Maynard James Keenan Quotes

Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.

Life is too short not to create something with every breath we draw.

Today's woman puts on wigs, fake eyelashes, false nails, sixteen pounds of make-up/shadows/blushes/creams, living bras, various pads that would make a linebacker envious, has implants and assorted other surgeries, then complains that she cannot find a 'real' man

This body holding me reminds me of my own mortality. Embrace this moment, remember: we are eternal all this pain is an illusion.

People have to follow their hearts, and if their hearts lead them to Wal-Mart, so be it.

Whenever you try to work through the things that we're trying to work through, that we're addressing, it ends up looking negative. Our goal is nonjudgment, nonfiltered acceptance of everything. So much of our background collectively, especially in the United States, is denying and suppressing and disowning a lot of negativity and the darker areas. You can become swallowed up in it. It's cancerous. The goal should be to define acceptance for everything. To try and consider every aspect. To try to look into the shadows, as well as the light.

Put a small child in a playpen with an apple and a bunny. If s/he eats the apple and plays with the bunny, s/he's normal;but if s/he eats the bunny and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car. Somewhere along the line we must have been TAUGHT to do the wrong thing.

This sort of behavior is left to the psychotic, dogmatic, fundamentalist believers you see on your TV everyday letting off bombs and killing people in the name of God. Beliefs are dangerous. Beliefs allow the mind to stop functioning. A non-functioning mind is clinically dead. Believe in nothing.

So crucify the ego, before its far too late To leave behind this place so negative and blind and cynical, And you will come to find that we are all one mind Capable of all thats imagined and all conceivable. Just let the light touch you And let the words spill through And let them pass right through Bringing out our hope and reason ... before we pine away.

A circle is the reflection of eternity. It has no beginning and it has no end - and if you put several circles over each other, then you get a spiral.

It's the role of us to run our government, the government by the people, for the people, and I don't think our government is listening to the people. It's our role as patriots to question them, because we elected them. And if they're not fairly and accurately representing us, it's the job of the people, the patriots, to take their country back.

Repugnant is a creature who would squander the ability To lift an eye to heaven, conscious of his fleeting time here

The trick is to use the drugs once to get there, and maybe spend the next ten years trying to get back there without the drug.

Finding beauty in the dissonance.

I'm a pessimist. But I'm a pessimist with a sense of responsibility.

Once you take yourself too seriously the art will suffer.

People get upset and it becomes an excuse to treat other people a certain way,but if you really step back, you realize what you've left behind.

Cold silence has a tendency to atrophy any sense of compassion between supposed lovers

I believe that music is a force in itself. It is there and it needs an outlet, a medium. In a way, we are just the medium.

We are eternal. All this pain is an illusion.

Recognize this as a holy gift and celebrate this chance to be alive and breathing.

I think that people get outraged over things. I think what we really need is a kind of borderline extinction level event to get people back to caring about what really matters.

Liar, lawyer, mirror show me. What’s the difference?

But you know, I'm the negative-Nancy, curmudgeon, glass-half-empty-with-a-leak-in-it guy - which is basically the fuel that fires me up anyway. Without that, we wouldn't have me.

One of my biggest heroes in music has been David Bowie. He's said, `I'm going to be a painter now, or I'm going to do some films,' and his audience is very forgiving, because they understand him as an artist. Whether you agree or like the result, you respect that he's expressing his artistic feelings.