Timothy Leary

Current psychological priesthoods ignore the fact that the profession of psychology was originated by Gustav Theodor Fechner, a physicist who recognized that the key to understanding human nature was the relationship between external stimuli and the brain.

The twentieth century may well find historical status as the epoch in which man began to study himself as a scientific phenomenon.

Philosophy is a performance sport - you have to play it with somebody back and forth.

There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.

In pursuing my fervent goal of relating external stimuli to reports about internal-neural change, we were, paradoxically enough, following the most orthodox tradition in psychology.

Science is all metaphor.

The universe is an intelligence test.

In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.

My profession is I'm a dissident philosopher.

When our systematic knowledge of human expressive behavior is more advanced, it will be possible to study the literary and historical documents of the past and to determine the expressed and implied views of personality that determined the behavior of our ancestors.

At the peak of his scientific triumphs, Newton became a 'head,' a student of the inner spiritual world - or in modern terms, a neurologician. Modern physicists do not dwell on this dramatic life-change in their hero.

From my first published paper in 1946, my obsession has been to objectify inner experiences, to demystify the software of human existence. How? By relating changes in external behavior, systematically and lawfully, to changes in the brain.

When people criticize the computer generation, the high tech generation, and say they neglect the body - well, just walk through a college campus, and you'll see the healthiest, most physically conscious and alert group of human beings I've ever met. So they're not nerds at all.

I've left specific instructions that I do not want to be brought back during a Republican administration.

We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.

Turn on, Tune in, Drop out.

Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.

My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

The role of anxiety in the development of human personality is central, and it is intricate beyond our understanding.

If you don't like what you're doing, you can always pick up your needle and move to another groove.

Think for yourself and question authority.

You're only as young as the last time you changed your mind.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.

I totally deplore the notion of an M.D. giving pills to patients - a medical doctor giving psychological or psychoactive change agents to another person.