Ken Kesey Quotes

Since we don't know where we're going, we have to stick together in case someone gets there.

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, but 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.

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.

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

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

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.

The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.

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

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.

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

When you love someone it is forever, or it was never really love at all.

You can't blame the President for the state of the country, it's always the poets' fault. You can't expect politicians to come up with a vision, they don't have it in them. Poets have to come up with the vision and they have to turn it on so it sparks and catches hold.

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

It is just as much an offense to take offense as it is to give offense.

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.

The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.

He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum

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

There's no disgrace in failing, lad, Though friends and foes deride; In fact, a failure's not so bad As never having tried.

See with your ears and hear with your eyes.

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.

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

The fundamentalists have taken the fun out of the mental.

There are going to be times when we can't wait for somebody. Now, you're either on the bus or off the bus.

To hell with facts! We need stories.