Robert Anton Wilson Quotes

The greater the ignorance the greater the dogmatism.

No matter how old you are, you always want your parents' approval.

Firmness or stiffness of the mind is not from adherence to truth, but submission to prejudice.

Work to perfect the mind. There is no certitude but in what the mind conceives.

The lesson taught us by these kindly commentators on my present experience is that dogmatic faith compels the best minds and hearts to narrowness and insolence.

There is no man so blind as one who has made up his mind.

Narrow minds think nothing right that is above their own capacity.

When you're overwhelmed by your emotion, you listen less and you judge more. This is also the reality of the dogmatic mind.

Orthodoxy is a relaxation of the mind accompanied by a stiffening of the heart.

Truthiness is "What I say is right, and [nothing] anyone else says could possibly be true." It's not only that I feel it to be true, but that I feel it to be true. There's not only an emotional quality, but there's a selfish quality.

It is discouraging to try to penetrate a mind like yours. You ought to get it out and dance on it. That would take some of the rigidity out of it.

I don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it…My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.

As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.

Narrowness of mind is often the cause of obstinacy; we do not easily believe beyond what we see.

The fact is that people would rather cling when they're afraid of something to a priori beliefs than rather open their minds about it.

Smallness of mind is the cause of stubbornness, and we do not credit readily what is beyond our view.

The door of a bigoted mind opens outwards so that the only result of the pressure of facts upon it is to close it more snugly.

A narrow mind begets obstinacy; we do not easily believe what we cannot see.

I wonder how she'll make up her mind." "Oh, that I do know." I can just catch Gale's last words through the layer of fur. "Katniss will pick whoever she thinks she can't survive without.

The sadistic person is as dependent on the submissive person as the latter is on the former; neither can live without the other. The difference is only that the sadistic person commands, exploits, hurts, humiliates, and that the masochistic person is commanded, exploited, hurt, humiliated. This is a considerable difference in a realistic sense; in a deeper emotional sense, the difference is not so great as that which they both have in common: fusion without integrity .

If you cannot be open-minded, then you do not possess your ideas, your ideas possess you.

When you have no defensiveness about what you think but rather you totally believe it, you are passionate about it.

With a live music performance, the ideas of the richness and complexity of our inner and outer worlds - the emotional world and the external world, like the planets, the weather, and the universe are really washing over you. Your body feels the intention more than your mind analyzing intellectually too much. I've always tried to do this in my music, to make it very direct and bodily, so that it communicates itself immediately, even to someone without prior knowledge of it.

Now, you'll hear people call here on my show claiming they used to be lib and they've changed their minds. That happens, but it happens naturally. It's not because I've focused on trying to persuade people. I think while it's a noble objective to try to help people to see things the right way, this is a different psychological collection of human beings, and they are walled off from anything that's not them.

Beware! The mind of the believer stagnates. It fails to grow outward into an unlimited, infinite universe.