Ken Kesey Quotes (91 Quotes)


    Leary can get a part of my mind that's kind of rusted shut grinding again, just by being around him and talking.

    The Haight is just a place; the '60s was a spirit.

    There's a lot of people who don't understand the circle crops in England. Pure enigma.

    I've been to too many Dead concerts. There've been smokin' holes where my memory used to be.

    If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously.


    To hell with facts! We need stories!

    You don't lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.

    Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.

    You've got to get out and pray to the sky to appreciate the sunshine; otherwise you're just a lizard standing there with the sun shining on you.

    Tricker the Squirrel is the best piece I ever wrote. It's intricate.

    Nowhere else in history has there ever been a flag that stands for the right to burn itself. This is the fractal of our flag. It stands for the right to destroy itself.

    There are going to be times when we cant wait for somebody. Now, youre either on the bus or off the bus. If youre on the bus, and you get left behind, then youll find it again. If youre off the bus in the first placethen it wont make a damn.

    I used to think we were going to win in the '60s. Nixon went out and I thought we won.

    There's something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.

    People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.

    The Grateful Dead are our religion. This is a religion that doesn't pay homage to the God that all the other religions pay homage to.

    Me and Norman Mailer have talked about how hard it is in America to get better. Especially at writing.

    The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer -- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

    You can't really be strong until you see a funny side to things.

    A sound of cornered-animal fear and hate and surrender and defiance ... like the last sound the treed and shot and falling animal makes as the dogs get him, when he finally doesnt care about anything but himself and his dying.

    When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it.

    People don't want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.

    If you're a Conservative, why aren't you behind conserving the land?

    The truth doesn't have to do with cruelty, the truth has to do with mercy.

    If Shakespeare were working right now, he wouldn't be working with a quill pen. He would be working with whatever the cutting edge of theatrical drama would be. And this is where literature is headed.

    I was raised a Christian and was a stone-faced acid head.

    I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

    When you're around the whole Dead scene, they're there as a tribal thing; they're there as part of a rendezvous and a pow-wow.

    The '60s aren't over; they won't be over until the Fat Lady gets high.

    But as Garcia said, you know, the '60s ain't over till the fat lady gets high. And that means that whatever it takes to get you high sometimes grief, sometimes it's prayer, fasting. I prefer a joint.

    You dont plow under the corn because the seed was planted with a neighbors shovel.

    Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.

    The frontiers we broke into in the '60s are still largely unexplored.

    When Shakespeare was writing, he wasn't writing for stuff to lie on the page; it was supposed to get up and move around.

    The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

    Fascism wants Baptism coast to coast.

    Listen, wait, and be patient. Every shaman knows you have to deal with the fire that's in your audience's eye.

    When people ask what my best work is, it's the bus. I thought you ought to be living your art, rather than stepping back and describing it.

    It's time to move on to the next step in the psychedelic revolution. We've reached a certain point, but we're not moving any more.

    We thought that by this time that there would be LSD given in classes in college and you would study it and prepare for it.

    Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.


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