Timothy Leary quotes

Timothy Leary was an American psychologist and writer, widely known for his advocacy of psychedelic drugs. His unconventional research and promotion of LSD made him a countercultural icon of the 1960s. He became famous for urging people to "turn on, tune in, drop out" and challenging mainstream society. Here are 63 of his quotes:

Think for yourself and question authority.

Timothy Leary

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.

Timothy Leary

In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.

Timothy Leary

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.

Timothy Leary

My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

Timothy Leary

The universe is an intelligence test.

Timothy Leary

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.

Timothy Leary

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

Timothy Leary

I've left specific instructions that I do not want to be brought back during a Republican administration.

Timothy Leary

Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities - the political, the religious, the educational authorities - who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing - forming in our minds - their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable open-mindedness, chaotic, confused vulnerability to inform yourself.

Timothy Leary

There's one uneasy borderline between what is external and what is internal, and this borderline is defined exactly by the sense organs and the skin and the introduction of external things within my own body. Consciousness is altered by physical events and physical objects, which impinge upon my sense organs, or which I introduce into my body. Now the name traditionally given to external objects or processes which change you internally is sacrament. Sacraments are the visible and tangible techniques for bringing you close to your own divinity.

Timothy Leary

Actions which are conscious expressions of the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out rhythm are religious. The wise person devotes his life exclusively to the religious search - for therein is found the only ecstasy, the only meaning. Anything else is a competitive quarrel over (or Hollywood-love sharing of) studio props.

Timothy Leary

I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.

Timothy Leary

If you listen to neurologists and psychiatrists, you'd never fall in love.

Timothy Leary

Seven million people I turned on, and only one hundred thousand have come by to thank me.

Timothy Leary

Giger's work disturbs us, spooks us, because of its enormous evolutionary time span. It shows us, all too clearly, where we come from and where we are going.

Timothy Leary

At one point consciousness-altering devices like the microscope and telescope were criminalized for exactly the same reasons that psychedelic plants were banned in later years. They allow us to peer into bits and zones of Chaos.

Timothy Leary

The language of God is not English or Latin; the language of God is cellular and molecular.

Timothy Leary

I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.

Timothy Leary

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.

Timothy Leary

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 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 telescopes are unnatural.

Timothy Leary

Drugs Are the Religion of the People - The Only Hope is Dope.

Timothy Leary