Quotes from Robert Anton Wilson

help conquer the IQ shortage worry less and think more

Having a spine is overrated. If everybody squealed and ran away, there'd be no more wars.

Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, My current model -- or grid, or map, or reality-tunnel -- contains the whole universe and will never need to be revised. In terms of the history of science and knowledge in general, this appears absurd and arrogant to me, and I am perpetually astonished that so many people still manage to live with such a medieval attitude.

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.

Stupidity is like bumping into a wall all the time. After a while you get tired of it and try to look the situation over and see if there's a doorway somewhere. I think most people eventually do look for the doorway and stop bumping into the wall

Mystics are all a bit funny in the head anyway, the priest added cynically, which is why the church locks them all up in mental hospitals and euphemistically calls these institutions monasteries.

Of course there are robots among us. There are also Magicians among us. I think we take turns playing each role, as a matter of fact. The Magician defines a reality-mesh and the robot lives in it. Grok?

The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness.

Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.

The longer one is alone, the easier to hear the song of the earth.

All that we know is what registers on our brains, so what you perceive (your individual reality-tunnel) is made up of nothing but thoughts—as Sir Humphrey Davy noted when self-experimenting with nitrous oxide in 1819, and as Buddha noticed by sitting alone until all his social imprints atrophied and dropped away.

Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of existence....

Encounters with death and danger are only adventures to the survivors.

I think I got off on the wrong planet. Beam me up Scotty, there's no rational life here.

Little Tony was sitting on a park bench munching on one candy bar after another. After the 6th candy bar a man on the bench across from him said Son you know eating all that candy isn't good for you. It will give you acne rot your teeth and make you fat. Little Tony replied My grandfather lived to be 107 years old. The man asked Did you grandfather eat 6 candy bars at a time Little Tony answered No he minded his own fucking business.

In summary, Intelligence Intensification is desirable, because there is not a single problem confronting humanity that is not either caused or considerably worsened by the prevailing stupidity (insensitivity) of the species: badly wired robots bumping into and maiming and killing each other.

I have read a great deal of economic theory for over 50 years now, but have found only one economic law to which I can find NO exceptions: Where the State prevents a free market, by banning any form of goods or services, consumer demand will create a black market for those goods or services, at vastly higher prices. Can YOU think of a single exception to this law?

A chicken is the egg's way of making more eggs.

In every state of the Union, Fundamentalists still fight to ban all the science they dislike and prosecute all who teach it. To them, 'traditional family values' denotes their right to keep their children as ignorant as their grandparents (and to hate the same folks grand-dad hated.)

Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each individual is different.

What the world calls sanity has led us to the present planetary crisis...and insanity is the only viable alternative.

No wife, no horse, no mustache

A disciple is an asshole looking for a human being to attach itself to.

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