Tom Robbins — Quotes & Such
On Politics — I define politics as "the desire to preside over property and make other people's decisions for them." Since I don't need anyone to preside over my property, and cannot tolerate others making my decisions, I'm not simply apolitical, I'm anti-political. In a sense I'm an anarchist because, at its best, what anarchy is really all about is thinking for oneself and taking responsibility for one's own life. The "thinking for oneself" is the part that the so-called "politically correct" don't seem to understand or be able to handle. All too frequently, they just mindlessly regurgitate dogma while refusing to make situational distinctions. I share many of their concerns, especially environmental concerns, but you'll never find me toeing any party line. -- Tom Robbins from interview in "Common Ground" August, 2001

On the Right and the Left — "The ultimate end of any ideology is totalitarianism. Today, the religious right and the academic left seem to be in some kind of competition to brutalize the gene pool. As agents of homogenization, both sides are committed to institutionalized mediocrity. They want to re-create the world in their image, and re-create society to fit the contours of their fears."
-- Tom Robbins

On the meaning of Life — It's about time we came to terms with the paradoxical nature of the universe. The great struggle in life is not between good and evil, which are both relative terms, but between the desire for certainty and the desire for freedom. Freedom and certainty cannot equally coexist. The more you have of one, the less you have of the other. And certainty is merely an illusionary product of fear. On perhaps an even wider scale, the dichotomy is between the Big Lie and the Big Joke. If you don't want to be controlled and manipulated by the Big Lie — as perpetrated by all of our institutions: governmental, corporate, academic, social and religious — then your only choice is to recognize and embrace the Big Joke. -- Tom Robbins from interview in "Common Ground" August, 2001

On Freedom & Creativity — ''Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow -- whether there is a market for it or not! The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don't show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward." --Kurt Vonnegut (Yea, but I think he's a friend of Robbin's.)

On the Soul — "If you need to visualize the soul, think of it as a cross between a wolf howl, a photon, and a dribble of dark molasses. But what it really is, as near as I can tell, is a packet of information. It's a program, a piece of hyperspatial software designed explicitly to interface with the Mystery. Not a mystery, mind you, the Mystery. The one that can never be solved. Data in our psychic program is often nonlinear, nonhierarchical, archaic, alive, and teeming with paradox. Simply booting up is a challenge, if not for no other reason than that most of us find acknowledging the unknowable and monitoring its intrusions upon the familiar and mundane more than a little embarrassing.

More immediately, by waxing soulful you will have granted yourself the possibility of ecstatic participation in what the ancients considered a divinely animated universe. And on a day to day basis, folks, it doesn't get any better than that."
--Tom Robbins in Esquire

On the Ego — "Hell is a large stiff ego. Heaven is a large loose ego." -- Tom Robbins

On taking Responsibility — "If you lack the iron and the fizz to take control of your own life, if you insist on leaving your fate to the gods, then the gods will repay your weakness by having a grin or two at your expense. Should you fail to pilot your own ship, don't be surprised at what inappropriate port you find yourself docked. The price of self-destiny is never cheap, and in certain situations it is unthinkable. But to achieve the marvelous, it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought."
- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"

On luck — "There's always the same amount of good luck and bad luck in the world. If one person doesn't get the bad luck, somebody else will have to get it in their place. There's always been the same amount of good and evil, too. We can't eradicate evil - we can only evict it, force it to move across town for awhile. And when evil moves, some good always goes with it. But we can never alter the ratio of good to evil. All we can do is keep things stirred up so neither good nor evil solidifies. That's when things get scary. Life is like a stew, you have to stir frequently, or all the scum rises to the top."
- Tom Robbins, "Still Life with Woodpecker"

On The Fool's Journey — "The whole Tarot deck, or at least the twenty-two trump cards of the Major Arcana, may be read as the Fool's journey. On one important level, the major cards are chapters in the story of a quest. I'm talking the universal human quest for understanding and divine reunion. And it doesn't matter whether the quest starts with the Fool, or ends with him, because it's a loop anyhow, a cycle endlessly repeated when the naive young Fool finally tumbles over the precipice, he falls into the world of experience. Now his journey has really begun. Along the way, he'll meet all the teachers and tempters - the tempters are teachers too - and challenging situations that a person is likely to meet in the task of his or her growing. The Fool is potentially everybody, but not everybody has the wisdom or the guts to play the Fool. A lot of folks don't know what's in that bag they're carrying. And they're all to willing to trade it for cash. Inside the bag, they have every tool they need to facilitate their life's journey, but they won't even open it up and glance inside. Subconsciously, the goal of all of us out-of-control primates is essentially the same, but let me assure you of this: the only ones who'll ever reach that goal are the ones who have the courage to make fools of themselves along the way."
- Tom Robbins, "Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas"

On Individuality — "Our individuality is all, ALL, that we have. There are those who barter it for security, those who repress it for what they believe is the betterment of the whole society, but blessed in the twinkle of the morning star is the one who nurtures it and rides it, in grace and love and wit, from peculiar station to peculiar station along life's bittersweet route."
- Tom Robbins, "Jitterbug Perfume"

On Sex — "We all want to be in touch with the divine. We all want to dissolve the ego. That's why orgasms are so popular." Tom Robbins

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