ROBERT ANTON WILSON QUOTES

 Most of our ancestors were not perfect ladies and gentlemen.

The majority of them weren't even mammals.
o Cosmic Trigger I: The Final Secret of the Illuminati (1977), p. 84
 I first heard of the 23 Enigma from William S. Burroughs, author
of Naked Lunch, Nova Express, etc. According to Burroughs, he had
known a certain Captain Clark, around 1960 in Tangier, who once
bragged that he had been sailing 23 years without an accident. That
very day, Clark’s ship had an accident that killed him and everybody else
aboard. Furthermore, while Burroughs was thinking about this crude
example of the irony of the gods that evening, a bulletin on the radio
announced the crash of an airliner in Florida, USA. The pilot was
another Captain Clark and the flight was Flight 23.
o "The 23 Phenomenon" in Fortean Times 23 (1977), also quoted
in "The hidden roots of the 23 Enigma" by Theo Paijmans at the
Charles Forte Institute (13 May 2010)
 There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There
is no restraint that cannot be escaped. We are all absolutely free. If
everybody could go into dhyana at will, nobody could be controlled —
by fear of prison, by fear of whips or electroshock, by fear of death, even.
All existing society is based on keeping those fears alive, to control the
masses. Ten people who know would be more dangerous than a
million armed anarchists.
o Hugh Crane a.k.a. Cagliostro the Great, in Schrödinger's Cat
Trilogy : The Trick Top Hat (1979)
 Guerrilla ontology
The basic technique of all my books. Ontology is the study of being;
the guerrilla approach is to so mix the elements of each book that the
reader must decide on each page 'How much of this is real and how
much is a put-on?'"
o The Illuminati Papers (1980), p. 2
 'The person we think we are have been manufactured out of some
[| shotgun wedding] of history and and imagination.'"
o The Illuminati Papers (1980), p. 61
 It only takes 20 years for a liberal to become
a conservative without changing a single idea.
o The Illuminati Papers (1980), p. 111
 The Western World has been brainwashed by Aristotle for the last
2,500 years. The unconscious, not quite articulate, belief of most
Occidentals is that there is one map which adequately
represents reality. By sheer good luck, every Occidental thinks he
or she has the map that fits. Guerrilla ontology, to me, involves
shaking up that certainty. I use what in modern physics is called the
"multi-model" approach, which is the idea that there is more than one
model to cover a given set of facts. As I've said, novel writing
involves learning to think like other people. My novels are written so as
to force the reader to see things through different reality grids rather
than through a single grid. It's important to abolish the unconscious
dogmatism that makes people think their way of looking at reality
is the only sane way of viewing the world. My goal is to try to get
people into a state of generalized agnosticism, not agnosticism
about God alone, but agnosticism about everything. If one can only
see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to
become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind. It's only possible to see people
when one is able to see the world as others see it. That's what guerrilla
ontology is — breaking down this one-model view and giving people a
multi-model perspective.
o "Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" -
interview with Jeffrey Elliot (1980)
 My early work is politically anarchist fiction, in that I was an
anarchist for a long period of time. I'm not an anarchist any longer,
because I've concluded that anarchism is an impractical ideal.
Nowadays, I regard myself as a libertarian. I suppose an anarchist
would say, paraphrasing what Marx said about agnostics being
 "frightened atheists," that libertarians are simply frightened anarchists.
Having just stated the case for the opposition, I will go along and agree
with them: yes, I am frightened. I'm a libertarian because I
don't trustthe people as much as anarchists do. I want to
see government limited as much as possible; I would like to see it
reduced back to where it was in Jefferson's time, or even smaller.
But I would not like to see it abolished. I think the average
American, if left totally free, would act exactly like Idi Amin. I don't
trust the people any more than I trust the government.
o "Robert Anton Wilson: Searching For Cosmic Intelligence" -
interview by Jeffrey Elliot (1980)
 A true initiation never ends.
o Masks of the Illuminati (1981), p. 257
 "Every national border in Europe," El Eswad added ironically,
"marks the place where two gangs of bandits got too exhausted to
kill each other anymore and signed a treaty. Patriotism is
the delusion that one of these gangs of bandits is better than all the
others."
o The Earth Will Shake: The History of the Early Illuminati (The
Historical Illuminatus Chronicles Vol. 1) (1982), p. 100
 Obviously, the faster we process information, the more rich and
complex our models or glosses — our reality-tunnels — will
become.
Resistance to new information, however, has a strong neurological
foundation in all animals, as indicated by studies of imprinting and
conditioning. Most animals, including most domesticated primates
(humans) show a truly staggering ability to "ignore" certain kinds
of information — that which does not "fit" their
imprinted/conditioned reality-tunnel. We generally call this
"conservatism" or "stupidity", but it appears in all parts of
the political spectrum, and in learned societies as well as in the Ku
Klux Klan.
 o Quantum Psychology : How Brain Software Programs You and Your
World (1990), p. 45
 Every war results from the struggle for markets and spheres of
influence, and every war is sold to the public by
professional liars and totally sincere religious maniacs, as a Holy
Crusade to save God and Goodness from Satan and Evil.
o Cosmic Trigger II : Down to Earth (1991)
 Every morning I have been looking at CNN to see if there is any
reason for hope. I see a few large and impressive peace protests here
and there around the world, but mostly I see empty robot faces
monotonously reciting the magic incantations, "We must support the
President" and "We must support our troops", both of which mean the
killing must continue.
o Cosmic Trigger II: Down to Earth (1991)
 We live in an age of artificial scarcity, maintained by ignorance and
fear. The government has been paying farmers not to grow food for fifty
years--while millions starve. Labor unions, business and government
conspire to hold back the Microprocessor Revolution--because none of
them know how to deal with the massive unemployment it will cause.
(Fuller's books could tell them.) The utilities advertise continually that
"solar power is at least forty years in the future" when my friend Karl
Hess, and hundreds of others, already live in largely solar-powered
houses. These propaganda advertisements are just a delaying action,
because the utilities still haven't figured out how to put a meter
between us and the sun.
o Right Where You Are Sitting Now: Further Tales of the Illuminati.
Berkeley, CA: Ronin Pub., 1993. p. 144.[1]
 I'm using myself as a typical 20th century model as I'm trying to
make sense out of the world around me … typical in the sense of
being one of the damn good models around these days. I am typical in
the sense that ...a lot of people are on the same wave length as me. I get
fan mail from people that are absolutely stunned that there's somebody
else besides themselves who thinks this way. So, we're a minority, but
 there are a lot of us. On a planet this overcrowded, a minority can have a
few million numbers. … More scientific than religious. More open than
dogmatic. More optimistic than pessimistic. More future oriented than
past oriented. And more humorous than serious. I really dread serious
people. Especially serious, dogmatic people. I regard them as sort
of what Reich called the emotional plague. I regard them as very
dangerous.
o "Robert Anton Wilson on Wilhelm Reich" (March 1995)
 He {Wilhelm Reich} had a great capacity to arouse
irrational hatred obviously, and that's because
his ideas were radical in the most extreme sense of
the word "radical." His ideas have something to offend everybody,
and he ended up becoming the only heretic in American history
whose books were literally burned by the government.
Timothy Leary spent five years in prison for
unorthodox scientific ideas. Ezra Pound spent 13 years in a nuthouse for
unorthodox political and economic ideas. Their books were not burned.
Reich was not only thrown in prison, but they chopped up all the
scientific equipment in his laboratory with axes and burned all of
his books in an incinerator. Now that interests me as a
civil liberties issue.
When I started studying Reich's works, I went through a period
of enthusiasm, followed by a period of skepticism, followed by a period
of just continued interest, but I think a lot of his ideas probably were
sound. A lot probably were unsound. And, I'm not a Reichian in the
sense of somebody who thinks he was the greatest scientist who
ever lived and discovered the basic secrets
of psychology, physics and everything else, all in one lifetime. But I
think he has enough sound ideas that his unpopular ideas deserve
further investigation.
o "Robert Anton Wilson on Wilhelm Reich" (March 1995)
 Well I sometimes call myself a libertarian but that's only because
most people don't know what anarchist means. Most people hear
you're an anarchist and they think you're getting ready to throw a
 bomb at a building. They don't understand the concept of voluntary
association, the whole concept of replacing force with voluntary
cooperation or contractual arrangements and so on. So libertarian is a
clearer word that doesn't arouse any immediate anxiety upon the
listener. And then again, libertarians, if they were totally consistent with
their principles would be anarchists. They take the position which they
call minarchy, which is the smallest possible government... The reason I
don't believe in the smallest possible government is because we started
out with that and it only took us 200 years to arrive at the czarist
occupation of government that we have now. I think any government is
dangerous no matter how small you make it. Instead of governments
we should have contractual associations that you can opt out of if
you don't like the way the association is going. Religions fought for
hundreds of years over which one should dominate Europe and then
they finally gave up and made a truce, and they all agreed
to tolerate each other — at least in this part of the world... But I think
government should be treated like religion, everyone should be
able to pick the kind they like. Only it should be contractual not
obligatory. I wouldn't mind paying taxmoney to a local association to
maintain a police force, as long as we need one. But I hate like hell
paying taxes to help the US government build more nuclear missiles to
blow up more people I don't even know and don't think I'd hate them if I
did know them. A lot of anarchists had a major roll in influencing my
political thinking, especially the individualist anarchists. Benjamin
Tucker and Lysander Spooner especially. But I've also been influenced
by Leo Tolstoy's anarcho-pacifism. And I find a lot
of Kropotkin compatible even though he was
a communist anarchist. Nothing wrong with communist anarchism
as long as it remains voluntary. Any one that wants to go make a
commune, go ahead, do it. I got nothingagainst it. As long as there's
room to the individualist to do his or her own thing.
o Interview in TSOG (2002) (sound file)
 I used to be an atheist, until I realized I had nothing to shout during
blowjobs. "Oh Random Chance! Oh Random Chance!" just doesn't cut
it….
 o DragonCon, 2000
o This quote is knowingly or otherwise lifted from Bill Hicks' comedy
routine, or vice versa.
 Following Korzybski, I put things in probabilities,
not absolutes... My only originality lies in applying this zetetic attitude
outside the hardest of the hard sciences, physics, to softer sciences and
then to non-sciences like politics, ideology, jury verdicts and, of
course, conspiracy theory.
o Interview in High Times (2003)
 Groups are grammatical fictions; only individuals exist, and each
individual is different.
o Robert Anton Wilson. The Robert Anton Wilson Website - RAW
Thoughts. Retrieved on 2016-06-03.
 I don't believe anything, but I have many suspicions.
o "RAW Thoughts" at rawilson.com
 I regard the two major male archetypes in 20th Century literature
as Leopold Bloom and Hannibal Lecter. M.D. Bloom, the perpetual
victim, the kind and gentle fellow who finishes last, represented an
astonishing breakthrough to new levels of realism in the novel, and also
symbolized the view of humanity that hardly anybody could deny c.
1900-1950. History, sociology, economics, psychology et al.
confirmed Joyce’s view of Everyman as victim. Bloom, exploited and
downtrodden by the Brits for being Irish and rejected by many of
the Irish for being Jewish, does indeed epiphanize humanity in the
first half of the 20th Century. And he remains a nice guy despite
everything that happens...
Dr Lecter, my candidate for the male archetype of 1951-2000, will
never win any Nice Guy awards, I fear, but he symbolizes our age as
totally as Bloom symbolized his. Hannibal's wit, erudition, insight
into others, artistic sensitivity, scientific knowledge etc. make him
almost a walking one man encyclopedia of Western civilization. As
for his "hobbies" as he calls them — well, according to the World Game
Institute, since the end of World War II, in which 60,000,000 human
 beings were murdered by other human beings, 193, 000,000 more
humans have been murdered by other humans in brush wars,
revolutions, insurrections etc. What better symbol of our age than a
serial killer? Hell, can you think of any recent U.S. President who
doesn't belong in the Serial Killer Hall of Fame? And their motives
make no more sense, and no less sense, than Dr Lecter's Darwinian
one-man effort to rid the planet of those he finds outstandingly
loutish and uncouth.
o "Previous Thoughts" at rawilson.com
 Horror is the natural reaction to the last 5,000 years of history.
o Cosmic Trigger II : Down to Earth
 No, they were not exactly automatons, but they did not know what they
were doing. They take down a boy’s britches. They stare at his buttocks.
They cane him until the buttocks bleed. And they believe this is virtue,
because it is done in a school, and it becomes vice only if it is done in a
place with a red lantern over the door.
o The Widow's Son
 Beyond a certain point, the whole universe becomes a continuous
process of initiation.
o The Widow's Son
 All phenomena are real in some sense, unreal in some sense,
meaningless in some sense, real and meaningless in some sense,
unreal and meaningless in some sense, and real and unreal and
meaningless in some sense.
o Nature's God This is a statement derived from one in the Principia
Discordia
 Existence is larger than any model that is not itself the exact size of
existence (which has no size...)
o Nature's God
 There is absolutely nothing that can be taken for granted in this
world.
 o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
 Conspiracy is just another name for coalition.
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Luigi Duccio
 The creative faculty, the god-power, is not used here with anything less
than literalness. When beauty was created by a godly mind, beauty
existed, as surely as the paintings of Botticelli or the concerti
of Vivaldi exist. When mercy was created, mercy
existed. When guilt was created, guilt existed. Out of a meaningless
and pointless existence, we have made meaningand purpose; but
since this creative act happens only when we relax after great
strain, we feel it as 'pouring into us' from elsewhere. Thus, we do
not know our own godhood and we are perpetually swindled by those
who assure us that it is indeed elsewhere, but they can give us access to
it, for a reasonable fee. And when we as a species were ignorant
enough to be duped in that way, the swindlers went one step
further, invented original sin and other horrors of that sort, and
made us even more 'dependent' upon them.
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
 The illusion of Sin and Guilt, the madness of our species, is the act
of cursing the world under the misapprehension that one is
cursing only one part of it. To curse the fig tree, as in the funniest and
most misunderstood parable of Jesus, is to curse the soil in which it
grew, the seed, the rains, the sun; the whole world, eventually —
because no part is truly separate from the whole. The fallacy is that
one can judge the part in isolation from the whole is "the Lie that
all men believe."
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
 The longer one is alone, the easier it is to hear the song of the earth.
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
 "Is," "is." "is" — the idiocy of the word haunts me. If it were
abolished, human thought might begin to make sense. I
 don't know what anything "is"; I only know how it seemsto me at
this moment.
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
 Why does the sexual appetite cause so much unspeakable joy and
irrational misery, so much suicidal and homicidal madness, and so much
absurd theological ranting? Because every sexual choice is going to play
a role in determining the temperament and talents of the next
generation, and of all future generations who will inherit the earth from
us. To be simple about it for once, a single friendly fuck can fill a
continent with morons or geniuses in only a few thousand years.
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by Sigismundo Celine
 The worst that can happen under monarchy is rule by a single
imbecile, but democracy often means the rule by an assembly of
three or four hundred imbeciles.
o The Historical Illuminatus as spoken by M. Gabriel Sartines
 Each mans spills the drink he loves.
o Cosmic Trigger II
 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 behavior.
o The I in the Triangle, speech held at a bookstore in Santa Cruz,
California (1990)
 The Constitution admittedly has a few defects and blemishes, but it
still seems a hell of a lot better than the system we have now.
o rawilson.com website/blog entry (mid 1990s)
 Various medical authorities swarm in and out of here predicting I have
between two days and two months to live. I think they are guessing. I
remain cheerful and unimpressed. I look forward without
dogmatic optimism but without dread. I love you all and I deeply
implore you to keep the lasagna flying.
 Please pardon my levity, I don't see how to take death seriously. It
seems absurd.
o "Do Not Go Gently Into That Good Night" final blog entry (6
January 2007)
The Illuminatus! Trilogy (1975)[edit]

There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope fiends are
a better guide to reality than the common-sense interpretation of data
available to the so-called normal mind. This is one such period, if you haven't
noticed already.
Main article: The Illuminatus! Trilogy
 There are periods of history when the visions of madmen and dope
fiends are a better guide to reality than the common-sense
interpretation of data available to the so-called normal mind. This
is one such period, if you haven't noticed already.
o Part I : The Eye in the Pyramid, p. 32
 ONLY THE MADMAN IS ABSOLUTELY SURE.
o Part I : The Eye in the Pyramid p. 176 of 1988 edition
 The individual act of obedience is the cornerstone not only of the
strength of authoritarian society but also of its weakness.
 And Spaceship Earth, that glorious and bloody circus, continued its four-
billion-year-long spiral orbit about the Sun; the engineering, I must
admit, was so exquisite that none of the passengers felt any motion at
all. Those on the dark side of the ship mostly slept and voyaged into
worlds of freedom and fantasy; those on the light side moved about the
 tasks appointed for them by their rulers, or idled waiting for the next
order from above.
Prometheus Rising (1983)[edit]

Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.

The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this planet

are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-pangs of a
cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of domesticated
primate history.
 Comparative religion and philosophy show that the Thinker can
regard itself as mortal, as immortal, as both mortal and immortal
(the reincarnation model) or even as non-existent (Buddhism). It
can think itself into living in a Christian universe, a Marxist universe, a
 scientific-relativistic universe, or a Nazi universe—among many
possibilities.
As psychiatrists and psychologists have often observed (much to the
chagrin of their medical colleagues), the Thinker can think itself sick,
and can even think itself well again.
The Prover is a much simpler mechanism. It operates on one law
only: Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves.
To cite a notorious example which unleashed incredible horrors earlier
in this century, if the Thinker thinks that all Jews are rich, the Prover
will prove it. It will find evidence that the poorest Jew in the most run-
down ghetto has hidden money somewhere.
o Ch. 1 : The Thinker & The Prover, p. 25
 Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover will prove. And if the
Thinker thinks passionately enough, the Prover will prove the thought
so conclusively that you will never talk a person out of such a belief,
even if it is something as remarkable as the notion that there is
a gaseous vertebrate of astronomical heft ("GOD") who will spend all
eternity torturing people who do not believe in his religion.
o Ch. 1 : The Thinker & The Prover, p. 28
 Animals outline their territories with their excretions, humans
outline their territories by ink excretions on paper.
o Ch. 4 : The Anal Emotional Territiorial Circuit, p. 68
 The current rampages of territorial-emotional pugnacity sweeping this
planet are not just another civilization failing … They are the birth-
pangs of a cosmic Prometheus rising out of the long nightmare of
domesticated primate history.
o Ch. 5 : Dickens & Joyce : The Two-Circuit Dialectic, p. 90
 "Mind" is a tool invented by the universe to see itself; but it can
never see all of itself, for much the same reason that you can’t see
your own back (without mirrors).
o Ch. 14 : The Meta Programming Circuit, p. 224
  Mind and its contents are functionally identical: My wife only exists, for
me, in my mind. Not being a solipsist, I recognize the converse: I only
exist, for her, in her mind. Lest the reader exclaim, like Byron of
Wordworth, "I wish he would explain his explanation!", let us try it this
way: If I am so fortunate as to be listening to the Hammerklavier sonata,
the only correct answer, if you ask me suddenly, "Who are you?" would
be to hum the Hammerklavier. For, with music of that quality, one is
hypnotized into rapt attention: there is no division between "me" and
"my experience".
o Ch. 14 : The Meta-Programming Circuit, p. 219
Everything Is Under Control (1998)[edit]
The A∴A∴ must rank as the most secretive secret society in the world.

Occult historians generally agree that V.V.V.V.V. signified Vi Veri Vniversum

Vivus Vici ("By the force of truth I have conquered the universe")
Everything Is Under Control : Conspiracies, Cults, and Cover-Ups (1998)
Yates thinks Bruno may have had a role in the invention of
either Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry or both.

The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like our First
Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions, and this tends,
somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one religion.
 You simply cannot invent any conspiracy theory so ridiculous and
obviously satirical that some people somewhere don't
already believe it.
o Introduction, p. 16
 The A∴A∴ must rank as the most secretive secret society in the
world. Perhaps nobody, not even the few writers who have discussed it,
knows for sure when the A∴A∴ began, which group claiming to be the
A∴A∴ at present is the real A∴A∴, or even what the symbols A∴A∴ stand
for — although many claim to know these things of course. … Occult
historians generally agree that V.V.V.V.V. signified Vi Veri Vniversum
Vivus Vici ("By the force of truth I have conquered the universe"), one of
the eleven magic mottoes of Aleister Crowley.
 o On conspiracy theories involving the A∴A∴, and the leader, known
only by the initials V.V.V.V.V., in A∴A∴, p. 21 - 22
 Most historians merely mention that Bruno was charged with the
heresy of teaching Copernican astronomy, but Frances Yates, a historian
who specialized in the occult aspects of the scientific revolution, points
out that Bruno was charged with 18 heresies and crimes, including the
practice of sorcery and organizing secret societies to oppose the
Vatican. Yates thinks Bruno may have had a role in the invention of
either Rosicrucianism or Freemasonry or both.
Bruno's teachings combined the new science of his time with
traditional Cabalistic mysticism. He believed in
a universe of infinite space with infinite planets, and in a kind of
dualistic pantheism, in which the divine is incarnate in every part but
always in conflicting forms that both oppose and support each
other. Whatever his link with occult secret societies, he
influenced Hegel, Marx, theosophy, James Joyce, Timothy
Leary, Discordianism, and Dr. Wilhelm Reich.
o "Giordano Bruno", p. 95
 Many tribal peoples have both all-male and all-female secret
societies, which help maintain the cultural values or reality
tunnel. Freemasonry is certainly the largest, and probably the oldest,
and still the most controversial of the all-male secret societies surviving
in our world. No two scholars can even agree on how old it is, much less
on how "good" or "evil" it is. … Although Masonry is often denounced as
either a political or religious "conspiracy", Freemasons are forbidden to
discuss either politics or religion within the lodge. Gary Dryfoos of the
Massachusetts Institute of technology, who maintains the best Masonic
site on the web, always stresses these points and also offers personal
testimony that after many years as a Mason, including high ranks, he has
not yet been asked to engage in pagan or Satanic rituals or plot for any
reason for or against any political party. The more rabid anti-Masons,
of course, dismiss such testimony as flat lies.
The enemies of Masonry, who are usually Roman Catholics or
Fundamentalist Protestants, insist that the rites of the order contain
"pagan" elements, e.g., the Yule festival, the SpringSolstice festival, the
 dead-and-resurrected martyr (Jesus, allegedly historical, to
Christians; Hiram, admittedly allegorical, to Masons). All these and
many other elements in Christianity and Masonry have a long
prehistory in paganism, as documented in the 12 volumes of Sir James
George Frazer's Golden Bough.
The major offense of Masonry to orthodox churches is that it, like
our First Amendment, encourages equal tolerance for all religions,
and this tends, somewhat, to lessen dogmatic allegiance to any one
religion. Those who insist you must accept their dogma fervently and
renounce all others as devilish errors, correctly see this Masonic
tendency as inimitable [sic] — to their faith.
o Freemasonry, p. 187; in the final sentence here, inimitable
perhaps should be "inimicable"
 "Elohim," the name for the creative power in Genesis, is a female
plural, a fact that generations of learned rabbis and
Christian theologians have all explained as merely grammatical
convention. The King James and most other Bibles translate it as "God,"
but if you take the grammar literally, it seems to mean "goddesses." Al
Shaddai, god of battles, appears later, and YHWH,
mispronounced Jehovah, later still.
o Genesis, p. 197
 You need the "is of identity" to describe conspiracy
theories. Korzybski would say that proves that illusions, delusions, and
"mental" illnesses require the "is" to perpetuate them. (He often said,
"Isness is an illness.")
Korzybski also popularized the idea that most sentences, especially the
sentences that people quarrel over or even go to war over, do not rank
as propositions in the logical sense, but belong to the category
that Bertrand Russell called propositional functions. They do not have
one meaning, as a proposition in logic should have; they have
several meanings, like an algebraic function.
o Language as Conspiracy, p. 277
  Dr. Wilhelm Reich was condemned for unscientific claims by the
Food and Drug Administration in 1956 because of
his theories about sexual freedom and his discovery of an alleged
"orgone" energy. He quickly became the most world-famous victim of
the FDA's quest to impose One True Faith on medical practice in the
United States, because the Feds not only destroyed all the equipment in
Dr. Reich's experimental laboratory but burned all his books, too, in an
incinerator, and then they put him in jail where he died of a heart
attack.
Since many disapprove of this unconstitutional way of silencing
heresy, Dr. Reich has remained a center of controversy. … In
addition to his bio-physical heresies, Dr. Reich vastly offended
many people by his sociological theory, which holds that fascism is just
an exaggerated form of the basic structure of sex-negative societies and
has existed under other names in every civilization based on sexual
repression. In this theory, the character and muscular armor of the
average citizen — a submissive and frightened attitude anchored in
body reflexes — causes the average person to want
a strong authority figure above them. Tyranny, in this model, is not
created by tyrants alone but by neurotic masses who want tyrants.
o p. 361; some of Wilson's account of the suppression of Reich's
ideas and work are slightly exaggerative: though an extensive
store of Reich's books mentioning his concepts of orgone energy
and the "orgone accumulators" of his laboratory were destroyed,
the destruction of his equipment and books was not actually total.
Reality Is What You Can Get Away With (1993, 1996)[edit]
An illustrated screenplay first published in 1993 and revised in 1996, but not
(yet) produced in film.
 Everyone has a belief system, B.S., the trick is to learn not to take
anyone's B.S. too seriously, especially your own.
Quotes about Wilson[edit]
Wilson is a primary source for the ironic style of conspiracism, a sensibility
that treats alleged cabals not as intrigues to be exposed or lies to be debunked
but as a bizarre mutantmythos to be mined for laughs, metaphors,
and social insights. ~ Jesse Walker
Quotations listed alphabetically by author or work.
 One of the most profound and important scientific philosophers of
this century … His vast intelligence and sharp wit are sufficient to
shock and enlighten the most heavily imprinted domesticated
primate nervous system.
o Profile page at Deoxy.org
 In a world where we are all giants in a pygmy's hut, fighting over
the space, he was one of the few trying to knock down the walls and
stretch his legs.
o Revered Roshah[citation needed]
 Robert Anton Wilson is the unacknowledged elephant in our
cultural living room: a direct and indirect influence on popular
books, movies, TV shows, music, games, comics, and
commentary. … Wilson is a primary source for the ironic style of
conspiracism, a sensibility that treats alleged cabals not as intrigues to
be exposed or lies to be debunked but as a bizarre mutant mythos to be
mined for laughs, metaphors, and social insights.
o Jesse Walker in "Live From Chapel Perilous : We're living in
Robert Anton Wilson's world" in Reason ( December 2003)