Literary Birthday – 18 January – Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson was born 18 January 1932, and died 11 January 2007.

Quotes

1. I don’t believe anything, but I have many suspicions.
2. Everybody who has ever worked for a corporation knows that corporations conspire all the time. Politicians conspire all the time, pot-dealers conspire not to get caught by the narcs, the world is full of conspiracies. Conspiracy is natural primate behaviour.
3. Belief is the death of intelligence.
4. Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.
5. Only the madman is absolutely sure.
6. The normal is that which nobody quite is. If you listen to seemingly dull people very closely, you’ll see that they’re all mad in different and interesting ways, and are merely struggling to hide it.
7. Of course I’m crazy, but that doesn’t mean I’m wrong.
8. Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5 000 years of history.
9. …an optimistic mind-set finds dozens of possible solutions for every problem that the pessimist regards as incurable.
10. Most of the characteristics which make for success in writing are precisely those which we are all taught to repress … the firm belief that you are an important person, that you are a lot smarter than most people, and that your ideas are so damned important that everybody should listen to you.

Robert Anton Wilson was an American novelist, philosopher, psychologist, essayist, editor, playwright, poet, futurist, civil libertarian and self-described agnostic mystic. He wrote 35 books including Cosmic Trigger, Prometheus Rising, Schrodinger’s Cat Trilogy, and he was the co-author of the Illuminatus! Trilogy.

by Amanda Patterson

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