My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The ultimate weapon isn't this plague out in Vegas, or any new super H-bomb. The ultimate weapon has always existed. Every man, every woman, and every child owns it. It's the ability to say No and take the consequences.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The true power lies in the ability to refuse harmful actions and accept the repercussions of that refusal.
This quote emphasizes that the most significant weapon any individual possesses is their choice to say 'no' to detrimental influences or situations. Rather than relying on physical weapons or destructive powers, the capacity for personal agency and moral courage defines true strength, as it invites accountability and integrity in the face of societal pressures or expectations.
Themes
CourageChoiceResponsibilityPowerAgency
In practice
Example use cases
In a speech about personal integrity, one could emphasize the importance of saying no to unethical practices.
More from Robert Anton Wilson
All quotes →There is no governor anywhere. You are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped. If anybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled - by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even. All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a million armed anarchists.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The abandoned infant's cry is rage, not fear.
Robert Anton WilsonRead
The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics).
Robert Anton WilsonRead
Similar quotes
Gay people - generally speaking - have a responsibility to our own community and to future generations of gay people to come out, if and when we feel that we can.
Rachel MaddowRead
To understand your fear is the beginning of really seeing.
Bruce LeeRead
They did not submit to the obvious alternative, which was simply to close the eyes and fall. So easy, really. Go limp and tumble to the ground and let the muscles unwind and not speak and not budge until your buddies picked you up and lifted you into the chopper that would roar and dip its nose and carry you off to the world. A mere matter of falling, yet no one ever fell. It was not courage, exactly; the object was not valor. Rather, they were too frightened to be cowards.
Tim O'BrienRead
Obviously, the real issue has nothing to do with fear itself, but, rather, how we hold the fear. For some, the fear is totally irrelevant. For others, it creates a state of paralysis. The former hold their fear from a position of power (choice, energy, and action), and the latter hold it from a position of pain (helplessness, depression, and paralysis).
Susan JeffersRead
I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson's stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.
Muhammad AliRead
They will not criminalise us, rob us of our true identity, steal our individualism, depoliticise us, churn us out as systemised, institutionalised, decent law-abiding robots. Never will they label our liberation struggle as criminal.
Bobby SandsRead