Quotes About Psychedelics

Psychedelics have been used for thousands of years and continue to be a powerful force in the lives of people today.

They enhance creativity, bring wisdom, and aid in self-reflection.

And while they may not be right for everyone, many people find them to provide amazing mental clarity when it comes to personal growth.

Here’s our list of the best quotes about psychedelics:

Psychedelic Quotes About Love

“Love is the most transformative medicine For Love slowly transforms you Into what psychedelics only get you to glimpse.”― Ram Dass

“Hmm. I think love is about loving all things, to treat each and every thing and every one as a sovereign being that’s free to make its own choices.” ― Michael Sanders

“People tend to link “sex and drugs” because both are condemned by society. Nevertheless, throughout the ages human beings have continually searched for more ecstasy, more sexual satisfaction, for solutions to their sexual problems, and for aphrodisiacs.” ― Rick Doblin

“No one wants to be loved out of a sense of duty.” ― Alan W. Watts

“Psychedelic experiences are notoriously hard to render in words; to try is necessarily to do violence to what has been seen and felt, which is in some fundamental way pre- or post-linguistic or, as students of mysticism say, ineffable. Emotions arrive in all their newborn nakedness, unprotected from the harsh light of scrutiny and, especially, the pitiless glare of irony. Platitudes that wouldn’t seem out of place on a Hallmark card flow with the force of revealed truth.

Love is everything.
Okay, but what else did you learn?
No – you must not have heard me; it’s everything!”

― Michael Pollan

“I have been born again,” he told the astonished reporters. “I have been through a psychiatric experience which has completely changed me. I was horrendous. I had to face things about myself which I never admitted, which I didn’t know were there. Now I know that I hurt every woman I ever loved. I was an utter fake, a self-opinionated bore, a know-all who knew very little. “I found I was hiding behind all kinds of defences, hypocrisies and vanities. I had to get rid of them layer by layer. The moment when your conscious meets your subconscious is a hell of a wrench. With me, there came a day when I saw the light.”

― Cary Grant

“Heal yourself with the light of the sun and the rays of the moon. With the sound of the river and the waterfall. With the swaying of the sea and the fluttering of birds. Heal yourself with mint, neem, and eucalyptus. Sweeten with  lavender, rosemary, and chamomile. Hug yourself with the cocoa bean and a  hint of cinnamon. Put love in tea instead of sugar and drink it looking at the stars. Heal yourself with the kisses that the wind gives you and  the hugs of the rain. Stand strong with your bare feet on the ground  and with everything that comes from it. Be smarter every day by listening to your intuition, looking at the world with your forehead. Jump, dance, sing, so that you live happier. Heal yourself, with beautiful love, and always remember … you are the medicine.”

― Maria Sabina

“I believe this theme—love, the need to reconnect with our true selves—addresses the underlying outcome of our psilocybin studies. Yet very often we’re afraid to open ourselves to this connection so we put up barriers and wear masks. If we are able to remove the barriers, to let down our defenses, we can begin to know and accept ourselves, thus allowing ourselves to receive and to give love.”

― Mary Cosimano

“I experienced this kind of unity, of resonant love, the sense that I’m not alone anymore, that there was this thing holding me that was bigger than my grief. I felt welcomed back to the world.”

― Rachael Peterson

Psychedelic Quotes About Life

“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behaviour and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.” ― Terence McKenna

“Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego.” ― Terence McKenna

“Shrooms giveth and taketh away.” ― A.D. Aliwat

“I sit up and stare with eyes closed, perceiving the infinity of this dimension, so grateful to experience this, comfortable with the idea of this journey either ending shortly or continuing forever.” ― Michael Sanders

“These days, when I knock on the doors of the Tryptamine Palace, I am no longer greeted with unconditional love, but instead, I am reminded of the responsibility that comes with ultimate knowledge: an undeniable responsibility to myself, to my tribe, to my species, to my planet.” ― James Oroc

“View the gradients of adversity as the colors that paint your story, and the power of experience as what makes you a great teacher, creator, philosopher, entrepreneur, artist, and human.

Everything works out eventually.

I promise.” ― Jennifer Sodini

“The cultural integration of psychedelics won’t happen overnight, and the question of young people is perhaps the most difficult involved. The first step is for people who have knowledge of these substances to share it, “coming out” about their own experiences. Drug education should be honest and present a balanced picture of risks and benefits.” ― Rick Doblin

“Subjects see new dimensions in the universe, have strong feelings of being an integral part of creation, and tend to regard ordinary things in everyday life—such as meals, walks in nature, playing with children, or sexual intercourse—as sacred.”

― Stanislav Grof

“With psychedelics, if you’re fortunate and break through, you understand what is truly of value in life. Material, power, dominance, and territory have no value. People wouldn’t fight wars, and the whole system we have currently would fall apart. People would become peaceful, loving citizens, not robots marching around in the dark with all their lights off.”

― Gary Fisher

“We don’t do psychedelics all the time, not in the least. It’s an experience though, that never leaves you. It stays with you for your whole life, and the learning and the lessons just grow and evolve.”

― Allyson Gray

“Taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life. LSD shows you that there’s another side to the coin, and you can’t remember it when it wears off, but you know it. It reinforced my sense of what was important creating great things instead of making money, putting things back into the stream of history and of human consciousness as much as I could.”

― Steve Jobs

“If life wasn’t real it would be the craziest psychedelic trip ever.”

― Joe Rogan

Psychedelic Quotes About Spirituality

“The opposite of spiritual is not material but egotistical.” ― Michael Pollan

“Spirituality destroys the ego. Religion strengthens it.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“Psychedelics are not a substitute for faith. They are a door to authentic faith, born of encountering directly the sacred dimension of everyday experience. This is not the only gate to that discovery, but it is the most ancient and universal, and potentially the most accessible to the majority of the human race.” ― Rick Doblin

“There’s this illusion that science and spiritual practices are separate. I actually don’t think that’s true.”

― Caitlin Thompson

“I am convinced that the way forward for the human race is to recognize and protect the fundamental right of sovereignty over consciousness, to throw off the chains of our divisive religious heritage, to seek out forms of spirituality (or no spirituality at all if we so prefer) that are truly supportive of liberty and tolerance, to help the human spirit to grow rather than to wither, and to nurture our innate capacity for love and mutual respect. The old ways are broken and bankrupt and new ways are struggling to be born. Each one of us with our own talents, and by our own choices, has a part to play in that process.”

― Graham Hancock

“Through all of history, mankind has ingested psychedelic substances. Those substances exist to put you in touch with spirits beyond yourself, with the creator, with the creative impulse of the planet.”

― Ray Manzarek

Psychedelic Quotes About Nature

“I was on acid and I looked at the trees and I realized that they all came to points, and the little branches came to points, and the houses came to point. I thought, ‘Oh! Everything has a point, and if it doesn’t, then there’s a point to it.” ― Harry Nilsson

“Shrooms are full of shit. That’s the whole story. Grown in shit, it’s their essence: they try to humble you in these ways that bring you down to their level.” ― A.D. Aliwat

“True, the seed does not intend to move itself with the wind, but neither did I intend to have arms and legs.” ― Alan W. Watts

“Nature does in fact teem with subjectivities — call them spirits if you like — other than our own; it is only the human ego, with its imagined monopoly on subjectivity, that keeps us from recognizing them all, our kith and kin.” ― Michael Pollan

“One psychedelic trip can make you understand more about the nature of reality than 1000s of hours of “doing” science.”― Robert Celner

“Perspective shifted on why it must ‘hurt to heal’, and a series of questions kept coming to mind. I found myself wondering if these medicines always ‘hurt’, or do they hurt so much now to show us how separate we are from nature? Perhaps these ‘revelations in pain’ are necessary in order for a personal apocalypse to occur so you may have a shift in perception, and a greater understanding of your role in the whole? To realize that we are not foreign from nature, nature is where we come from and where we return to.” ― Jennifer Sodini

“I feel part of the environment, not separate from it, as though I’m at home rather than visiting—as though I’m tapped into some eternal omnipresence beyond the transient physical forms.” ― Michael Sanders

“…psilocybin can offer a means to reconnect to our true nature—our authentic self—and thereby help find meaning in our lives.”

― Mary Cosimano

Psychedelic Quotes About Self

“The old you is only a shadow of the reality which is the new you. The shadow is useless without its reality.” ― Efrat Cybulkiewicz

“You, being nothing but awareness, are the stage—the only stage—on which, not to whom, life is happening.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“You do not choose your thoughts. In fact, they are not yours. What’s more, you, too, are a thought.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“To hold sovereign and exclusive ownership of one’s own conscious mind, to explore freely and without boundary, is surely the most fundamental of human rights. Third party intrusion into this wholly personal territory is a grievous breach of this inalienable freedom.” ― Dominic Milton Trott

“We are sneaking psychedelics back into our society through research like the MDMA research that’s going on, through the research for the use of marijuana for pain, through research with the dying [with psilocybin], and ultimately we will do the same kind of stuff about alcoholism, about prison rehabilitation, so on. I mean, its obvious that psychedelics, properly used, have a behavior-change psychotherapeutic value. But from my point of view, that is all underusing the vehicle. The potential of the vehicle is sacramentally to take you out of the cultural constructs which you are part of a conspiracy in maintaining. And giving you a chance to experience once again your innocence.” ― Ram Dass

“This is the oldest form of living communication; the brotherhood of breath.” ― Timothy Leary

“There is no difference in principle between sharpening perception with an external instrument, such as a microscope, and sharpening it with an internal instrument, such as one of these three drugs. If they are an affront to the dignity of the mind, the microscope is an affront to the dignity of the eye and the telephone to the dignity of the ear. Strictly speaking, these drugs do not impart wisdom at all, any more than the microscope alone gives knowledge.” ― Alan W. Watts

“[T]he present is self-sufficient, but it is not a static present. It is a dancing present—the unfolding of a pattern which has no specific destination in the future but is simply its own point. It leaves and arrives simultaneously, and the seed is as much the goal as the flower.” ― Alan W. Watts

“Unlike happiness, unhappiness cannot happen without the presence of an ego.” ― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“It’s a remarkable experience to ask yourself identity-crisis questions from a comic book movie with a mostly straight face, but I don’t recommend it.” ― Jonathan Talat Phillips

““How about a positive LSD story? Wouldn’t that be news-worthy, just the once? To base your decision on information rather than scare tactics and superstition and lies? I think it would be news-worthy. ‘Today, a young man on acid realized that all matter is merely energy condensed to a slow vibration. That we are all one consciousness experiencing itself subjectively. There is no such thing as death, life is only a dream and we’re the imagination of ourselves’ . . . ‘ Here’s Tom with the weather.’”

― Bill Hicks

Psychedelic Quotes About Reality

“LSD is a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have NOT taken it.” ― Timothy Leary

“It’s a very salutary thing to realize that the rather dull universe in which most of us spend most of our time is not the only universe there is. I think it’s healthy that people should have this experience.” ― Aldous Huxley

“Through psychedelics we are learning that God is not an idea, God is a lost continent in the human mind. That continent has been rediscovered in a time of great peril for ourselves and our world. Is this coincidence, synchronicity, or a cruelly meaningless juxtaposition of hope and ruin?” ― Terrence McKenna

“You live in a limitless reality. Whatever boundary you construct is a lingering self-created thought. There is a paradise beyond.” ― Vladimir Hlocky

“People have been willing to alter their perceptions of reality for as long as there have been people, and now, the newest and oldest tools to explore ways for self-transcendence are coming together: Biohacking is on the rise and psychedelics are now oftentimes used to enhance experience in virtual reality.” ― Alex M. Vikoulov

“The only way to write honestly about the scene is to be part of it. If there is one quick truism about psychedelic drugs, it is that anyone who tries to write about them without first-expierience is a fool and a fraud.” ― Hunter S. Thompson

“The music was intended to replicate or even enhance the mind-altering experiences of the psychedelic drugs. They were using electric guitars, wah-wah pedals, loop music to create ostinato patterns, electric organs, synthesizers (nobody even had any idea what that was at the time, but it was cool to throw it into a conversation), electro-mechanical polyphonic tape replay keyboards, fuzz box effects, backward tapes, you name it. Anything went.” ― Karl Wiggins

“Things are pretty strange in this world and people do it many ways and you are just an atom in a galaxy of possibilities and your opinions and your science and ‘What I think’ and all that, is just so much noise in a very complex and busy world. And it’s that same humbling perception that comes out of psychedelics. It just shows you, you’re very parochial.” ― Terence McKenna

“When free from the confines of our normal identity, we are able to look at life, and the often repetitive stories we tell about it, with fresh eyes. Come Monday morning, we may still clamber back into the monkey suits of our everyday roles—parent, spouse, employee, boss, neighbor—but, by then, we know they’re just costumes with zippers.” ― Steven Kotler

“Psychedelics show you what’s in and on your mind, those subconscious thoughts and feelings that are are hidden, covered up, forgotten, out of sight, maybe even completely unexpected, but nevertheless imminently present. Depending upon set and setting, the same drug, at the same dose, can cause vastly different responses in the same person. One day, very little happens; another day, you soar, full of ecstatic and insightful discoveries; the next, you struggle through a terrifying nightmare. The generic nature of psychedelic, a term wide open to interpretation, suits these effects.” ― Rick Strassman M.D.

“Part of what psychedelics do is they decondition you from cultural values. This is what makes it such a political hot potato. Since all culture is a kind of con game, the most dangerous candy you can hand out is one which causes people to start questioning the rules of the game.” ― Terence McKenna

“I think of going to the Grave without having a Psychedelic Experience is like going to the Grave without ever having Sex. It means that you never Figured out what it is all about. The Mystery is in the Body and the way the Body Works itself into Nature.” ― Terence McKenna