Terence McKenna
Terence McKenna
Terence Kemp McKennawas an American ethnobotanist, mystic, psychonaut, lecturer, author, and an advocate for the responsible use of naturally occurring psychedelic plants. He spoke and wrote about a variety of subjects, including psychedelic drugs, plant-based entheogens, shamanism, metaphysics, alchemy, language, philosophy, culture, technology, environmentalism, and the theoretical origins of human consciousness. He was called the "Timothy Leary of the '90s", "one of the leading authorities on the ontological foundations of shamanism", and the "intellectual voice of rave culture"...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth16 November 1946
CityPaonia, CO
CountryUnited States of America
Terence McKenna quotes about
It's as though a certain level of intoxication with the mushroom is the precondition for being able to communicate, but is not itself enough.
Western civilization is a loaded gun pointed at the head of this planet.
We have changed. We are no longer, as I said, bipedal monkeys. We are instead a kind of cybernetic coral reef of organic components and inorganic technological components.
The truth for sure, when it arrives, will make you smile. If it doesn't, you should seek a deeper truth.
The lack of a sense of history makes us really prey to manipulation.
The 'hard swallow' built into science is this business about the Big Bang. ... This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant. ... Notice that this is the limit test for credulity. . . . It's the limit case for likelihood.
I'm not an advocate for everything that rolls out of the laboratory. I'm an advocate for things sanctioned by millennia of usage.
What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.
We have wandered into a state of prolonged neurosis because of the absence of a direct pipeline to the unconscious and we have then fallen victim to priestcraft of every conceivable sort.