Image: Re-cropped derivative work: Burn t (talk) Burroughs1983_cropped.jpg: Chuck Patch, CC BY-SA 2.0
38 quotes
American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer (1914–1997)
“Virtue is simply happiness, and happiness is a by-product of function. You are happy when you are functioning.”
"There are no innocent bystanders ... what are they doing there in the first place?"
on Social Justice
"The simplest questions are the most difficult."
on Critical Thinking
"Artists to my mind are the real architects of change, and not the political legislators who implement change after the fact."
on Art
"Happiness is a byproduct of function, purpose, and conflict; those who seek happiness for itself seek victory without war."
on Happiness
"Language is a virus from outer space."
on Language
"Poverty, hatred, war, police-criminals, bureaucracy, insanity, all symptoms of The Human Virus."
on Society
"There couldn't be a society of people who didn't dream. They'd be dead in two weeks."
on Dreams
"A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on."
on Psychology
"The best way to keep something bad from happening is to see it ahead of time... and you can't see it if you refuse to face the possibility."
on Wisdom
"The price an artist pays for doing what he wants is that he has to do it."
"Jesus Christ said 'by their fruits ye shall know them,' not by their disclaimers."
on Faith
"Desperation is the raw material of drastic change. Only those who can leave behind everything they have ever believed in can hope to escape."
on Life
"Intelligence and war are games, perhaps the only meaningful games left. If any player becomes too proficient, the game is threatened with termination."
on War
"Your knowledge of what is going on can only be superficial and relative."
on Knowledge
"You must learn to exist with no religion, no country, no allies. You must learn to live alone in silence."
on Philosophy
"Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax and wait for the answer."
on Mindfulness
"The aim of education is the knowledge, not of facts, but of values."
on Education
"How long does it take man to realize that he cannot want what he wants? You have to live in hell to see heaven."
"Panic is the sudden realization that everything around you is alive."
on Fear
"A junkie spends half his life waiting."
on Addiction
