Tom Robbins Quotes (157 Quotes)

To specialize is to brush one tooth. When a person specializes he channels all of his energies through one narrow conduit; he knows one thing extremely well and is ignorant of almost everything else.

Does koala bear poop smell like cough drops?

Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked.

If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values. Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal. This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws.

The problem starts at the secondary level, not with the originator or developer of the idea but with the people who are attracted to it, who adopt it, who cling to it until their last nail breaks, and who invariably lack the overview, flexibility, imagination, and, most importantly, sense of humor, to maintain it in the spirit in which it was hatched. Ideas are made by masters, dogma by disciples, and the Buddha is always killed on the road.

Hitchhiking is not a sport. It is not an art. It certainly isn't work, for it requires no particular ability not does it produce anything of value. It's an adventure, I suppose, but a shallow ignoble adventure.

People aren't trees, so it is false when they speak of roots.

Under an orchard tree, dropping with cherries, cowgirls lay in the shade. They fed each other fruit. Dark juice dribbled into dimples. Cherry meat stained smiles and nostrils.

Existence can be rearranged. A man can be many things. I am special and free. And the world is round round round.

Slavic peoples get their physical characteristics from potatoes, their smoldering inquietude from radishes, their seriousness from beets.

I'm an outlaw, not a hero. I never intended to rescue you. We're our own dragons as well as heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

There are essential and inessential insanities. The later are solar in character, the former are linked to the moon.

What is politics, after all, but the compulsion to preside over property and make other peoples' decisions for them. (Thomas Eugene

To achieve the impossible; it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating

Philosophers have argued for centuries about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, but materialists have always known it depends on whether they are jitterbugging or dancing cheek to cheek. (Thomas Eugene

We're proposing some stakes increases and more significant increases than the prior year. If the TOC agrees to those, that will take up some of that money. I think we will take a more aggressive approach to our overnights.

What is it that separates human beings from the so-called lower animals Well, as I see it, its exactly one half-dozen significant things Humor, Imagination, Eroticism- as opposed to the mindless, instinctive mating of glowworms or raccoons- Spirituality, Rebelliousness, and Aesthetics, an appreciation of beauty for its own sake.

The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplacable being.

Our Similarities bring us to a common ground Our Differences allow us to be fascinated by each other

In order to be respected, authority has got to be respectable.

When they tell you to grow up, they mean stop growing.

I believe in nothing, everything is sacred. I believe in everything, nothing is sacred.

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

If little else, the brain is an educational toy.

Human folly does not impede the turning of the stars.

As unrefined and basic as an animal's emotional equipment may be, it is not insensitive to freedom. Somewhere in the archives of crudest instinct is recorded the truth that it is better to be endangered and free than captive and comfortable.

You are a complicated man, but happily complicated. You have found a way to be at home with the world's confusion, a way to embrace the chaos rather than struggle to reduce it or become its victim. It's all part of a game to you, and you are delighted to play.

When life demands more of people than they demand of life - as is ordinarily the case - what results is a resentment of life almost as deep-seated as the fear of death

Their desperate craving for simplicity sure can create complications. And their pitiful longing for certainty sure can make things unsteady.

Equality is not in regarding different things similarly, equality is in regarding different things differently.

The sky was the color of Edgar Allan Poe's pajamas.

Religion is not merely the opium of the masses, it's the cyanide.

To be or not to be isn't the question. The question is how to prolong being.

Humanity has advanced, when it has advanced, not because it has been sober, responsible, and cautious, but because it has been playful, rebellious, and immature.

Wild Ducks Flying Backward.

The narrow, no-nonsense skeptic is every bit as naive as the breezy-brained New Age believer.

When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on--series polygamy--until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimensions to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.

Life isn't stable. Stability is unnatural. The only stable society is the police state. You can have a free society or you can have a stable society. You can't have both. Take your choice. As for me, I'll choose a free, organic society over a rigid, artificial society any day.

Now tequila may be the favoured beverage of outlaws but that doesn't mean it gives them preferential treatment. In fact, tequila probably has betrayed as many outlaws as has the central nervous system and dissatisfied wives. Tequila, scorpion honey, harsh

We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

Logic only gives man what he needs...Magic gives him what he wants.

There are many things worth living for, a few things worth dying for, and nothing worth killing for.

Hold on to your divine blush, your innate rosy magic, or end up brown. Once you're brown, you'll find out you're blue. As blue as indigo. And you know what that means. Indigo. Indigoing. Indigone. (Thomas Eugene

It is easier to play around with a man's wife than with his cliches.

Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it. (Thomas Eugene

There is no such thing as a weird human being, It's just that some people require more understanding than others

Ideas are mallable and unstable they not only can be misused, they invite misuse---and the better the idea the more volatile it is. That's because only the better ideas turn into dogma, and it is by this process whereby a fresh, stimulating, humanly helpf

If it is committed in the name of God or country, there is no crime so heinous that the public will not forgive it.