Think for yourself and question authority.
Timothy LearyRead
I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.
Interpretation
This quote advocates for a mindful and informed approach to drug use while condemning impulsive consumption.
Timothy Leary emphasizes the importance of being knowledgeable and careful about drug use, balancing the potential benefits with awareness of risks. He expresses a strong opposition to using substances thoughtlessly, regardless of their nature, indicating that while he sees value in intelligent drug use, it is not a focal point in his life.
In practice
During a debate on drug policy in a college lecture.
Think for yourself and question authority.
There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.
The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environnement.
My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in.
The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
If you are serious about your religion, if you really wish to commit yourself to the spiritual quest, you must learn how to use psychochemicals. Drugs are the religion of the twenty-first_x000D_ century. Pursuing the religious life today without using psychedelic drugs is like studying astronomy with the naked eye because that's how they did it in the first century A.D., and besides_x000D_ telescopes are unnatural.
An abnormal reaction to an abnormal situation is normal behavior.
A Christian should always remember that the value of his good works is not based on their number and excellence, but on the love of God which prompts him to do these things.
But to manipulate men, to propel them toward goals which you-the social reformers-see, but they may not, is to deny their human essence, to treat them as objects without wills of their own, and therefore to degrade them.
In the colonial context the settler only ends his work of breaking in the native when the latter admits loudly and intelligibly the supremacy of the white man's values.
We must be convinced that abundance is the natural state of the Universe. To experience and accept abundance in our life, we must be convinced that as we conceive and believe, the Universe handles the details.
Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not 'yours,' not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.
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