Albert Hofmann quotes

Albert Hofmann was a Swiss chemist best known for synthesizing LSD. His discovery profoundly impacted neuroscience, psychology, and popular culture. He became an influential advocate for the careful study of psychoactive substances. Here are 46 of his quotes:

I know LSD; I don't need to take it anymore. Maybe when I die, like Aldous Huxley. (Albert Hofmann)
When you study natural science and the miracles of creation, if you don't turn into a mystic you are not a natural scientist. View quote
Albert Hofmann
I think that in human evolution it has never been as necessary to have this substance LSD ... It is just a tool to turn us into what we are supposed to be. View quote
Albert Hofmann
LSD wanted to tell me something. ... It gave me an inner joy, an open mindedness, a gratefulness, open eyes and an internal sensitivity for the miracles of creation. View quote
Albert Hofmann
It's very, very dangerous to lose contact with living nature. View quote
Albert Hofmann
I was completely astonished by the beauty of nature. Our eyes see just a small fraction of the light in the world. It is a trick to make a colored world, which does not exist outside of human beings. View quote
Albert Hofmann
Wrong and inappropriate use has caused LSD to become my problem child. View quote
Albert Hofmann
After some time, with my eyes closed, I began to enjoy this wonderful play of colors and forms, which it really was a pleasure to observe. Then I went to sleep and the next day I was fine. I felt quite fresh, like a newborn. View quote
Albert Hofmann
I was visited by Timothy Leary when he was living in Switzerland many years ago. He was a very intelligent man, and quite charming. I enjoyed our conversations very much. However, he also had a need for too much attention. He enjoyed being provocative, and that shifted the focus from what should have been the essential issue. It is unfortunate, but for many years these drugs became taboo. Hopefully, these same problems from the Sixties will not be repeated. View quote
Albert Hofmann
This self-experiment showed that LSD-25 behaved as a psychoactive substance with extraordinary properties and potency. View quote
Albert Hofmann
I share the belief of many of my contemporaries that the spiritual crisis pervading all spheres of Western industrial society can be remedied only by a change in our world view. We shall have to shift from the materialistic, dualistic belief that people and their environment are separate, toward a new consciousness of an all-encompassing reality, which embraces the experiencing ego, a reality in which people feel their oneness with animate nature and all of creation. (Albert Hofmann)
They do not know very good Latin, these botanists. View quote
Albert Hofmann
This belief had survived in early Christianity, although with other symbols. View quote
Albert Hofmann
I was seized by the dreadful fear of going insane. I was taken to another world, another place, another time. My body seemed to be without sensation, lifeless, strange. View quote
Albert Hofmann
The history of LSD to date amply demonstrates the catastrophic consequences that can ensue when its profound effect is misjudged and the substance is mistaken for a pleasure drug. View quote
Albert Hofmann
Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained as a fundamental understanding from all of my LSD experiments: what one commonly takes as "the reality," including the reality of one's own individual person, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous - that there is not only one, but that there are many realities, each comprising also a different consciousness of the ego. View quote
Albert Hofmann
It could become of fundamental importance, and be not merely a transient fashion of the present, if more and more people today would make a daily habit of devoting an hour, or at least a few minutes, to meditation. View quote
Albert Hofmann
For the entire duration of the experiment, I had even been aware of participating in an experiment, but despite this recognition of my condition, I could not, with every exertion of my will, shake off the LSD world. View quote
Albert Hofmann
It was these experiences that shaped the main outlines of my world view and convinced me of the existence of a miraculous, powerful, unfathomable reality that was hidden from everyday sight. View quote
Albert Hofmann
Deliberate provocation of mystical experience, particularly by LSD and related hallucinogens, in contrast to spontaneous visionary experiences, entails dangers that must not be underestimated. View quote
Albert Hofmann
Since my self-experiment had revealed LSD in its terrifying, demonic aspect, the last thing I could have expected was that this substance could ever find application as anything approaching a pleasure drug. (Albert Hofmann)
In studying the literature connected with my work, I became aware of the great universal significance of visionary experience. View quote
Albert Hofmann
I was filled with an indescribable sensation of joy, oneness, and blissful security. View quote
Albert Hofmann
And how could I tell anyone about it, as my overflowing joy compelled me to do, since I knew there were no words to describe what I had seen? View quote
Albert Hofmann
If one of the two is lacking, no reality happens, no radio music plays, the picture screen remains blank. View quote
Albert Hofmann