Quote

For me, the glory of the human animal is cognitive activity.

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
Cognitive
Glory
Activity
Animal
Human
Humans

More quotes by Terence McKenna

Image
The lack of a sense of history makes us really prey to manipulation.
Terence McKenna
Image
Capitalism is not a human being. Capitalism is a Moloch, a god, a god of bloody sacrifice that sees human beings as ants
Terence McKenna
Image
I connect the psychedelic dimension to the dimension of inspiration and dream.
Terence McKenna
Image
The way I think of the psychedelics is, they are catalysts to the imagination.
Terence McKenna
Image
The psychedelic experience is not a journey into the human unconscious, or into the ghost bards of our human civilization. It's a journey into the presence of the Gaian mind.
Terence McKenna
Image
I believe that what makes the psychedelic experience so central is that it is a connection into a larger modality of organization on the planet, which is a fancy way of saying it connects you up to the mind of Nature Herself.
Terence McKenna
Image
Psychedelics can carry you farther and faster than most people care to go. Once you get to psychedelics, it's no longer a matter of seeking the answer, you have found the answer. Now the issue changes dramatically, you must face the answer.
Terence McKenna
Image
Wherever we press beyond the thin curtain of rationalist culture, we discover the incredibly rich, erotic, scary, promising presence of this intelligent Other, that beckons us out of history, and says, you know: 'The galaxy lies waiting.'
Terence McKenna
Image
Ultimately what we're touching is the invisible, all-pervasive intelligence that surrounds us and penetrates us. It is grooming us to be able to tolerate its splendor. It can't just reveal itself openly because we would be forfeited we'd never know what hit us.
Terence McKenna
Image
There is a morphological enfoldment occurring on this planet. It is bringing forth some entirely new order of being. We are a privileged part of this.
Terence McKenna
Image
What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance.
Terence McKenna
Image
But what I really am interested in is not the end of the world but everything which precedes it.
Terence McKenna
Image
I have nothing but scorn for all weird ideas other than my own.
Terence McKenna
Image
We are reaping the fruits of ten thousand, fifty thousand years of sowing of the fields of mind. And it is being dropped into our laps for us to create human-machine interfacing, control of genetic material, redefinition of social reality, re engineering of languages, revisioning of the planetary ecology, all these things fall upon us.
Terence McKenna
Image
We need a pharmacological intervention on anti-social behavior or we are not going to get hold of our dilemma.
Terence McKenna
Image
You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your own understanding.
Terence McKenna
Image
This is what magic is. It's being able to speak in a voice which makes things happen, being able to speak in a voice which causes facts to be beheld by groups of people in a way that has been purged from profane language, for us relegated to poetry and that sort of thing.
Terence McKenna
Image
The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.
Terence McKenna
Image
We're not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event.
Terence McKenna
Image
By manipulating queuing, by manipulating expectation, you can lead people to a fundamental confrontation, not only with themselves, but with the Other.
Terence McKenna