We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor. - Robert Anton Wilson

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We're trapped in linguistic constructs... all that is is metaphor.

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About Robert Anton Wilson

Robert Anton Wilson (18 January 1932 – 11 January 2007) was an American novelist, essayist, absurdist philosopher, futurist, and guerilla ontologist, most famous for his satirical work (with Robert Shea), The Illuminatus! Trilogy.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Alternative Names: Robert Edward Wilson
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Additional quotes by Robert Anton Wilson

When you're dealing with these forces or powers in a philosophic and scientific way, contemplating them from an armchair, that rationalistic approach is useful. It is quite profitable then to regard the gods and goddesses and demons as projections of the human mind or as unconscious aspects of ourselves. But every truth is a truth only for one place and one time, and that's a truth, as I said, for the armchair. When you're actually dealing with these figures, the only safe, pragmatic and operational approach is to treat them as having a being, a will, and a purpose entirely apart from the humans who evoke them. If the Sorcerer's Apprentice had understood that, he wouldn't have gotten into so much trouble.

If one can only see things according to one's own belief system, one is destined to become virtually deaf, dumb, and blind.

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To say that one goes on holiday is to speak the language of the working class, for whom the time off appears merry and playful; but to say one goes on vacation is to speak the language of the ruling class. Vacation comes from the same root as vacant and reflects what the owner sees when he looks around the floor — a vacancy where John 'should' 'be'. (I suspect that the owner probably thinks some negative thoughts about the Labor Unions and the 'damned Liberal' Government that force him to pay John even when John 'is vacant.')

I leave it as a puzzle for the reader: Do the Irish and English speak Working Class in this case because they have had several socialist governments, or have the had several socialist governments because they learned to speak the language of the Working Class? And: has the U.S., alone among industrial nations, never had a socialist government because it speaks the Ruling Class language, or does it speak the Ruling Class language because it has never had a socialist government?

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