Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson

In short, one deep reality seems, to this view, as absurd as one correct instrument, or the medieval one true religion; and preferring, say, the wave model of matter to the particle model seems as silly as claiming the thermometer tells more of the truth than the barometer.

Dr. Isaac Asimov notes in his Genetic Code that there seems to be a 60-year cycle between the first understanding of a new scientific principle and the transformation of the world by that principle.

The resistance to hearing the women at Greenham Common is not unrelated to the resistance to bizarre information we have been examining. There are economic as well as neurological reasons why Dr. Reich and Dr. Leary went to prison, while Dr. Teller, Father of the Hydrogen Bomb, is a recognized Authority on The Real Universe, rich, honored and praised throughout the Citadel.

This system makes a feedback loop between muscles, adrenaline, the thalamus of the brain, the anus and the larynx. Swelling the body and using the larynx to howl (muscle-flexing and noise) makes up the usual Domination signal among birds, reptiles, mammals and politicians. Study the speeches of Hitler and Ronald Reagan for further details, or just watch two ducks disputing territory in a pond.

That's why Einstein had to remind us, Common sense tells us the earth is flat.

and their stern Father God demands endless sacrifices, offers no joy on earth but only duty blindly obeyed, and threatens sadistic tortures (for an infinite number of years, according to some theologians) to anyone who crosses him. It almost seems as if history, at least in the Occident, repeats the pattern Freud found in the nursery, from oral bliss to anal anxiety.

Ever since then there has been a strain of right wing political thought which blames everything in the world on the Illuminati and claims they still continue. I stumbled on this literature in the mid-60s. Most of it is obviously paranoid. It's full of logical howlers such as only paranoids commit through a strong passion to prove an obsessive case, and I thought it was very funny.

Almost all cigarette smokers, for instance, have a favorite brand and insist that they cannot be satisfied by any other brand. When blindfolded, however, they cannot distinguish this favorite brand from any other brand. They are not buying the cigarettes but buying the package. The same is true of most beer drinkers: they have a favorite brand, but cannot distinguish it from other brands when blindfolded.

Again: I call this book Quantum Psychology rather than Quantum Philosophy because understanding and internalizing (learning to use) these principles can decrease dogma, intolerance, compulsive behavior, hostility, etc., and also may increase openness, continuous learning, growth and empathy — sombunall of which represent goals sought in most forms of psychotherapy, and sombunall forms of mystic religion.

Conversely, shrinking the body and muttering (or becoming totally silent) make up the usual Submission reflex. Crawling away with its tail between its legs, the dog's submission reflex, does not differ much from the body-language of an employee who made the mistake of disagreeing with the boss and received a Dominator (flexing/howling) signal in response.

Well, then I started to find out that it wasn't all paranoid. The Illuminati really was a very influential organization in its time. I am extremely skeptical that it still exists. But it did play a much larger role in the 18th century than most conventional historians realize. The more you look at it, the more intriguing connections leap out at you.

This species of mass hallucination has been created by conditioning and association. Each advertiser tries to associate his product with something most domesticated primates desire, such as Sex or Status. The commercials carry the association, sometimes fairly blatantly, sometimes subliminally. The repetition of the association gradually produces the conditioned response. The victim is not exactly buying the package as we just said but buying the hope for Sex and Status.

In 1933, in Science and Sanity, Alfred Korzybski proposed that we should abolish the is of identity from the English language. (The is of identity takes the form X is a Y. E.g., Joe is a Communist, Mary is a dumb file-clerk, The universe is a giant machine, etc.) In 1949, D. David Bourland Jr. proposed the abolition of all forms of the words is or to be and the Bourland proposal (English without isness) he called E-Prime, or English-Prime.

Non-Aristotelian logic deals with existential/operational probabilities. Aristotelian logic deals with certainties, and in the lack of certainties throughout most of life, Aristotelian logic subliminally programs us to invent fictitious certainties. That rush for fictitious certainties explains most of the Ideologies and damned near all the Religions on the planet, I think.

Each of us has a "favorite" circuit — that is, a circuit that has been more heavily imprinted than the others. Miscommunication, misunderstanding and general misjudgment of one another is vastly increased by the fact that few of us know about these levels of circuitry, and we all tend to assume that the person we are interacting with is on the same circuit we are.

It is curious, in passing, that the Women's Liberation Movement, the latest and most revolutionary of these waves, is paradoxically more patrist than much of what preceded it

An eye for an eye, Seamus said, Do you know that way of it, doctor? An eye for an eye, we say. An eye for an eye—it's our whole law and religion. An eye for an eye, until we all go fooken blind.

Worse yet, scientific models, like people and cattle and insect species and mountains and all things known, have a lifespan. Mountains may survive geological eras, but scientific maps, like people and birds, have short lives. None has ever lasted more than a few hundred years, at present. To believe in any such mask with the fervor of Gross and Levitt contradicts all known facts of scientific history. Every theory they worship will someday get junked.

Thus, radical psychologists ask us: does not the reality of schizophrenia or art remain real to those in schizophrenic or artistic states, however senseless these states appear to the non-schizophrenic or non-artistic? Anthropologists even ask: do not the emic realities of other cultures remain existentially real to those living in those cultures, however bizarre they may seem to the Geriatric White Male hierarchy that defines official reality in our culture?

1) until the future arrives, the outcome is uncertain, so Doomsday scenarios, however popular, are not definitive and, for intellectual honesty and clarity, deserve to be criticized and challenged;

Ask them about a particular apple and they will tell you about the gross national product; ask about this chair right here and they'll go on at length about the evolution of furniture. They are not avoiding the subject; they are looking at it philosophically, in the round, as it were. The specific information you are seeking never comes through.

Rejection of science and free discussion are, of course, characteristic of all totalitarian movements; thus, nonbiblical astronomy was heretical to the Inquisition, unpalatable anthropology was Jewish to the Nazis, unsatisfactory biology was banned as bourgeois in Stalin's Russia and irritating ethology is sexist (and unpleasant psychology is chauvinist) to these ladies.

Sigismundo Celine, in the woods of Ohio, meditated. To him all phenomena were real in some sense, unreal in some sense, meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense, unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and meaningless in some sense.

Yeah. I don't believe in monistic conspiracy theories where you pick out one group and blame everything on them, but I do tend to believe that conspiracy plays a larger role in human history than conventional historians admit.