Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilson
Robert Anton Wilsonwas an American author, novelist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, psychologist, and self-described agnostic mystic. Recognized as an Episkopos, Pope, and saint of Discordianism, Wilson helped publicize the group through his writings and interviews...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionWriter
Date of Birth18 January 1932
CountryUnited States of America
faith religious thinking
Whenever people are certain they understand our peculiar situation here on this planet, it is because they have accepted a religious Faith or a secular Ideology (Ideologies are the modern form of Faiths) and just stopped thinking.
faith light next-week
Belief Systems contradict both science and ordinary "common sense." B.S. contradicts science, because it claims certitude and science can never achieve certitude: it can only say, "This model"- or theory, or interpretation of the data- "fits more of the facts known at this date than any rival model." We can never know if the model will fit the facts that might come to light in the next millennium or even in the next week.
faith atheist believe
Belief is the death of intelligence.
faith believe thinking
My own opinion is that belief is the death of intelligence. As soon as one believes a doctrine of any sort, or assumes certitude, one stops thinking about that aspect of existence.
faith book space
Death makes me realize how deeply I have internalized the agnosticism I preach in all my books. I consider dogmatic belief and dogmatic denial very childish forms of conceit in a world of infinitely whirling complexity. None of us can see enough from one corner of space-time to know "all" about the rest of space-time.
people
It's only possible to see people when one is able to see the world as others see it.
The average is that which no person quite ever is.
cynics equally everybody except idealists regard
Cynics regard everybody as equally corrupt... idealists regard everybody equally corrupt, except themselves.
alone god people state
My goal is to try to get people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not about God alone, but agnosticism about everything.
Certitude belongs exclusively to those who only own one encyclopedia.
horror natural
Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.
children leaving poverty
I will do anything, including highway robbery and murder, to avoid leaving my children in poverty.
meditation labels hopeless
I read everything, including the labels on canned food. I'm a hopeless print addict, a condition alleviated only by daily meditation which breaks the linear-Aristotelian trance. National Lampoon, Scientific American are what I read most obsessively.
opportunity opportunities-to-learn hinder
The things that hinder me are opportunities to learn more and develop further.