Ken Kesey - Man Quotes

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Maybe not you, buddy, but the rest are even scared to open up and laugh. You know, that's the first thing that got me about this place, that there wasn't anybody laughing. I haven't heard a real laugh since I came through that door, do you know that? Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.

Ken Kesey
Once upon a time a young man of American background thought he had discovered the Great Secret, the Skeleton Key to the Cosmos, the Absolute Answer to the Age Old Question asked by every Wizard, and Alchemist and Mystic that ever peered curiously into the Perplexing Heavens, by every Doctor and Scientist and Explorer that ever wondered about the Winding Ways of this world, by every Philosopher and Holyman and Politician that ever listened for the Mysterious Song beneath the beat of the Human Heart... the answer to "What Makes It All Go?"

Ken Kesey
The secret of being a top-notch con man is being able to know what the mark wants, and how to make him think he's getting it.

Ken Kesey
You're making sense, old man, a sense of your own. You're not crazy the way they think. Yes...I see...

Ken Kesey
No one's ever dared come out and say it before, but there's not a man among us that doesn't think it, that doesn't feel just as you do about her and the whole business - feel it somewhere down deep in his scared little soul.

Ken Kesey
Never before did I realize that mental illness could have the aspect of power, power. Think of it: perhaps the more insane a man is, the more powerful he could become. Hitler an example. Fair makes the old brain reel, doesn't it?

Ken Kesey
Man is certain of nothing but his ability to fail. It is the deepest faith we have, and the unbeliever- the blasphemer, the dissenter- will stimulate in us the most righteous of furies.

Ken Kesey
What can you pay for the way a man lives? What can you pay for what a man is?

Ken Kesey
There's shames a man can never reason away, though he looks back and piles up reasons over them forty dozen deep. And maybe those are the shames a man never should reason away.

Ken Kesey
Alongside the statement about one man's poison being another man's high, one might as well add that one man's saint can be another man's sore and one man's hero can turn out to be that man's biggest hangup.

Ken Kesey