QuoteProject
Reality is, you know, the tip of an iceberg of irrationality that we've managed to drag ourselves up onto for a few panting moments before we slip back into the sea of the unreal.
Terence Mckenna
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote suggests that our understanding of reality is superficial, akin to the small visible part of an iceberg, while much of it remains hidden and irrational.

Terence Mckenna's quote presents a thought-provoking perspective on reality, suggesting that what we perceive as reality is merely a small fraction of a much larger and deeper realm of irrationality and the unknown. It implies that our grasp on what is real is tenuous and fleeting, and we often find ourselves slipping back into a more chaotic and unreal state of existence.

Themes

RealityIrrationalityPerceptionIllusionPhilosophy

In practice

Example use cases

During a thought-provoking discussion on the nature of reality in a philosophy class.

More from Terence Mckenna

We want freedom. We want freedom from the constraints of the cycles of the sun and the moon. We want freedom from drought and weather, freedom from the movement of game, the growth of plants, freedom from control from mendacious popes and kings, freedom from ideology, freedom from want. This idea of freeing ourselves has become the compass of the human journey.
Terence MckennaRead
LSD burst over the dreary domain of the constipated bourgeoisie like the angelic herald of a new psychedelic millennium. We have never been the same since, nor will we ever be, for LSD demonstrated, even to skeptics, that the mansions of heaven and gardens of paradise lie within each and all of us.
Terence MckennaRead
A hallucination is a species of reality, as capable of teaching you as a videotape about Kilimanjaro or anything else that falls through your life.
Terence MckennaRead
Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. An extremely yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced.
Terence MckennaRead
If the words 'life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness' don't include the right to experiment with your own consciousness, then the Declaration of Independence isn't worth the hemp it was written on.
Terence MckennaRead
It is no coincidence that a rebirth of psychedelic use is occuring as we acquire the technological capability to leave the planet. The mushroom visions and the transformation of the human image precipitated by space exploration are spun together. Nothing less is happening than the emergence of a new human order. A telepathic, humane, universalist kind of human culture is emerging that will make everything that preceded it appear like the stone age.
Terence MckennaRead

Similar quotes

For us humans, everything is permanent - until it changes, as we are immortal until we die
Malcolm MuggeridgeRead
Feminist: A person who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes.
Chimamanda Ngozi AdichieRead
The outer space beings are my brothers. They sent me here. They already_x000D_ know my music.
Sun RaRead
My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.
John GreenRead
If there is any God, there is only one way to please him, and that is by a conscientious discharge of your obligations to your fellow men.
Robert Green IngersollRead
This is a fundamental view of the world. It says that when you build a thing you cannot merely build that thing in isolation, but must repair the world around it, and within it, so that the larger world at that one place becomes more coherent, and more whole; and the thing which you make takes its place in the web of nature, as you make it.
Christopher AlexanderRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.