Robert Anton Wilson quotes

" It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. " # Change

" An Enlightened Master is ideal only if your goal is to become a Benighted Slave. " # Goals # Freedom # Slavery

" The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last 2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the "multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a multi-model perspective. " # Writers and Writing # Books - Reading # Goals

" Humans live through their myths and only endure their realities. " # Myth # Life and Living # Reality

" The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth. " # Music # Love # Song and Singing

" I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions. " # Suspicion # Belief # Doubt

" The creative faculty, the god-power, is not used here with anything less than literalness. When beauty was created by a godly mind, beauty existed, as surely as the paintings of Botticelli or the concerti of Vivaldi exist. When mercy was created, mercy existed. When guilt was created, guilt existed. Out of a meaningless and pointless existence, we have made meaning and purpose; but since this creative act happens only when we relax after great strain, we feel it as 'pouring into us' from elsewhere. Thus, we do not know our own godhood and we are perpetually swindled by those who assure us that it is indeed elsewhere, but they can give us access to it, for a reasonable fee. And when we as a species were ignorant enough to be duped in that way, the swindlers went one step further, invented original sin and other horrors of that sort, and made us even more 'dependent' upon them. " # Arts and Artists # Love # Creativity

" Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. " # Ideals and Idealism # Cynics and Cynicism # Equality

" Only the madman is absolutely sure. " # Madness

" Only the insane is absolutely certain. " # Insanity