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For all we know, we know nothing.

Terence McKenna

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Terence McKenna
Age: 53 †
Born: 1946
Born: November 16
Died: 2000
Died: April 3
Anthropologist
Ethnobotanist
Philosopher
Writer
Paonia
Colorado
Terence Kemp McKenna
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More quotes by Terence McKenna

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What I've observed, and I think it's fair to give credit to the psychedelic experience for this, what I've observed is that nature builds on previously established levels of complexity.
Terence McKenna
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Ultimate novelty must be a situation where all boundaries are dissolved.
Terence McKenna
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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
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We are led by the least among us - the least intelligent, the least noble, the least visionary. We are led by the least among us and we do not fight back against the dehumanizing values that are handed down as control icons.
Terence McKenna
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The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug. This act of surrender is the major technical function you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip.
Terence McKenna
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The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.
Terence McKenna
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I believe reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement and everybody is working very hard to make me happy.
Terence McKenna
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You're immortal as long as you live.
Terence McKenna
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There has been no progress in 60,000 years in reducing the psychedelic experience to a known quantity. It is as terrifying, as awesome, as ecstatic, as irreducible to us as it was to them.
Terence McKenna
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And the whole schtick of the psychedelic experience, I think, is reclaim immediate experience, realize that you out vote all parliaments, police forces, and major newspapers on the planet because, who knows, they may be illusions.
Terence McKenna
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My normal lectures deal with the psychedelic experience as a generalized and historical phenomenon, but this effort at communication is slightly more personal in that it's an effort to impart [just] one idea that came out of an involvement with psychedelic substances.
Terence McKenna
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Psychedelic experiences and dreams are chemical cousins they are only different in degree.
Terence McKenna
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Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you're talking about.
Terence McKenna
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We need a pharmacological intervention on anti-social behavior or we are not going to get hold of our dilemma.
Terence McKenna
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Cyberspace is the human transition into a mathematical super space where we as a collectivity become optionally a single point of view.
Terence McKenna
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The shaman has access to a superhuman dimension and a superhuman condition, and by being able to do that he affirms the potential for transcendence in all people. He is an exemplar, if you will.
Terence McKenna
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I'm meeting my obligations, somehow, always have, without ever truly working, without ever putting my shoulder to the wheel for the man. Of course I had to deal dope to do this!
Terence McKenna
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It's as though a certain level of intoxication with the mushroom is the precondition for being able to communicate, but is not itself enough.
Terence McKenna
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Science is the exploration of the experience of nature without psychedelics. And I propose, therefore, to expand that enterprise and say that we need a science beyond science. We need a science which plays with a full deck.
Terence McKenna
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What blinds us, or what makes historical progress very difficult, is our lack of awareness of our ignorance.
Terence McKenna