Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson

Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.

Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen. The majority of them weren't even mammals.

Philadelphia merely seems dull because it's next to exciting Camden, New Jersey.

Only the madman is absolutely sure.

What the thinker thinks, the prover proves.

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you.

I'm the kind of anarchist whose chief objection to the State is that it kills so many people. Government is the epitome of the deathist philosophy I reject.

The only intelligent way to discuss politics is on all fours.

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.

There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually.

The Right's view of government and the Left's view of big business are both correct.

He who lives happiest has forgotten most

History, sociology, economics, psychology et al. confirmed Joyce's view of Everyman as victim.

part of the humor of living on this backward planet is listening to the hominids rationalize their predations.

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.

There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.

We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor.

Entropy requires no maintenance.

Taxation is robbery based on monopoly of weapons

The Copenhagen Interpretation is sometimes called model agnosticism and holds that any grid we use to organize our experience of the world is a model of the world and should not be confused with the world itself. Alfred Korzybski , the semanticist, tried to popularize this outside physics with the slogan, The map is not the territory. Alan Watts , a talented exegete of Oriental philosophy, restated it more vividly as The menu is not the meal.

How many times... have you encountered the saying, 'When the student is ready, the Master speaks?' Do you know why that is true? The door opens inward . The Master is everywhere, but the student has to open his mind to hear the Masters Voice.

We have been told over and over that you can't change human nature, but the study of emic realities shows quite the contrary, that almost anything can become human nature if society defines it as such.

The easiest way to get brainwashed is to be born. All of the above principles then immediately go into action, a process which social psychologists euphemistically call socialization.

Nothing of any importance can be taught. It can only be learned, and with blood and sweat.