Timothy Leary (1920–96,) fully Timothy Francis Leary, was a psychologist, philosopher, author, and lecturer. A drug pioneer, he became a figurehead, with Baba Ram Dass, for the hippy drug culture. He was best known for supporting the exploration of the therapeutic potential of psychedelic drugs under controlled conditions.
Born in Springfield, Massachusetts, Leary received a doctorate in psychology from Berkeley, where he was an assistant professor until 1955. Leary joined Harvard University as a lecturer in 1959, where he experimented with consciousness-altering drugs, including LSD. After Harvard dismissed from his teaching post in 1963, Leary became a figurehead for the hippy drug culture and a counterculture icon.
Leary coined and popularized the catchphrase “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” He traveled widely and gave many public lectures, especially on college campuses, and, because of his high public profile, he became a focus of the emerging public debate over LSD.
Leary authored and co-authored more than twenty books, including Interpersonal Diagnosis of Personality (1957,) The Psychedelic Experience (1964,) and the collections of essays Changing My Mind, Among Others (1982) and Design for Dying (1997.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Timothy Leary
The universe is an intelligence test.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Intelligence
We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they’ve got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Education, Generations
All suffering is caused by being in the wrong place. If you’re unhappy where you are, MOVE.
—Timothy Leary
Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Feminism, Women, Ambition
Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Society
Think for yourself, question authority.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Protest
You’re only as young as the last time you changed your mind.
—Timothy Leary
Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Self-Discovery
Science is all metaphor.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Scientists, Science
Think for yourself and question authority.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Authority, One liners
The danger of psychedelic drugs, the danger of mind-opening, the danger of consciousness expansion, the danger of inner discovery is a danger to the establishment.
—Timothy Leary
In the information age, you don’t teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today, he’d have a talk show.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Philosophers, Philosophy
My advice to people today is as follows: If you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.
—Timothy Leary
Topics: Twentieth Century
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