But technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space.

The numinous depth of the mystery that seems to have called us out of the animal mind is completely impenetrable to modern analysis.

Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered. Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored.

Ecstasy is a complex emotion containing elements of joy, fear, terror, triumph, surrender, and empathy. What has replaced our prehistoric understanding of this complex of ecstasy now is the word comfort, a tremendously bloodless notion. Drugs are not comfortable, and anyone who thinks they are comfortable or even escapist should not toy with drugs unless they’re willing to get their noses rubbed in their own stuff.

Part of what is wrong with our society, and hence with ourselves, is that we consume images, we don't produce them. We need to produce, not consume, media.

I think that a lot of people are making a lot of money spreading anxiety. Anxiety sells.

For me, the glory of the human animal is cognitive activity.