Timothy Leary

Photo: AP News / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain)

Timothy Leary

22-Oct-1920


United States


Psychologist

Timothy Francis Leary (October 22, 1920 – May 31, 1996) was an American psychologist and author known for strongly advocating psychedelic drugs. Evaluations of Leary are polarized, ranging from "bold oracle" to "publicity hound". According to poet Allen Ginsberg, he was "a hero of American consciousness", while writer Tom Robbins called him a "brave neuronaut". President Richard Nixon disagreed, calling Leary "the most dangerous man in America". During the 1960s and 1970s, at the height of the counterculture movement, Leary was arrested 36 times. As a clinical psychologist at Harvard University, Leary founded the Harvard Psilocybin Project after an experience with magic mushrooms he had in Mexico in 1960. For two years, he tested psilocybin's therapeutic effects, in the Concord Prison Experiment and the Marsh Chapel Experiment. He also experimented with lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD)… Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy_Leary

QUOTES BY Timothy Leary


People use the word "natural" … What is natural to me is these botanical species which interact directly with the nervous system. What I consider artificial is four years at Harvard, and the Bible, and Saint Patrick's cathedral, and the sunday school teachings.

Art's certainly made a lot of money, and got on a lot of shows β€” he got himself into the Nixon White House riding on the death of his daughter. And I think that's ghoulish! That's ghoulish.

I declare that The Beatles are mutants. Prototypes of evolutionary agents sent by God, endowed with a mysterious power to create a new human species, a young race of laughing freemen.

If you want to change the way people respond to you, change the way you respond to people.

Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.

Think for yourself and question authority.

That’s the left wing of the CIA debating the right wing of the CIA.

I have always considered myself, when I learned what the word meant, I've always considered myself a Pagan.

We saw ourselves as anthropologists from the twenty-first century inhabiting a time module set somewhere in the dark ages of the 1960s. On this space colony we were attempting to create a new paganism and a new dedication to life as art.

VIEW MORE QUOTES BY Timothy Leary