“ Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 3.5K
“ Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt... Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 1.4K
“ It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 3.8K
“ ...an optimistic mindset finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ ...when dogma enters the brain, all intellectual activity ceases. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ We look for the Secret the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ 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. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 1.2K
“ These ideas can be made more concrete with a parable, which I borrow from John Fowles’s wonderful novel, The Magus. Conchis, the principle character in the novel, finds himself Mayor of his home town in Greece when the Nazi occupation begins. One day, three Communist partisans who recently killed some German soldiers are caught. The Nazi commandant gives Conchis, as Mayor, a choice — either Conchis will execute the three partisans himself to set an example of loyalty to the new regime, or the Nazis will execute every male in the town. Should Conchis act as a collaborator with the Nazis and take on himself the direct guilt of killing three men? Or should he refuse and, by default, be responsible for the killing of over 300 men? I often use this moral riddle to determine the degree to which people are hypnotized by Ideology. The totally hypnotized, of course, have an answer at once; they know beyond doubt what is correct, because they have memorized the Rule Book. It doesn’t matter whose Rule Book they rely on — Ayn Rand’s or Joan Baez’s or the Pope’s or Lenin’s or Elephant Doody Comix — the hypnosis is indicated by lack of pause for thought, feeling and evaluation. The response is immediate because it is because mechanical. Those who are not totally hypnotized—those who have some awareness of concrete events of sensory spacetime, outside their heads— find the problem terrible and terrifying and admit they don’t know any 'correct' answer. I don’t know the 'correct' answer either, and I doubt that there is one. The universe may not contain 'right' and 'wrong' answers to everything just because Ideologists want to have 'right' and 'wrong' answers in all cases, anymore than it provides hot and cold running water before humans start tinkering with it. I feel sure that, for those awakened from hypnosis, every hour of every day presents choices that are just as puzzling (although fortunately not as monstrous) as this parable. That is why it appears a terrible burden to be aware of who you are, where you are, and what is going on around you, and why most people would prefer to retreat into Ideology, abstraction, myth and selfhypnosis. To come out of our heads, then, also means to come to our senses, literally—to live with awareness of the bottle of beer on the table and the bleeding body in the street. Without polemic intent, I think this involves waking from hypnosis in a very literal sense. Only one individual can do it at a time, and nobody else can do it for you. You have to do it all alone. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 2K
“ The Bible tells us to be like God, and then on page after page it describes God as a mass murderer. This may be the single most important key to the political behavior of Western Civilization. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ 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. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ 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. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 800
“ Belief in the traditional sense, or certitude, or dogma, amounts to the grandiose delusion, "My current model" or grid, or map, or realitytunnel "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. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 63
“ I'm sorry There are some jokes you cannot understand until you have been a fool many, many years and thought yourself finally cured and then found out that you had just become a different kind of fool. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 1.2K
“ 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. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 3.8K
“ The final war will be between Pavlov's dog and Schoedinger's Cat. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 680
“ The most thoroughly and relentlessly Damned, banned, excluded, condemned, forbidden, ostracized, ignore, suppressed, repressed, robbed, brutalized and defamed of all Damned Things is the individual human being. The social engineers, statistician, psychologist, sociologists, market researchers, landlords, bureaucrats, captains of industry, bankers, governors, commissars, kings and presidents are perpetually forcing this Damned Thing into carefully prepared blueprints and perpetually irritated that the Damned Thing will not fit into the slot assigned it… ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ I love you all and I deeply implore you to keep the lasagna flying. Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It seems absurd. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
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“ It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 1.8K
“ It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 3.4K
“ The final war will be between Pavlov's dog and Schoedinger's Cat. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 3.7K
“ It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become a conservative without changing a single idea. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 2.1K
“ Cynics regarded everybody as equally corrupt… Idealists regarded everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 3.2K
“ Cynics regard everybody as equally corrupt… Idealists regard everybody as equally corrupt, except themselves. ”
- Robert Anton Wilson- Copy
- 1.2K
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