Marijuana and Psychedelics: Quotes for the Criminalized

Marijuana and Psychedelics: Uplifting quotes for the criminalized, past and present, and the people who process them.

Enjoy these quotes for anyone involved in the non-legalisation of cannabis and psychedelics.

Numbers in [square brackets] refer here.

"O konoplji vedo pacienti ve kot zdravniki."

-- Doc. dr. Tanja Bagar

"Only a fool fights by the ground rules, that his enemy has laid down for him."

-- Malcolm X

"You sayin. you wanna piece of me?!"

-- Frank Costanza [5430]

"The slightest hint, the most groundless accusation, can circulate with vertiginous speed and is transformed into irrefutable proof. The corporate sense of conviction snowballs, each member taking confidence from his neighbor by a rapid process of mimesis. The firm conviction of the group is based on no other evidence than the unshakable unanimity of its own illogic."

-- Ren Girard, Violence and the Sacred

"The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim."

-- Gustave Le Bon

"The precise moment at which a great belief is doomed is easily recognisable; it is the moment when its value begins to be called in question."

-- Gustave Le Bon

"The obedient always think of themselves as virtuous, rather than cowardly."

-- Robert Anton Wilson

"One of the finest fellows who ever stepped this world."

-- Arthur "Bomber" Harris on Jan Smuts [3971]

"I will legalize recreational marijuana, break down unjust legal barriers, and create opportunities for all Americans to succeed in this new industry."

-- Kamala Harris, two days before the 2024 election.

"The more we learn about the world, and the deeper our learning, the more conscious, specific, and articulate will be our knowledge of what we do not know, our knowledge of our ignorance. For this, indeed, is the main source of our ignorance the fact that our knowledge can be only finite, while our ignorance must necessarily be infinite."

-- Karl Popper in Science: Conjectures and Refutations (1963)

In 1924, Gosset wrote in a letter to Fisher, "I am sending you a copy of Student's Tables as you are the only man that's ever likely to use them!"

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sealy_Gosset [2785]

So careful of the type? but no.
From scarped cliff and quarried stone
She cries, A thousand types are gone:
I care for nothing, all shall go.

Thou makest thine appeal to me:
I bring to life, I bring to death:
The spirit does but mean the breath:
I know no more. And he, shall he,

Man, her last work, who seemd so fair,
Such splendid purpose in his eyes,
Who rolld the psalm to wintry skies,
Who built him fanes of fruitless prayer,

Who trusted God was love indeed
And love Creations final law
Tho Nature, red in tooth and claw
With ravine, shriekd against his creed

Who loved, who sufferd countless ills,
Who battled for the True, the Just,
Be blown about the desert dust,
Or seald within the iron hills?

No more? A monster then, a dream,
A discord. Dragons of the prime,
That tare each other in their slime,
Were mellow music matchd with him.

O life as futile, then, as frail!
O for thy voice to soothe and bless!
What hope of answer, or redress?
Behind the veil, behind the veil.

-- Canto LVI of In Memoriam, Alfred Tennyson (1850)

"Someone had blunderd,
Theirs not to make reply
Theirs not to reason why
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the Valley of Death
Rode the six hundred."

-- Lord Alfred Tennyson, The Charge of the Light Brigade, 1854

"Our new gods and devils our own creations, but mysterious monsters all are the drugs we worship and fear."

-- Thomas Szasz [1372]

"There's no hangover and I never wake up covered in blood."

-- Woody Harrelson on why he prefers marijuana to alcohol.

"You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today."

-- Abraham Lincoln.

"Societies exist under three forms sufficiently distinguishable. 1. Without government, as among our Indians. 2. Under governments wherein the will of every one has a just influence, as is the case in England in a slight degree, and in our states in a great one. 3. Under governments of force: as is the case in all other monarchies and in most of the other republics. To have an idea of the curse of existence under these last, they must be seen. It is a government of wolves over sheep. It is a problem, not clear in my mind, that the 1st. condition is not the best. But I believe it to be inconsistent with any great degree of population. The second state has a great deal of good in it. The mass of mankind under that enjoys a precious degree of liberty and happiness. It has it's evils too: the principal of which is the turbulence to which it is subject. But weigh this against the oppressions of monarchy, and it becomes nothing. Malo periculosam, libertatem quam quietam servitutem. Even this evil is productive of good. It prevents the degeneracy of government, and nourishes a general attention to the public affairs. I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing, and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical."

-- Jefferson to Madison, January 30, 1787 [2778]

"Jazz music celebates the life, human life, the range of it, the absurdity of it, the ignorance of it, the greatness of it, the intelligence of it, the sexuality if it, the profundity of it, and it deals with it, in all of this, it deals with it."

-- Wynton Marsalis

"Cannabis makes me feel the way I need to feel."

-- Calvin Cordozar Broadus Jr.

"Instead of taking the five or six prescriptions I decided to go the natural route and smoke marijuana."

-- Melissa Etheridge, musician

"...cannabis use disorder exhibited the highest prevalence....It is noteworthy that the global mortality rate associated with cannabis use disorder has remained at zero."

-- Global, regional and national burden of drug use disorders, 1990-2021: decomposition analysis, health inequality analysis and predictions to 2035 [5597]

"The UN recognises criminalisation of drugs as 'proven to have negative health outcomes' and to 'counter established public health evidence'; yet a disconnection between discourse and policy action persists. National drug policies largely remain punitive; they are polarised, simplified, and based more on ideology than evidence."

-- Editorial, The Lancet 25 Nov 2023 [4740]

"And you know it's not even the drugs that'll kill you, man. What really kills you is looking for drugs."

--Tommy Chong in Things Are Tough All Over

"Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored."

-- Aldous Huxley

"Get your head out of your ass
And listen to the goddamn qualified scientists"

-- Ariane Grande

"Great minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events and small minds discuss people."

-- Eleanor Roosevelt

"The fact is that the health effectiveness of cannabis can no longer be denied. Another reason is to protect patients from being criminalized if they take matters into their own hands."

-- Dušan Nolimal

"Indeed, it is becoming ever more obvious that it is not famine, not earthquakes, not microbes, not cancer but man himself who is man's greatest danger to man, for the simple reason that there is no adequate protection against psychic epidemics, which are infinitely more devastating than the worst of natural catastrophes. The supreme danger which threatens individuals as well as whole nations is a psychic danger. Reason has proved itself completely powerless, precisely because its arguments have an effect only on the conscious mind and not on the unconscious. The greatest danger of all comes from the masses, in whom the effects of the unconscious pile up cumulatively and the reasonableness of the conscious mind is stifled. Every mass organization is a latent danger just as much as a heap of dynamite is. It lets loose effects which no man wants and no man can stop."

-- Carl Jung - The Symbolic Life [5376]

"Q. Is it immoral to spoil other people's delusions if they make them happy?

"A. It's a complex question. From a utilitarian perspective, the focus is on the consequences of actions. If a delusion causes harm or prevents someone from achieving greater happiness or well-being in the long term, then it might be ethical to challenge it. However, if the delusion is harmless and contributes significantly to someone's happiness, disrupting it could cause unnecessary distress.

"It's important to consider the context and the potential outcomes of spoiling such delusions."

-- AI philosophical chatbot petersinger.ai

"The wisest men follow their own direction
And listen to no prophet guiding them.
None but the fools believe in oracles,
Forsaking their own judgment."

-- Euripides, Greek Tragedy

"When life begins, we are tender and weak.
When life ends, we are stiff and rigid.
All things, including the grass and the trees,
Are soft and pliable in life, dry and brittle in death.
So the soft and supple are the companions of life,
Whilst the stiff and unyielding are the companions of death.
An army that cannot yield will be defeated.
A tree that cannot bend will crack in the wind.
Thus, by nature's own decree,
The hard and strong are defeated,
Whilst the soft and gentle are triumphant."

-- Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching Chapter 76

"There is in existence a totalitarian "Document of Terror" which discusses in detail the use of well-planned, repeated successive WAVES OF TERROR to bring the people into submission. Each wave of terrorizing cold war creates its effect more easily -- after a breathing spell - than the one that preceded it because people are still disturbed by their previous experience. Morale becomes lower and lower, and the psychological effect of each new propaganda campaign becomes stronger; it reaches a public already softened up. Every dissenter becomes more and more frightened that he may be found out. Gradually people are no longer willing to participate in any sort of political discussion or to express their opinions. Inwardly they have already surrendered to the terrorizing dictatorial forces."

and

"We must learn to treat the demagogue and aspirant dictator in our midst just as we should treat our external enemies in a cold war - with the weapon of ridicule. The demagogue himself is almost incapable of humour of any sort, and if we treat him with humour, he will begin to collapse. Humour is, after all, related to a sense of perspective. If we can see how things should be, we can see how askew they can get, and we can recognize distortion when we are confronted with it. Put the demagogue's statements in perspective, and you will see how utterly distorted they are. How can we possibly take them seriously or answer them seriously? We have important business to attend to - matters of life and death both for ourselves as individuals and for our nation as a whole. The demagogue relies for his effectiveness on the fact that people will take seriously the fantastic accusations he makes; will discuss the phony issues he raises as if they had reality, or will be thrown into such a state of panic by his accusations and charges that they will simply abdicate their right to think and verify for themselves. The fact is that the demagogue is not appealing to what is rational and mature in man; he is appealing to what is most irrational and most immature. To attempt to answer his ravings with logic is to attempt the impossible."

-- Joost Meerloo, Rape of the Mind
https://selfdefinition.org/psychology/A.M.Meerloo-Md-Rape-Of-The-Mind-Psychology-of-Thought-Control-1956.pdf [1863]

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be 'cured' against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals."

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)

"The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. To be your own man is a hard business. If you try it, you'll be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself."

-- Rudyard Kipling, 1935

"Ultimately, arguing that you don't care about the right to privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different than saying you don't care about free speech because you have nothing to say."

-- Edward Snowden

"The endocannabinoid system is very important. Almost all illnesses we have are linked to it in some way or another. And that is very strange. We don't have many systems which get involved with every illness."

-- Raphael Mechoulam [4908]

"I cannot think of any law that has done more damage in terms of social upheaval, parent-child alienation and police-public hostility."

-- Howard 'Mr Nice' Marks (1945-2016) on cannabis prohibition

"All those marijuana arrests do is make people hate us. Marijuana smokers aren't going to attack and kill a cop. They just want to grab a bag of chips and relax. Alcohol is a much bigger problem.

-- Kathy Lanier, Former Chief of Police, Washington DC

"Everyone hustles his life along, and is troubled by a longing for the future and weariness of the present. But the man who organizes every day as though it were his last, neither longs for nor fears the next day Nothing can be taken from this life, and you can only add to it as if giving to a man who is already full and satisfied food which he does not want but can hold. So you must not think a man has lived long because he has white hair and wrinkles: he has not lived long, just existed long. For suppose you should think that a man had had a long voyage who had been caught in a raging storm as he left harbor, and carried hither and thither and driven round and round in a circle by the rage of opposing winds? He did not have a long voyage, just a long tossing about."

-- Seneca, "On the Shortness of Life"

"Every cannabis user is a medical patient whether they know it or not."

-- Dennis Peron

"All disease begins in the gut."

-- Hippocrates

"The seeker after the truth is not one who studies the writings of the ancients and, following his natural disposition, puts his trust in them, but rather the one who suspects his faith in them and questions what he gathers from them, the one who submits to argument and demonstration, and not to the sayings of a human being whose nature is fraught with all kinds of imperfection and deficiency. Thus the duty of the man who investigates the writings of scientists, if learning the truth is his goal, is to make himself an enemy of all that he reads, and, applying his mind to the core and margins of its content, attack it from every side. He should also suspect himself as he performs his critical examination of it, so that he may avoid falling into either prejudice or leniency."

-- al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham (ca. 965 - ca. 1040)

"Mr. Snell. What is the bill?
Mr. Rayburn. It has something to do with something that is called marihuana. I believe it is a narcotic of some kind."

-- Colloquy on the House floor prior to passage of the Marihuana Tax Act." [1915]

...the outpourings of an educated nigger

-- John Buckley, a Texas customs man, on "the Mexican Freud" psychiatrist Leopoldo Salazar Viniegra's rationale for legalising drugs in Mexico in 1940 [1751]

Salus populi suprema lex esto (Latin: "The health (welfare, good, salvation, felicity) of the people should be the supreme law"

-- Cicero, Marcus Tullius: de Legibus (book III, part III, sub. VIII)

"Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe; to know what he ought to desire; and to know what he ought to do."

-- St. Thomas Aquinas, Two Precepts of Charity, 1273. From the series Great Ideas of Western Man.

"In ancient times men blamed women for concupiscence or praised them for chastity, but it seems to have been reserved for the nineteenth century to state that women are apt to be congenitally incapable of experiencing complete sexual satisfaction, and peculiarly liable to sexual anesthesia. This idea appears to have been almost unknown to the eighteenth century. During the last century, however, and more especially in England, Germany, and Italy, this opinion has been frequently set down, sometimes even as a matter of course, with a tincture of contempt or pity for any woman afflicted with sexual emotions."

-- Analysis of the sexual impulse, love and pain, the sexual impulse in women, by Ellis, Havelock, 1913.
https://archive.org/details/cu31924013991678/page/n209/mode/2up [2684]

"Any man can make mistakes, but only an idiot persists in his error."

-- Marcus Tullius Cicero

"The third combination is the mating of two alcoholic individuals. This is the most severe test and offers the greatest chance for defective offspring."

-- Dr Charles L Stockard, 1913

"Drug use is not a criminal issue, but sometimes it's not a health issue either. A lot of drug use isn't an issue at all."

-- @BabblingBrookeA https://twitter.com/BabblingBrookeA/status/1480292851133128710

"The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world."

-- Carl Sagan

"This is a business model that has turned piss into money. This is capitalism at its peak!"

-- Jeremy Milloy on urine testing workers for drug use

"The stereotype that people who use drugs are always involved in some nefarious, morally repugnant criminal activity is hilarious because said 'criminal activity' is just them using illicit drugs."

-- Garrett Reuscher, harm reduction psychotherapist

"There is no subject, even one as interesting as psychedelic science, that cannot be made boring by experts."

-- Sarah Rose Siskind [3765]

"Religions survive mainly because they brainwash the young."

-- A C Grayling

"If I'm staring at a blank computer screen sober, I'm thinking, 'Uh, I don't want to do this, it's an ASSIGNMENT!'

Then, as soon as I'm high, which takes about 3 seconds, it's, 'Oh, this is fun! It's not an assignment. It's a GAME.'"

-- Bill Maher

"By negatively stigmatizing other substances as drugs, I unburden myself from the eventual problem of alcohol consumption."

-- Raphael Gamann [3346]

"Slovenians forgive everything, except success."

-- Ivo Boscarol

"The main hangup in the world today is hypocrisy and insecurity. If people can't face up to the fact of other people being naked or smoking pot, or whatever they want to do, then we're never going to get anywhere. People have got to become aware that it's none of their business and that being nude is not obscene. Being ourselves is what's important. If everyone practiced being themselves instead of pretending to be what they aren't, there would be peace."

-- John Lennon

"One of marihuana's greatest advantages as a medicine is its remarkable safety. It has little effect on major physiological functions. There is no known case of a lethal overdose; Marihuana is also far less addictive and far less subject to abuse than many drugs now used as muscle relaxants, hypnotics, and analgesics. The ostensible indifference of physicians should no longer be used as a justification for keeping this medicine in the shadows."

-- Journal of the American Medical Association June 21, 1995. Commentary. p. 1874-1875 [2160]

"I smoke weed. Thats it. Don't expect me to know shit else about the plant and this and that. I honestly don't care about any of that. I care about staying medicated and happy & I don't need to be a cannabis expert to love it. Thanks "

-- CannaMom Erica, https://twitter.com/ImB4ked/status/1717510540229038203

"Drugs are ideal for politicians to scapegoat, and avoid tackling the problems of the poor. And they are ideal to exclude the people you don't like in your society. Drugs are used to vilify the people you don't like."

-- Prof. Dr. Carl Hart

"To do evil is like sport to a fool, But a man of understanding has wisdom."

-- Proverbs 10:23

"That which can be asserted without evidence, can be dismissed without evidence."

-- Christopher Hitchens

"No good deed goes unpunished"

-- attributed to John deLorean among others

"Cannabis: a medicine so awesome most people take it just for the side effects."

-- Unknown

"Lloyd George is a fool, and an extra fool for sending Smuts, who doesn't even know where Austria is."

-- Clemenceau, on the failed peace feelers in 1917 [? - 2041, chapter 47]

"The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, and wiser people so full of doubts.

Bertrand Russell"

"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."

Stephen Hawking

"When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it."

-- Frdric Bastiat

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

-- George Santayana

"The saddest aspect of life now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom."

-- Isaac Asimov

"I would rather have questions that can't be answered than answers that can't be questioned."

-- Richard Feynman

"The consciousness of men and the embryonic consciousness of animals is a property of highly organized matter; therefore, consciousness cannot exist without matter, while matter existed before the emergence of man and his consciousness. Consciousness is in effect the reflection of the material world in the human brain."

-- Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (1908)

A knowledge of the historical development of a subject is often essential for a full understanding of the present-day situation [12].

-- Otto Warburg (1883-1970)Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicinequote as described by Hans Krebs

"One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If weve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. Were no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. Its simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that weve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back."

-- Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

"When you mix science and politics, you get politics."

-- John M Barry

"I smoke weed all day, everyday. It is 100% intrinsic to my functionality and my life."

-- Seth Rogen

"I grew one plant this year and it will last me a full year. Cost 10 dollars. I have 9 mason jars full. I have MS and crohns, diabetes, and kidney failure. I started using it 20 years ago when I was about to commit suicide due to pain and had not been able to eat for two weeks. Im allergic to all opiate pain killers and have bad side effects from many others. My daughter, who does not smoke, saw a documentary on tv and then tracked some down for me. I was very angrythen I had an attack. I was on the verge of suicide anyway so I smoked some. Within 30 seconds my pain went away and I was able to eat. So if you count suicide, it has so far prolonged my life by 20 years. Yes, this is not what you wanted to hear, but its true."

-- Krystal G Potter
https://www.quora.com/How-much-marijuana-will-shorten-a-typical-users-life [2624]

"7. The development of human thought since the Renaissance is thoroughly one-sided.
8. Reason in mankind will be developed on every side.
9. The formally correct is a science of reality.
10. Materialism is false."

-- Kurt Gdel's Philosophical Remarks
https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01473665/document [825]

"When the lie's so big
As in Robertson's case,
(That sinister face
Behind all the Jesus hurrah)
Could result in the end
To a worrisome trend
In which every American
Not 'born again'
Could be punished in cruel and unusual ways
By this treacherous cretin
Who tells everyone
That he's Jesus' best friend"

-- When the lie's so big, Frank Zappa

"I think generally people should be open to psychedelics. A lot of people making laws are from a different era. As a new generation gets into political power, I think we will see greater receptivity to the benefits of psychedelics."

-- Elon Musk, world's richest man [1047]

"It [psilocybin] is almost certainly the most promising development innovation in the treatment of mental illness and also some neurological illnesses for 50 years."

-- Prof. David Nutt
https://www.thesun.co.uk/health/30920261/magic-mushrooms-medicine-depression-addiction/ [3603]

"Looking back the system of Transatlantic slavery didn't need better regulation; it didn't become out of date; it didn't need reforming; exceptions were not needed to exclude more 'races'. No! The system was wicked, corrupt, immoral and needed abolishing - Just like Prohibition!"

-- Julian Buchanan, Professor of criminology (ret.)

"If you want to understand the brain, if you want to understand consciousness, you've got to study psychedelics."

-- Prof. David Nutt
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sw-OmHFXHs0 [1050]

"Paradoxically, most neurocognitive studies on schizophrenia have shown cannabis use to be a marker of superior performance on neuropsychological tests."
-- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3483569/ [1923]

"'It's not just the fire hazard these products pose, and the obvious health dangers, we find that the sale of illegal cigarettes attracts other anti-social behaviour and criminal activity to an area."

-- Emma Milligan, operational delivery manager for Lincolnshire Trading Standards
https://thelincolnite.co.uk/2022/04/daughter-haunted-after-mum-dies-in-spalding-illegal-cigarette-fire/

"I believe that legal interdicting of abortion by either the federal government or the individual states is not a plausible possibility and even if it could be obtained, it wouldn't work. Given present attitudes, it would be 'Prohibition' revisited, legislating what couldn't be enforced and in the process creating a disrepect for law in general."

-- Mario Cuomo, speech delivered September 13, 1984, as a John A. O'Brien Lecture in the University of Notre Dame's Department of Theology.

"I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effect on a long-range basis. Any attempt to use the water this way is deplorable."

-- Charles Gordon Heyd, M.D., Past President, American Medical Association.

"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there's free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate."

-- Noam Chomsky, "The Common Good", 1998 p19

"Cannabis prohibition is a sumptuary law of a nature repugnant to our Constitution's framers."

-- Washington state cannabis decriminalization initiatives 229 and 248

"In one of my early books I suggested that the potential significance of LSD and other psychedelics for psychiatry and psychology was comparable to the value the microscope has for biology or the telescope has for astronomy. My later experience with psychedelics only confirmed this initial impression. These substances function as unspecific amplifiers that increase the cathexis (energetic charge) associated with the deep unconscious contents of the psyche and make them available for conscious processing. This unique property of psychedelics makes it possible to study psychological undercurrents that govern our experiences and behaviours to a depth that cannot be matched by any other method and tool available in modern mainstream psychiatry and psychology. In addition, it offers unique opportunities for healing of emotional and psychosomatic disorders, for positive personality transformation, and consciousness evolution."
Foreword to the MAPS edition of LSD: My Problem Child (October 2005) by Dr. Albert Hofmann

-- Stanislav Grof

"Imagine a society that subjects people to conditions that make them terribly unhappy then gives them the drugs to take away their unhappiness. Science fiction It is already happening to some extent in our own society. Instead of removing the conditions that make people depressed modern society gives them antidepressant drugs. In effect antidepressants are a means of modifying an individual's internal state in such a way as to enable him to tolerate social conditions that he would otherwise find intolerable."

-- Theodore Kaczynski (The Unabomber)

"When I think back to my childhood, I remember that I was "ashamed" of some things, namely that I became interested in space very quickly, so that my first books from the library were about the universe.

"So I always made sure that nobody saw which books I secretly borrowed and read. In no case I found a conversation partner, I was 9 years old. In the same year I also started dancing in a dance group. At the age of ten I started to write songs in secret. I was different, I felt that everything I did was not acceptable for the environment I lived in, in the suburbs of Ptuj."

-- Milan Krajnc
https://www.milankrajnc.com/why-i-do-not-want-to-go-back-to-slovenia/ [826]

"Everyone should see now that leveling has a fundamental meaning: the category of 'generation' supersedes the category of the 'individual.' During ancient times the mass of individuals had this value: that it made valuable the outstanding individual. . . . In ancient times, the single individual in the masses signified nothing; the outstanding individual signified them all. In the present age, the tendency is towards a mathematical equality . . .

"In order for leveling really to occur, first it is necessary to bring a phantom into existence, a spirit of leveling, a huge abstraction, an all-embracing something that is nothing, an illusion--the phantom of the public. . . . The public is the real Leveling-Master, rather than the leveler itself, for leveling is done by something, and the public is a huge nothing.

"The public is an idea, which would never have occurred to people in ancient times, for the people themselves en masse in corpora took steps in any active situation, and bore responsibility for each individual among them, and each individual had to personally, without fail, present himself and submit his decision immediately to approval or disapproval. When first a clever society makes concrete reality into nothing, then the Media creates that abstraction, 'the public,' which is filled with unreal individuals, who are never united nor can they ever unite simultaneously in a single situation or organization, yet still stick together as a whole. The public is a body, more numerous than the people which compose it, but this body can never be shown, indeed it can never have only a single representation, because it is an abstraction. Yet this public becomes larger, the more the times become passionless and reflective and destroy concrete reality; this whole, the public, soon embraces everything. . . .

"The public is not a people, it is not a generation, it is not a simultaneity, it is not a community, it is not a society, it is not an association, it is not those particular men over there, because all these exist because they are concrete and real; however, no single individual who belongs to the public has any real commitment; some times during the day he belongs to the public, namely, in those times in which he is nothing; in those times that he is a particular person, he does not belong to the public. Consisting of such individuals, who as individuals are nothing, the public becomes a huge something, a nothing, an abstract desert and emptiness, which is everything and nothing..."

-- Soren Kierkegaard in "The Present Age" (1846)

"So the joke among cannabis researchers is if marijuana is a gateway drug, it's a gateway to your refrigerator."

--- Dr Godfrey Pearlson, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Yale [3380]

"If you really want to piss people off, you can do two things: Attain some happiness or tell the truth."

-- Tennessee Williams

There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the innovator has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order, this lukewarmness arising partly from fear of their adversaries and partly from the incredulity of mankind, who do not truly believe in anything new until they have had actual experience of it.

-- Niccolò Machiavelli

"Too old to be alternative, too alternative to be old."

-- Robert Smith, on what he wants on his tombstone

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

-- Hamlet Act II Scene II

"The first symbol in which we recognise humanity is in the burials."

-- Jacques Lacan

In response to Illinois' statewide prohibition of alcohol in the 1840s, Abraham Lincoln noted that prohibition

"...goes beyond the bounds of reason in that it attempts to control a man's appetite by legislation and makes a crime out of things that are not crimes. A prohibition law strikes a blow at the very principles upon which our government was founded."

-- https://www.forbes.com/sites/econostats/2016/10/25/taxing-choice-and-the-road-to-prohibition/?sh=5b7121f27285 [947]

"ROMEO: But, soft! what light through yonder window breaks?
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon,
Who is already sick and pale with grief..."

-- Romeo and Juliet Act II Scene II
(The goddess of virginity, Diana (the moon personified), is envious of the fair Juliet. Romeo implores Juliet not to be in Diana's service; thus, not to remain a virgin.)

"No wonder psychedelics are threatening to an authoritarian religious hierarchy. You don't need faith to benefit from a psychedelic experience, let alone a priest or even a shaman to interpret it. What you need is courage to drink the brew, eat the mushroom, or whatever it is, and then to pay attention, and make of it what you will. Suddenly, the tools for direct contact with the transcendent other (whether you call it God or something else) is taken from the hands of an anointed elite and given to the individual seeker."

-- Dennis McKenna

"There are balls which are gravely licentious, either on account of immodest dances or of the costumes and dresses introduced at them. In these no one should take part. Even modest dances are rarely without danger, and a Christian should not frequent them from choice and of his own free will."

"The theatre. Though the drama is not bad in its nature, in point of fact it generally is so in our times. There are some plays so immoral, either in themselves or in their accessories, such as costumes, ballets, (&c., that we cannot be present at them without rendering ourselves gravely culpable ; and others which are called innocent are in reality only less bad, and are never without danger. We may say, then, that the theatre is not the place for a Christian. Apart from the case in which a person, by reason of his social position or other circumstances not depending on his will, is obliged to observe a legitimate condescension, to frequent the theatre is to give up a devout life, to expose oneself to fall into every vice, and even to lose the treasure of the faith."

-- Schouppe, Franois Xavier (1879). Abridged Course of Religious Instruction, Apologetic, Dogmatic, and Moral: For the Use of Catholic Colleges and Schools
https://archive.org/details/abridgedcourser01schogoog/page/n364/mode/2up [151]

"Justifying a crime is dangerous for any society, as it erodes the value and legal order at its core."

-- Janez Janša

"If everyone is thinking alike, then no one is thinking at all."

-- variously attributed to Benjamin Franklin, Walter Lippman, General Patton, John F Kennedy

"All laws which can be violated without doing any one any injury are laughed at. Nay, so far are they from doing anything to control the desires and passions of men that, on the contrary, they direct and incite men's thoughts the more toward those very objects, for we always strive toward what is forbidden and desire the things we are not allowed to have. And men of leisure are never deficient in the ingenuity needed to enable them to outwit laws framed to regulate things which cannot be entirely forbidden... He who tries to determine everything by law will foment crime rather than lessen it."

"Many errors, of a truth, consist merely in the application of the wrong names of things."

"A good thing which prevents us from enjoying a greater good is in truth an evil."

-- Baruch Spinoza

"Noah and his family were saved -- if that could be called an advantage. I throw in the 'if' for the reason that there has never been an intelligent person of the age of sixty who would consent to live his life over again. His or anyone else's. The Family were saved, yes, but they were not comfortable, for they were full of microbes. Full to the eyebrows; fat with them, obese with them, distended like balloons. It was a disagreeable condition, but it could not be helped, because enough microbes had to be saved to supply the future races of men with desolating diseases, and there were but eight persons on board to serve as hotels for them. The microbes were by far the most important part of the Ark's cargo, and the part the Creator was most anxious about and most infatuated with. They had to have good nourishment and pleasant accommodations. There were typhoid germs, and cholera germs, and hydrophobia germs, and lockjaw germs, and consumption germs, and black-plague germs, and some hundreds of other aristocrats, specially precious creations, golden bearers of God's love to man, blessed gifts of the infatuated Father to his children -- all of which had to be sumptuously housed and richly entertained; these were located in the choicest places the interiors of the Family could furnish: in the lungs, in the heart, in the brain, in the kidneys, in the blood, in the guts. In the guts particularly. The great intestine was the favorite resort. There they gathered, by countless billions, and worked, and fed, and squirmed, and sang hymns of praise and thanksgiving; and at night when it was quiet you could hear the soft murmur of it. The large intestine was in effect their heaven. They stuffed it solid; they made it as rigid as a coil of gaspipe. They took pride in this. Their principal hymn made gratified reference to it:

"Constipation, O Constipation,
The Joyful sound proclaim
Till man's remotest entrail
Shall praise its Maker's name.""

- Mark Twain, Letters from the Earth (1909)

"Our drug laws are racist, and doctors must speak out"

-- Baron Woolley in the BMJ
https://www.bmj.com/content/374/bmj.n2147.full [276]

"The War on Drugs was an abject failure. It's time to legalize marijuana and bring justice to people of color harmed by failed drug policies."

-- Vice President Kamala Harris

"I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have 'no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse'. They didn't have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true."

-- Dr Sanjay Gupta [4652]

"In the Dr. Seuss' classic, The Grinch that Stole Christmas, the small-hearted Grinch steals what he thinks is the meaning of Christmas. He nabs the decorations, the presents, and the food in his attempt to 'stop Christmas from coming'."
https://www.barnhartcrane.com/blog/the-grinch-that-stole-thanksgiving [152]

"[English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist] Gregory Bateson points out that an important part of the Alcoholics Anonymous philosophy is to understand that alcohol plays a curative role for the alcoholic who has not yet begun to dry out. This is not simply a matter of providing an anesthetic, but a means for the alcoholic of 'escaping from his own insane premises, which are continually reinforced by the surrounding society.'"

-- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmakon_(philosophy) [935]

"Formerly there were those who said: You believe things that are incomprehensible, inconsistent, impossible because we have commanded you to believe them; go then and do what is injust because we command it. Such people show admirable reasoning. Truly, whoever can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. If the God-given understanding of your mind does not resist a demand to believe what is impossible, then you will not resist a demand to do wrong to that God-given sense of justice in your heart. As soon as one faculty of your soul has been dominated, other faculties will follow as well. And from this derives all those crimes of religion which have overrun the world."

-- Voltaire

https://fr.wikisource.org/wiki/Page:Voltaire_-_%C5%92uvres_compl%C3%A8tes_Garnier_tome25.djvu/422 [2514]
Translation source [2511]

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary"

-- H. L. Mencken

"We suffer more often in imagination than in reality."

-- Seneca

"Shame must change sides."

-- Gisele Pericot

Ken Kesey explaining why LSD is illegal:

-- https://twitter.com/FatherMcKennaa/status/1720866760960966657 [4077]

"Never memorize something that you can look up."

-- Albert Einstein

"I've always wondered why cannabis is illegal."

-- Dorien Rookmaker at the European Parliament debate on cannabis, Legalisation of Personal Use of Cannabis: Exchange of Best Practices. [2760]

"Not trusting an industry that is financially dependent on you being sick, does not make you a conspiracy theorist but actually shows critical thinking skills."

-- Unknown

"As a doctor, I myself have been very skeptical for a long time in terms of legalisation because I'd seen the effects of substance abuse and addiction in my patients. Then, like more and more healthcare professionals I realised that the damage was mainly caused by the ban itself."

-- Kirsten Kappert-Gonther, MdB, Member of the Bundestag for Bremen
for @die_gruenen, Acting Chairwoman of the Health Committee [2760]

"People's opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; truth, for most people is a secondary consideration."

-- Bertrand Russell

"If liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear."

-- George Orwell

"This war is a new crusade, a new fight to the death for man's rights and liberties, and for the personal ideals of man's ethical and spiritual life. I come to this question: what is the sort of world which we envisage as our objective after this war? What sort of social and international order are we aiming at? A great deal of thought is no doubt already being given to these matters, and one may hope that we shall approach the peace much better informed and equipped than we were last time."

-- Jan Smuts, addressing the British Parliament, 1942 [3634]

"This event makes an astonishing point to all the young musicians in the world. That sales are not the be-all and end-all of rock and roll...inspiration and artistic freedom is the cornerstone of rock and roll."

-- John Cale, at the induction of the Velvet Underground into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, 1996.