All Quotes

"While sitting in my prison cell, I was astonished to hear the local rock station play a new song by the Beatles entitled "Come Together." Although the new version was certainly a musical and lyrical improvement on my campaign song, I was a bit miffed that Lennon had passed me over this way. (I must explain that even the most good-natured persons tend to be a bit touchy about social neglect while in prison). When I sent a mild protest to John, he replied with typical Lennon charm and wit: that he was a tailor and I was a customer who had ordered a suit and never returned. So he sold it to someone else."

"The mark of a basic shit is that he can’t mind his own business."

"The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value."

"But they all do sort of the same thing, and that is rearrange what you thought was real, and they remind you of the beauty of pretty simple things. You forget, because you're so busy going from A to Z, that there's 24 letters in between... You turn on... tune in... and you drop out..."

"LSD is a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have NOT taken it."

"Negative stereotypes about Jewish women permeated the Left and counterculture, making it even harder for radical women to identify as Jews. Naomi Weisstein recalled an incident when, while a doctoral student in Harvard's graduate psychology program, gurus Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert handed out magic mushrooms. Many students became delusional; Weisstein had a paranoid nightmare and hallucinated for a month. "We knew you would," Leary commented. "You're an uptight Jewish female who can't let herself go." Weisstein called them "sleazeballs.""

"Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking, 'cause that's where he works. He knows that area of the mind and the brain, and he knows the difference between the two areas. He's a real master at getting your old wheel squeaking again. … When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew that we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it. It is still largely unexplored and uncharted. People like Leary have done the best they can to chart it sort of underground, but the government and the powers do not want this world charted, because it threatens established powers. It always has."

"Leary was different things to different people. He was reviled. He was revered. He was a prophet. He was a phony. He was a brilliant, innovative thinker. He was a fool. He captured the irreverent, rebellious spirit of the sixties. He was a fame-seeking, manipulative con artist. Who was he? Perhaps The Trickster said it best when he quipped, “You get the Timothy Leary you deserve.”"

"The most dangerous man alive."

"He really understood my generation. He called us "free agents in the Age of Information." What I learned from Tim didn't have anything to do with drugs, but it had everything to do with getting high. His die-hard fascination with the human brain was not all about altering it, but about using it to its fullest. And he showed us that that process-that journey-was our most important one. However we did it, as long as we did it. "You are the owner and operator of your brain," he reminded us. Tim was a huge influence on me-not just with his revolutionary ideas about human potential, but as someone who read me stories, encouraged me, took me to baseball games-you know, godfather stuff. He was the first person outside my family-who you never tend to believe while growing up-to make me believe I could do anything. He had an incredible way of making you feel special and completely supported. F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote a letter to his daughter in which he said that he hoped his life had achieved some sort of "epic grandeur." Tim's life wasn't "some sort of" epic grandeur. It was flat-out epic grandeur. It's easy sometimes to get lost in all the drug stuff that Tim's famous for all the "Turn on, tune in, drop out" stuff, especially in a society that loves a sound bite. But it wasn't Tim's only legacy. It was his vitality, enthusiasm, curiosity, humor, and humanity that made Tim great and those are the real ingredients of a mad scientist."

"Timothy Leary's dead. No, no no no, he's outside, looking in."

"We are all wired into a survival trip now. No more of the speed that fueled the Sixties. Uppers are going out of style. This was the fatal flaw in Tim Leary's trip. He crashed around America selling "consciousness expansion" without ever giving a thought to the grim meat-hook realities that were lying in wait for all the people who took him too seriously. After West Point and the Priesthood, LSD must have seemed entirely logical to him … but there is not much satisfaction in knowing that he blew it very badly for himself, because he took too many others down with him. Not that they didn't deserve it: No doubt they all Got What Was Coming To Them. All those pathetically eager acid freaks who thought they could buy Peace and Understanding for three bucks a hit. But their loss and failure is ours, too. What Leary took down with him was the central illusion of a whole lifestyle that he helped to create … a generation of permanent cripples, failed seekers, who never understood the essential old-mystic fallacy of the Acid Culture: the desperate assumption that somebody—or at least some force—is tending that Light at the end of the tunnel."

"There was an optimism that was ungrounded. Vietnam was happening, all this real stuff was going on, and the psychedelic movement wasn't really addressing that in a real way. Timothy and that bunch sold us a false bill of goods that didn't really work."

"Timothy Leary really so discredited a scientific approach to studying this, because he may have started off doing interesting research, and then got into advocating use in a way that was incredibly threatening. Culturally, we reacted, and politically, it became impossible to do this sort of research. Funding agencies didn't make resources available. Regulatory agencies increased the practical hurdles for initiating this kind of research. And I think people who had interest in research of this type largely were discredited because of their interest in the research. Social, political and scientific issues that came together pushed these drugs out of the scientific marketplace."

"We are dealing with the most educated generation in history But their mindslink."

"Learning how to deal with spirit personalities takes time."

"We can no longer maintain any distinction between music and discourse about music, between the supposed object of analysis and the terms of analysis."

"The optimist looks at the world through rose-tinted spectacles."

"Rose-colored glasses are never made in bifocals. Nobody wants to read the small print in dreams."

"Men seldom make passes At girls who wear glasses."

"When you're a kid that sees through plastic With a harness of elastic So the girls all think you're icky And the boys all think you're queer"

"The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value."

"Hip-hop backbeats have supported vocalists as far-flung as Bruce Springsteen and Sinead O'Connor, and digital samples have crossed over still more unexpected territory."

"'Form' has always come into being in a dialogue between particular 'instances' and the larger body of work, or 'tradition.'"

"If words, images, and movements as elements of popular music's texts are linked in powerful ways to popular music's sounds in a manner that we yet do not fully understand, then...we may conclude that, although music can be textual, it is textual in some very distinctive ways."

"Performance has remained the ideal locus of rock authenticity long after it has ceased to be the real origin of rock music."

""Women are still a relative rarity in rock bands, and studies of women's experiences with pop and rock music have indicated that girls are socialized to pop and rock music differently from boys: boys and young men tend to learn songs by ear and talk about popular music's technical aspects, while girls and young women tend to focus on lyrics rather than on equipment and instrumentation, and to resist learning songs by ear. Miki Bernyi's experience testifies to the truthfulness of those findings:"

"These differences can make it difficult for female musicians to enter male-dominated musical cultures."

"The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process."

"Discourse may want an animated "No" To brush the surface, and to make it flow; But still remember, if you mean to please, To press your point with modesty and ease."

"A good discourse is that from which nothing can be retrenched without cutting into the quick."

"Those who violate the rules of a language do not enter new territory; they leave the domain of meaningful discourse. Even facts in these circumstances dissolve, because they are shaped by the language and subjected to its limitations."

"A discourse is "a language or system of representation that has developed socially in order to make and circulate a coherent set of meanings about an important topic area.""

"Les discours sont des éléments ou des blocs tactiques dans le champ des rapports de force; il peut y en avoir de différents et même de contradictoires à l'intérieur d'une même stratégie; ils peuvent au contraire circuler sans changer de forme entre des stratégies opposées."

"Discourse, the sweeter banquet of the mind."

"We can no longer maintain any distinction between music and discourse about music, between the supposed object of analysis and the terms of analysis."

"It is of the nature of idea to be communicated: written, spoken, done. The idea is like grass. It craves light, likes crowds, thrives on crossbreeding, grows better for being stepped on."

"[H]ow can a democratic discourse exist in a corporate owned informational system? Who, for example, possesses freedom of speech in such a society?"

"Your fair discourse hath been as sugar, Making the hard way sweet and delectable."

"The moment the idea is admitted into society, that property is not as sacred as the law of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If "," and "," are not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society, before it can be civilized or made free."

"For you and for me, the category of the subject is a primary ‘obviousness’ (obviousnesses are always primary): it is clear that you and I are subjects (free, ethical, etc.). Like all obviousnesses, including those that make a word ‘name a thing’ or ‘have a meaning’ (therefore including the obviousness of the ‘transparency’ of language), the ‘obviousness’ that you and I are subjects – and that that does not cause any problems – is an ideological effect, the elementary ideological effect. It is indeed a peculiarity of ideology that it imposes (without appearing to do so, since these are ‘obviousnesses’) obviousnesses as obviousnesses."

"Those who are in ideology believe themselves by definition outside ideology: one of the effects of ideology is the practical denegation of the ideological character of ideology by ideology: ideology never says, ‘I am ideological’. It is necessary to be outside ideology, i.e. in scientific knowledge, to be able to say: I am in ideology (a quite exceptional case) or (the general case): I was in ideology. As is well known, the accusation of being in ideology only applies to others, never to oneself."

"Perhaps I did not succumb to ideology … because I have never seen myself as a spokesman. I am a witness. In the church in which I was raised you were supposed to bear witness to the truth. Now, later on, you wonder what in the world the truth is, but you do know what a lie is."

"An idea is something you have; an ideology is something that has you."

"Ideology is a highly controversial term, precisely because it challenges the extent to which people are self-determining with respect to the ideas to which they adhere. This seems to put the critic of ideology in a transcendent position, of the kind which theories like Adorno's should be concerned to question. However, saying, as Rorty does, for example, that ideology therefore should just mean 'bad idea' is likely to obscure the fact that the production and adoption of 'bad ideas' involve accumulated systemic social and economic pressures. These need to be analysed in terms of how individuals are subject to forces beyond their control and yet do not see how they may be led to deceive themselves by such forces."

"At its core, the battle unfolding in the Middle East is more than a clash of arms. It is an ideological struggle. On one side are the forces of terror and death. On the other are tens of millions of ordinary people who want a free and peaceful life for their children. The future of the Middle East depends on the outcome of this struggle, and so does the security of the United States."

"Capitalism is an exploitative system, as Marx has argued so cogently, and as anyone who studies the inequalities within and between the countries of the world today must see. It is therefore a priori likely that its ideology conceals realities that if known would make the exploited militant."

"Ultra-left and reactionary are often used as opposites, but extreme ideologies are never linear – they are circular. They all end up in the same place. Rigid. Sanctimonious. Intolerant."

"The only value of ideology is to stop things becoming showbiz."

"The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value."