The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we're doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.

Tom Robbins

When we're incomplete, we're always searching for somebody to complete us. When, after a few years or a few months of a relationship, we find that we're still unfulfilled, we blame our partners and take up with somebody more promising. This can go on and on - series polygamy - until we admit that while a partner can add sweet dimension to our lives, we, each of us, are responsible for our own fulfillment. Nobody else can provide it for us, and to believe otherwise is to delude ourselves dangerously and to program for eventual failure every relationship we enter.

Tom Robbins

wedding love relationship

We waste time looking for the perfect lover, instead of creating the perfect love.

Tom Robbins

marriage time love

You should never hesitate to trade your cow for a handful of magic beans.

Tom Robbins

anxiety magic inspiration

Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business.

Tom Robbins

government humor believe

To achieve the impossible; it is precisely the unthinkable that must be thought.

Tom Robbins

positive-thinking perspective leadership

Our greatest human adventure is the evolution of consciousness. We are in this life to enlarge the soul, liberate the spirit, and light up the brain.

Tom Robbins

light soul adventure

The enemy of the black is not the white. The enemy of capitalist is not communist, the enemy of homosexual is not heterosexual, the enemy of Jew is not Arab, the enemy of youth is not the old, the enemy of hip is not redneck, the enemy of Chicano is not gringo and the enemy of women is not men. We all have the same enemy. The enemy is the tyranny of the dull mind. The enemy is every expert who practices technocratic manipulation, the enemy is every proponent of standardization and the enemy is every victim who is so dull and lazy and weak as to allow himself to be manipulated and standardized.

Tom Robbins

redneck white men

there are two kinds of people in this world : those who believe there are two kinds of people in this world and those who are smart enough to know better.

Tom Robbins

smart two believe

To emphasize the afterlife is to deny life. To concentrate on heaven is to create hell.

Tom Robbins

afterlife hell heaven

Throughout most of our history, nothing - not flood, famine, plague, or new weapons - has endangered humanity one-tenth as much as the narcissistic ego, with its self-aggrandizing presumptions and its hell-hound spawn of fear and greed.

Tom Robbins

greed humanity self

You risked your life, but what else have you ever risked? Have you risked disapproval? Have you ever risked economic security? Have you ever risked a belief? I see nothing particularly courageous about risking one's life. So you lose it, you go to your hero's heaven and everything is milk and honey 'til the end of time. Right? You get your reward and suffer no earthly consequences. That's not courage. Real courage is risking something that might force you to rethink your thoughts and suffer change and stretch consciousness. Real courage is risking one's clichés.

Tom Robbins

milk-and-honey real hero

A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. Embrace failure! Seek it out. Learn to love it. That may be the only way any of us will ever be free.

Tom Robbins

still-life-with-woodpecker may way

The only authority I respect is the one that causes butterflies to fly south in fall and north in springtime.

Tom Robbins

butterfly causes fall

Of the Seven Dwarfs, the only one who shaved was Dopey. That should tell us something about the wisdom of shaving.

Tom Robbins

shaving seven should

We're our own dragons as well as our own heroes, and we have to rescue ourselves from ourselves.

Tom Robbins

hero healing funny

The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only way that the mediocre and the vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. Loving makes love. Loving makes itself. We waste time looking for the perfect lover instead of creating the perfect love. Wouldn't that be the way to make love stay?

Tom Robbins

creating perfect people

Our similarities bring us to a common ground;

Tom Robbins

similarity differences common

There is no such thing as a weird human being, It's just that some people require more understanding than others.

Tom Robbins

being-weird understanding people

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence. When you're unhappy, you get to pay a lot of attention to yourself. You get to take yourself oh so very seriously.

Tom Robbins

cheer dream love

The world is a wonderfully weird place, consensual reality is significantly flawed, no institution can be trusted, certainty is a mirage, security a delusion, and the tyranny of the dull mind forever threatens -- but our lives are not as limited as we think they are, all things are possible, laughter is holier than piety, freedom is sweeter than fame, and in the end it's love and love alone that really matters.

Tom Robbins

laughter reality thinking