I am 100 percent in favor of the intelligent use of drugs, and 1,000 percent against the thoughtless use of them, whether caffeine or LSD. And drugs are not central to my life.
Timothy LearyRead
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.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of understanding the connection between inner experiences and external behaviors through scientific study.
Timothy Leary's quote reflects his lifelong pursuit of understanding human consciousness and behavior through a scientific lens. He expresses a desire to make the complexities of human experiences clear by systematically linking them to observable changes in the brain, suggesting that our inner thoughts and feelings can be better understood through empirical study.
Themes
ScienceConsciousnessBehaviorBrainExperiences
In practice
Example use cases
During a lecture on psychology, this quote can illustrate the link between neuroscience and behavior.
More from Timothy Leary
All quotes →Think for yourself and question authority.
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There are three side effects of acid: enhanced long-term memory, decreased short-term memory, and I forget the third.
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The brain is not a blind, reactive machine, but a complex, sensitive biocomputer that we can program. And if we don't take the responsibility for programming it, then it will be programmed unwittingly by accident or by the social environnement.
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My advice to myself and to everyone else, particularly young people, is to turn on, tune in and drop out. By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in.
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The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
Timothy LearyRead
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