Anton Wilson Quotes & Sayings

There are gods, but there is no God; and all gods become devils eventually. — Robert Anton Wilson

I like pacifists and people who have a heavy emotional identification with deathism and war would probably call me a pacifist, but I am a non-invasivist rather than a non-violentist. That is, I believe that an invaded people have the right to defend themselves by any means necessary. This includes putting ground glass or poison in the invaders' food, shooting at them from ambush, sabotage, the general strike, armed revolution, etc. It's up to the invaded to decide which of these techniques they will use. It's not up to some moralist to tell them which techniques are permissible. — Robert Anton Wilson

There is one universal sex law: Sex shall not be unregulated. — Robert Anton Wilson

I worked, long ago, in New York City, in construction, like many young men of the Mohawk Nation. I found that whites were often like us, and I could not hate them one at a time. But they do not know the earth or love it. They do not speak from the heart, usually. They do not act from the heart. They are more like the actors on the movie screen. They play roles. And their leaders are not like our leaders. They are not chosen for virtue, but for their skill at playing roles. Whites have told me this, in plain words. They do not trust their leaders, and yet they follow them. When we do not trust a leader, he is finished. Then, also, the leaders of the whites have too much power. It is bad for a man to be obeyed too often. But the worst thing is what I have said about the heart. Their leaders have lost it and they have lost mercy. They speak from somewhere else. They act from somewhere else. But from where? Like you, I do not know. It is, I think, a kind of insanity. — Robert Anton Wilson

Most people live in a myth and grow violently angry if anyone dares to tell them the truth about themselves. — Robert Anton Wilson

I was born into a working class Irish Catholic family at the brutal bottom of the Great Depression. I suppose this early imprinting and conditioning made me a life-long radical. My education was mostly scientific, majoring in electrical engineering and applied math. Those imprints made me a life-long rationalist. I have become increasingly skeptical about, or detached from, the assumption that radicalism and rationalism are the only correct perspectives with which to view life, but they remain my favorite perspectives. — Robert Anton Wilson

Human society as a whole is a vast brainwashing machine whose semantic rules and sex roles create a social robot. — Robert Anton Wilson

In order to eat, you have to be hungry. In order to learn, you have to be ignorant. Ignorance is a condition of learning. Pain is a condition of health. Passion is a condition of thought. Death is a condition of life. — Robert Anton Wilson

Each mans spills the drink he loves. — Robert Anton Wilson

Consciousness itself is an infinite regress. This explains coincidences. — Robert Anton Wilson

When the pope sits on the chamber pot to shit, does he believe in his own infallibility? Does not every imposter occasionally recognize his own hairy, homely humanity? Perhaps not; worn long enough, sometimes the Mask of Authority becomes the man. Even looking in a mirror, he will see the sacred Mask and not his own ordinary human face. — Robert Anton Wilson

I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions. — Robert Anton Wilson

If it's true that we are here to help others, then what exactly are the others here for? — Robert Anton Wilson

The fear of death is the beginning of slavery. — Robert Anton Wilson

The only intelligent way to discuss politics is
on all fours. — Robert Anton Wilson

Non-Aristotelian logic deals with existencial/operacional probabilities. Aristotelian logic deals with certainties, and in the lack of certainties throughout most of life, Aristotelian logic subliminally programs us to ivent fictitious certainties.
That rush for fictitious certainties explains most of the Ideologies and damn near all Religions on the planet, I think. — Robert Anton Wilson

Masturbation is not the happiest form of sexuality, but the most advisable for him who wants to be alone and think. I detect the aroma of this pleasant vice in most philosophers, and a happily married logicians is almost a contradiction in terms. So many sages have regarded Woman as temptress because fornication often leads to marriage, which usually leads to children, which always leads to a respectable job and pretending to believe the idiocies your neighbors believe. The hypocrisy of the sages has been to conceal their timid onanism and call it celibacy. — Robert Anton Wilson

Most animals, including most domesticated primates (humans) show truly staggering ability to 'ignore' certain kinds of information - that which does not 'fit' their imprinted/ conditioned reality-tunnel — Robert Anton Wilson

Every nervous system creates its own "reality," minute by minute - we live inside a "bubble" of neural abstractions which we identify with reality. You can make this neurological fact into conscious experience, and you will never be bored or depressed again. — Robert Anton Wilson

If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. — Robert Anton Wilson

The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of three or four hundred imbeciles. — Robert Anton Wilson

People have murdered each other, in massive wars and guerilla actions, for many centuries, and still murder each other in the present, over Ideologies and Religions which, stated as propositions, appear neither true nor false to modern logicians- meaningless propositions that look meaningful to the linguistically naive. — Robert Anton Wilson

The novels that get praised in the NY Review of Books aren't worth reading. Ninety-seven percent of science fiction is adolescent rubbish, but good science fiction is the best and only literature of our times. — Robert Anton Wilson

There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't noticed already. — Robert Anton Wilson

belief is the death of intelligence. — Robert Anton Wilson

I've recently noticed "as if for the first time" that when people pray they always look "upward" - i.e. perpendicular to whatever place they're standing - or kneeling or groveling. I deduce that they conceive of their "god" as topologically isomorphic to a huge donut, about a thousand miles wider than Earth. — Robert Anton Wilson

My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence. — Robert Anton Wilson

Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of influence, and every war is sold to the public by professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil. — Robert Anton Wilson

You are precisely as big as what you love and precisely as small as what you allow to annoy you. — Robert Anton Wilson

My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. — Robert Anton Wilson

There is no complete theory of anything. — Robert Anton Wilson

It became quite clear to me that the Natural Law mystique, in Catholic, libertarian or neo-pagan forms, remains basically a set of rhetorical strategies to hypnotize others into the state which Bernard Shaw called "barbarism" and defined as 'the belief that the laws of one's own tribe are the laws of the universe'. — Robert Anton Wilson

Blue uniforms are real. Cops are a social fiction — Robert Anton Wilson

On a planet that increasingly resembles one huge Maximum Security prison, the only intelligent choice is to plan a jail break. — Robert Anton Wilson

When we meet somebody whose separate tunnel-reality is obviously far different from ours, we are a bit frightened and always disoriented. We tend to think they are mad, or that they are crooks trying to con us in some way, or that they are hoaxers playing a joke. Yet it is neurologically obvious that no two brains have the same genetically-programmed hard wiring, the same imprints, the same conditioning, the same learning experiences. We are all living in separate realities. That is why communication fails so often, and misunderstandings and resentments are so common. I say "meow" and you say "Bow-wow," and each of us is convinced the other is a bit dumb. — Robert Anton Wilson

How do you get free of the damnable books of Romance when everybody else is still living in them? — Robert Anton Wilson

Human beings live in their myths. They only endure their realities. — Robert Anton Wilson

Hysteria is a chaotic and irrational emotional state caused by seeing how the world really operates. — Robert Anton Wilson

Now you know how I fooled you," he would say. "Try to figure out on your own how your congressmen and clergymen fool you. There is no restraint that isn't self-imposed: you are all absolutely free. — Robert Anton Wilson

The rapists of the intellectual world become politicians; the seducers become artists. — Robert Anton Wilson

Anyone in the United States today who isn't paranoid must be crazy. — Robert Anton Wilson

Mind is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can't see your own back (without mirrors). — Robert Anton Wilson

Philadelphia merely seems dull because it's next to exciting Camden, New Jersey. — Robert Anton Wilson

All phenomena are 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. — Robert Anton Wilson

Money, after all, is an abstract artifact, like language - merely symbolized by the paper or coin or whatever. If you can fully grasp its abstractedness, especially in the computer age, it becomes quite clear that no group can monopolize this abstraction, except through a series of swindle. If the usurers had been bolder, they might have monopolized language as well as currency, and people would be saying we can't write more books because we don't have enough words, the way they now say we can't build starships, because we don't have enough money. — Robert Anton Wilson

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

You should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely-knit group of nearly omnipotent people, and you should think of those people as yourself and your friends. — Robert Anton Wilson

In almost all other professions a man must be able to observe carefully and report accurately what he has seen. Those qualifications are unnecessary for journalists, however, since their job is to write sensational stories that sell newspapers. — Robert Anton Wilson

When the rose and the cross are united the alchemical marriage is complete and the drama ends. Then we wake from history and enter eternity. — Robert Anton Wilson

You know what family values means, that's hating the same people your grandfather hated. — Robert Anton Wilson

You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't already believe it. — Robert Anton Wilson

Pregnancy is a kind of miracle. Especially so in that it proves that a man and woman can conspire to force God to create a new soul. — Robert Anton Wilson

Size is not a reality, but a construct of the mind; and space a construct to contain constructs. — Robert Anton Wilson

Pornographic novels were novels about the things primates enjoy most, namely sexual acrobatics. They were taught to feel ashamed of these natural primate impulses so that they would be guilty-furtive-submissive types and easy for the alpha males to manipulate. Those caught reading such novels were called no-good shits, of course. — Robert Anton Wilson

He had an ego so large that only by contemplating the mathematical definition of infinity could anything so limitless be imagined. — Robert Anton Wilson

I look forward without dogmatic optimism but without dread. — Robert Anton Wilson

People's belief in their own local reality-tunnels keep us all far stupider than we ought to be ... — Robert Anton Wilson

I see anarchism as the theoretical ideal to which we are all gradually evolving to a point where everybody can tell the truth to everybody else and nobody can get punished for it. That can only happen without hierarchy and without people having the authority to punish other people. — Robert Anton Wilson

The only way to stave off boredom, in a complex domesticated primate like humankind, is to increase one's intelligence. This is not appealing to the average primate, who instead invents emotional games (soap opera and grand opera dramatics). — Robert Anton Wilson

I really like the stuff that is very absurd and very real at the same time. I think Anton Chekhov is the greatest comedy writer of all time. I think he would make a great addition to The Office staff. If you look through Chekhov plays there is a lot of awkward pauses in there. His mixture of pathos, absurdity, truthfulness and whimsy is just mixed together perfectly. — Rainn Wilson

No wife, no horse, no mustache — Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any reason for hope . I see a few large and impressive peace protests here and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the killing must continue. — Robert Anton Wilson

All of us should treasure his (John Dillinger) Oriental wisdom and his preaching of a Zen-like detachment, as exemplified by his constant reminder to clerks, tellers, or others who grew excited by his presence in their banks: 'Just lie down on the floor and keep calm. — Robert Anton Wilson

Here's to the good nuns for telling me what books NOT to read! — Robert Anton Wilson

The minority who actually loves its work seems to be made up chiefly of the writers, dancers, actors and other artists, most scientists above the technician-troll level, computer freaks, and the righteous dope-dealers of California. — Robert Anton Wilson

To me, it doesn't matter if your scapegoats are the Jews, the homosexuals, the male sex, the Masons, the Jesuits, the Welfare Parasites, the Power Elite, the female sex, the vegetarians, or the Communist Party. To the extent that you need a scapegoat, you simply have not got your brain programmed to work as an efficient problem-solving machine. — Robert Anton Wilson

Every fact of science was once damned. Every invention was considered impossible. Every discovery was a nervous shock to some orthodoxy. Every artistic innovation was denounced as fraud and folly. The entire web of culture and 'progress,' everything on earth that is man-made and not given to us by nature, is the concrete manifestation of some man's refusal to bow to Authority. We would own no more, know no more, and be no more than the first apelike hominids if it were not for the rebellious, the recalcitrant, and the intransigent. As Oscar Wilde truly said, 'Disobedience was man's Original Virtue. — Robert Anton Wilson

Wise men have regarded the earth as a tragedy, a farce, even an illusionist's trick; but all, if they are truly wise, and not merely intellectual rapists, recognize that it is certainly some kind of stage in which we all play roles, most of us being very poorly coached and totally unrehearsed before the curtain rises. Is it too much if I ask, tentatively, that we agree to look upon it as a circus, a touring carnival wandering about the sun for a record season of four billion years and producing new monsters and miracles, hoaxes and bloody mishaps, wonders and blunders, but never quite entertaining the customers well enough to prevent them from leaving, one by one, and returning to their homes for a long and bored winter's sleep under the dust? — Robert Anton Wilson

You're only infallible about your own nervous system. You know what's going on in your own nervous system, whatever realities you're creating out of the infinite flux of being. You don't know anything about anybody else's reality unless they tell you about it. You gotta listen very sympathetically in order to understand them. So it's a limited infallibility. — Robert Anton Wilson

We all see only that which we are trained to see. — Robert Anton Wilson

Creativity has a touch of the bizarre — Robert Anton Wilson

To work for libertarianism - to oppose the growth of government and aid the liberation of the individual - used to be an idealistic choice taken for purely idealistic reasons. Now it is an act of intelligent and almost desperate self-defense. — Robert Anton Wilson

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

What a fantastic piece of hot lustful woman she was, Roger thought irrelevantly. — Robert Anton Wilson

The Greatest thing about masturbation is that it is always available. I wager that many a condemn man has consoled himself this way during the night before his execution. — Robert Anton Wilson

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. — Robert Anton Wilson

Getting even was the basis of many primate semantic confusions, such as"expropriating the expropriators," "an absolute crime demands an absolute penalty," "they did it to me so I can do it to them," and, in general, the emotional mathematics of "one plus one equals zero" (1 + 1 = 0).

The primates were so dumb they didn't realize that one plus one equals two (1 + 1 = 2) and one murder plus one murder equals two murders, one crime plus one crime equals two crimes, etc. — Robert Anton Wilson

Accuracy of signal and free flow of information define sanity in my epistemology. — Robert Anton Wilson

In Unistat, due to the strong encouragement of individualistic third-and fourth-circuit (semantic-moral) functions, slavery had grown so repugnant that it was formally "abolished" within a century after the formation of the pack constitution; it lingered on through inertia in the form of "wage slavery," which required that all primates not born into the sixty families that "owned" almost everything would have to "work" for those families or their corporations in order to get the tickets (called "money") which were necessary for survival. — Robert Anton Wilson

I have developed, over the years, some sense of the difference between real horseshit that you can step in and Ideal Platonic Horseshit that exists, evidently, only in the contemplation of those who worship such abstractions; and I continue to notice that Natural Law bears an uncanny resemblance to ideal Platonic Horseshit. — Robert Anton Wilson

Is," "is," "is" - the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seems to me at this moment. — Robert Anton Wilson

I am filled with fear and tormented with terrible visions of pain. Everywhere people are hurting one another, the planet is rampant with injustices, whole societies plunder groups of their own people, mothers imprison sons, children perish while brothers war. O, woe. — Robert Anton Wilson

Wishing to prove oneself right is the usual motive for scholarship. — Robert Anton Wilson

The land monopoly always starts with conquest. Shot and shell are the coins of purchase, as Herbert Spencer said. Except by force of arms, nobody "owns" the earth, anymore than the moon, the planets, the stars themselves. — Robert Anton Wilson

Since the Unistat primates, like other domesticated hominids, did not know they were primates, all this was explained by a ferocious amount of ink excretions invoking Morality and Ideology, the twin gods of domesticated primatedom. — Robert Anton Wilson

See you when tea is hot. — Robert Anton Wilson

Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week. — Robert Anton Wilson

[Red Dirt Marijuana] contains most of the great short stories in English that are not by Mr. Hemingway or Mr. O'Hara. — Robert Anton Wilson

We're trapped in linguistic constructs ... all that is is metaphor. — Robert Anton Wilson

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

The distinction between "magick" and "communication" exits only in our traditional ways of thinking. The uncanny Egyptians attributed both inventions to a single deity, Thoth, god of speech and other illusions. — Robert Anton Wilson

The future is up for grabs. It belongs to any and all who will take the risk and accept the responsibility of consciously creating the future they want. — Robert Anton Wilson

Ego is a social fiction for which one person at a time gets all the blame. — Robert Anton Wilson

The Grail is the womb of the beloved. — Robert Anton Wilson

...reality is always plural and mutable. — Robert Anton Wilson

I will do anything, including highway robbery and murder, to avoid leaving my children in poverty. — Robert Anton Wilson

Hippies generally aren't busy with anything except feeling sorry for themselves. — Robert Anton Wilson

Reality is what you can get away with. — Robert Anton Wilson

I'm using myself as a typical 20th century model as I'm trying to make sense out of the world around me. — Robert Anton Wilson

I don't believe anything I write or say. I regard belief as a form of brain damage, the death of intelligence, the fracture of creativity, the atrophy of imagination. I have opinions but no Belief System (B.S.) — Robert Anton Wilson