Philosophy Quote by William S. Burroughs — Inspiring Words on Life, Love & Wisdom

“when I become death. Death is the seed from which I grow.”

“Nobody owns life, but anyone who can pick up a frying pan owns death.”

“There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve.”

“To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room. … Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life…”

“A paranoid is someone who knows a little of what's going on.”

“Fear of death is form of stasis horrors. The dead weight of time.”

“But by the grace of God I am what I am: and his grace which was bestowed upon me was not in vain; but i laboured more abundantly than they all: yet not I, but the grace of God which was with me.”

“Logic in all its infinite potential, is the most dangerous of vices. For one can always find some form of logic to justify his action, and rest comfortably in the assurance, that what he did abides by reason. That is why, for us brittle beings, Intention is the only true weapon of peace.”

“Anyone who fights for the future, lives in it today.”

“The hardest thing in the world is to let go of who you once thought you were and to manifest your true self, at the risk of being unloved. This is self-actualization.”

“To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.”

“A person who has not been completely alienated, who has remained sensitive and able to feel, who has not lost the sense of dignity, who is not yet "for sale", who can still suffer over the suffering of others, who has not acquired fully the having mode of existence - briefly, a person who has remained a person and not become a thing - cannot help feeling lonely, powerless, isolated in present-day society. He cannot help doubting himself and his own convictions, if not his sanity. He cannot help suffering, even though he can experience moments of joy and clarity that are absent in the life of his "normal" contemporaries. Not rarely will he suffer from neurosis that results from the situation of a sane man living in an insane society, rather than that of the more conventional neurosis of a sick man trying to adapt himself to a sick society. In the process of going further in his analysis, i.e. of growing to greater independence and productivity,his neurotic symptoms will cure themselves.”