Ken Kesey famous quotes

Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.
-- Ken Kesey

#Relationship #Happiness #Smile

People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.
-- Ken Kesey

#Love #Philosophy #Educational

It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.
-- Ken Kesey

#Inspirational #Life #World

Loved. You can't use it in the past tense. Death does not stop that love at all.
-- Ken Kesey

#Past #Doe #Use

If you've got love in your heart, whatever you do from that moment out is likely to be right. If you've got that one true note ringing inside you, then whatever you do is going to be OK.
-- Ken Kesey

#Heart #Moments #Notes

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum
-- Ken Kesey

#Steps #March

I believe that with the advent of acid, we discovered a new way to think, and it has to do with piecing together new thoughts in your mind. Why is it that people think it's so evil ? What is it about it that scares people so deeply, even the guy that invented it, what is it ? Because they're afraid that there's more to reality than they have confronted. That there are doors that they're afraid to go in, and they don't want us to go in there either, because if we go in we might learn something that they don't know. And that makes us a little out of their control.
-- Ken Kesey

#Believe #Reality #Thinking

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

#Motivational #Inspiring #Leadership

We'd just shared the last beer and slung the empty can out the window at a stop sign and were just waiting back to get the feel of the day, swimming in that kind of tasty drowsiness that comes over you after a day of going hard at something you enjoy doing -- half sunburned and half drunk and keeping awake only because you wanted to savor the taste as long as you could.
-- Ken Kesey

#Swimming #Beer #Long

To hell with facts! We need stories.
-- Ken Kesey

#Reality #Needs #Stories

The stars up close to the moon were pale; they got brighter and braver the farther they got out of the circle of light ruled by the giant moon
-- Ken Kesey

#Stars #Moon #Light

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.
-- Ken Kesey

#Powerful #Ghouls #World

All I know is this: nobody's very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.
-- Ken Kesey

#Psychology #Looks #Firsts

You can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.
-- Ken Kesey

#Apples

I had to keep on acting deaf if i wanted to hear at all.
-- Ken Kesey

#Acting #Deaf #Wanted

What the Chronics are - or most of us - are machines with flaws inside that can't be repaired, flaws born in, or flaws beat in over so many years of the guy running head-on into solid things that by the time the hospital found him he was bleeding rust in some vacant lot.
-- Ken Kesey

#Running #Years #Guy

If you don't watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.
-- Ken Kesey

#Thinking #Opposites #People

Take what you can use and let the rest go by.
-- Ken Kesey

#Inspirational #Wisdom #Humility

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

#Being Strong #Funny Things #Training

All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed.
-- Ken Kesey

#Mistake #Kids #Home

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.
-- Ken Kesey

#Moving On #Next #Revolution

turns me on so loud it's like no sound, everybody yelling at me hands over their ears from behind a glass wall, faces working around in talk circles but no sound from the mouths. my sound soaks up all other sound.
-- Ken Kesey

#Wall #Hands #Circles

We made love. How pedestrian the words look-trite, worn, practically featureless with use-but how can one better describe that which happens when it happens? That creation? That magic blending? I might say we became figures in a mesmerized dance before the rocking talisman of the moon, starting slow, so slow... a pair of feathers drifting through clear liquid substance of sky... gradually accelerating, faster and faster and finally into photon existence of pure light... as my whole straining body burst like fluid electricity into hers.
-- Ken Kesey

#Sex #Moon #Sky

You’re just a young kid. What are you doin’ here? You oughta be out in a convertible, why… bird-doggin’ chicks and bangin’ beaver. What are ya doin’ here, for Christ’s sake? What’s funny about that? Jesus, I mean, you guys do nothin’ but complain about how you can’t stand it in this place here and then you haven’t got the guts just to walk out!
-- Ken Kesey

#Jesus #Mean #Kids

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

#Lying #Moving #Writing

Sometimes I looked at them and sometimes they looked at me, but rarely did we look at one another.
-- Ken Kesey

#Looks #Sometimes

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.
-- Ken Kesey

#Memories #Machinery

There’s no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won, but I’m not sure what.
-- Ken Kesey

#Mcmurphy #Doubt #Mind

He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.
-- Ken Kesey

#Life #Running #Hurt

I've found psychedelics to be keys to worlds that have always existed, that have to be talked about.
-- Ken Kesey

#Keys #World #Found

The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.
-- Ken Kesey

#Jobs #Powerful #Kissing

The world news might not be therapeutic.
-- Ken Kesey

#News #World #Might

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

#Literature #Mercy #Cruelty

I lay in bed the night before the fishing trip and thought it over, about my being deaf, about the years of not letting on I heard what was said, and I wonder if I can ever act any other way again. But I remembered one thing: it wasn't me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.
-- Ken Kesey

#Night #Years #Fishing

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.
-- Ken Kesey

#Sunshine #Sky #Appreciate

I'd take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.
-- Ken Kesey

#Mirrors #Self #Looks

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

#Giving #Energy #Breaking Promises

I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.
-- Ken Kesey

#Memories #Sound

Marvelous wonders don't have to happen of a sudden, the way they do in the Arabian Nights. They can also take a long time, like crystals growing, or minds changing, or leaves turning. The trick is to keep an eye peeled, so they don't slip by unappreciated.
-- Ken Kesey

#Eye #Night #Long

Always stay in your own movie.
-- Ken Kesey

#Independence

Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.
-- Ken Kesey

#Garden #Strange #Mystery

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.
-- Ken Kesey

#Motivational #Jobs #Garden

Mr. Bibbit, you might warn this Mr. Harding that I'm so crazy I admit to voting for Eisenhower. Bibbit! You tell Mr. McMurphy I'm so crazy I voted for Eisenhower twice! And you tell Mr. Harding right back — he puts both hands on the table and leans down, his voice getting low — that I'm so crazy I plan to vote for Eisenhower again this November.
-- Ken Kesey

#Crazy #Voice #Mcmurphy

No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?
-- Ken Kesey

#Ceramics #Rorschach #Psycho