anyone who would control it, because you can't predict the impact of any technology before you put it in place.
Terence McKenna
Image
I started out in psychedelic drugs, and people said it was a flight from reality. It still is a flight from reality, but I think reality is now a bit more scary than the drugs we used to fly from it, so long ago.
Terence McKenna
Image
Information is just simply bootstrapping itself to higher and higher levels of self-reflection and self-coordination using whatever means are necessary.
Terence McKenna