“Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself.”

“Civilization is unbearable, but it is less unbearable at the top.”

“Learning how to operate a soul figures to take time.”

“The universe is an intelligence test.”

“We are dealing with the best-educated generation in history. But they've got a brain dressed up with nowhere to go.”

“In the information age, you don't teach philosophy as they did after feudalism. You perform it. If Aristotle were alive today he'd have a talk show.”

“Science is all metaphor.”

“Throughout human history, as our species has faced the frightening, terrorizing fact that we do not know who we are, or where we are going in this ocean of chaos, it has been the authorities, the political, the religious, the educational authorities who attempted to comfort us by giving us order, rules, regulations, informing, forming in our minds their view of reality. To think for yourself you must question authority and learn how to put yourself in a state of vulnerable, open-mindedness; chaotic, confused, vulnerability to inform yourself.”

“Women who seek to be equal with men lack ambition.”

“I only had to drop acid once to know that Timothy Leary was right about questioning authority.Motorcycling is like life. There's nothing solid about it. Something not even the asphalt under your tires.Time on a motorcycle is unlike time spent anywhere else. There are moments lost in the landscape, seconds devoted solely to balance, and long stretches spent spiraling inward.”

“At the sensory level I am the divine receiving station...a two-legged, trembling-tissue, Jodrell Bank radar telescope, dancing, grumbling, sniffling Geiger counter""But there's an added feature. Each generation, I...return. Each time carried onstage, blinking, puking, bawling, bewildered by the bizarre novelty of each new drama, untutored in the language of the new script (did she say her name was Mommie?)”