Top 200 Ken Kesey Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “But I tried, didn’t I? Goddamnit, at least I did that.”

— Ken Kesey

2. “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.”

— Ken Kesey

Featured in: Leadership Quotes

3. “Since we don’t know where we’re going, we have to stick together in case someone gets there.”

— Ken Kesey

4. “Always stay in your own movie.”

— Ken Kesey

5. “Now, you’re either on the bus or you’re off the bus.”

— Ken Kesey

6. “You can count how many seeds are in the apple, but not how many apples are in the seed.”

— Ken Kesey

7. “To hell with facts! We need stories.”

— Ken Kesey

Featured in: Quotes About Stories

8. “The job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

— Ken Kesey

9. “See with your ears and hear with your eyes.”

— Ken Kesey

10. “There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. If you’re on the bus, and you get left behind, then you’ll find it again. If you’re off the bus in the first place – then it won’t make a damn.”

— Ken Kesey

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

11. “He Who Marches Out Of Step Hears Another Drum.”

— Ken Kesey

12. “You can’t really be strong until you see a funny side to things.”

— Ken Kesey

13. “Ocean, Ocean I’ll beat you in the end.”

— Ken Kesey

14. “The man who seeks revenge digs two graves.”

— Ken Kesey

15. “No, my friend. We are lunatics from the hospital up the highway, psycho-ceramics, the cracked pots of mankind. Would you like me to decipher a Rorschach for you?”

— Ken Kesey

16. “The job of the writer is to kiss no ass, no matter how big and holy and white and tempting and powerful.”

— Ken Kesey

17. “The world news might not be therapeutic.”

— Ken Kesey

18. “All I know is this: nobody’s very big in the first place, and it looks to me like everybody spends their whole life tearing everybody else down.”

— Ken Kesey

Featured in: Firsts Quotes

19. “High high in the hills, high in a pine tree bed. She’s tracing the wind with that old hand, counting the clouds with that old chant, Three geese in a flock one flew east one flew west one flew over the cuckoo’s nest.”

— Ken Kesey

20. “Sometimes the need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”

— Ken Kesey

21. “The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery.”

— Ken Kesey

22. “But it’s the truth even if it didn’t happen.”

— Ken Kesey

23. “Your trouble is, you keep trying to unscrew the unscrutable.”

— Ken Kesey

24. “I’ve found psychedelics to be keys to worlds that have always existed, that have to be talked about.”

— Ken Kesey

25. “To Vik Lovell who told me dragons did not exist, then led me to their lairs...”

— Ken Kesey

26. “He knows that you have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from running you plumb crazy.”

— Ken Kesey

27. “It’s time to move on to the next step in the psychedelic revolution. We’ve reached a certain point, but we’re not moving any more.”

— Ken Kesey

28. “If you don’t watch it people will force you one way or the other, into doing what they think you should do, or into just being mule-stubborn and doing the opposite out of spite.”

— Ken Kesey

29. “Plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom.”

— Ken Kesey

30. “Take what you can use and let the rest go by.”

— Ken Kesey

31. “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

32. “We think we’re in the present, but we aren’t. The present we know is only a movie of the past.”

— Ken Kesey

33. “There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus.”

— Ken Kesey

34. “I’d take a look at my own self in the mirror and wonder how it was possible that anybody could manage such an enormous thing as being what he was.”

— Ken Kesey

35. “People don’t want other people to get high, because if you get high, you might see the falsity of the fabric of the society we live in.”

— Ken Kesey

36. “There is generally one person in every situation you must never underestimate the power of.”

— Ken Kesey

37. “Ritual is necessary for us to know anything.”

— Ken Kesey

38. “When we first broke into that forbidden box in the other dimension, we knew we had discovered something as surprising and powerful as the New World when Columbus came stumbling onto it.”

— Ken Kesey

39. “If you’re a Conservative, why aren’t you behind conserving the land?”

— Ken Kesey

40. “It has been often said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the fruits of weakness. The resentment of the weak does not spring from any injustice done to them but from the sense of their inadequacy and impotence.”

— Ken Kesey

41. “But I remember one thing: it wasn’t me that started acting deaf; it was people that first started acting like I was too dumb to hear or see or say anything at all.”

— Ken Kesey

42. “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

43. “Hell of a life. Damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Puts a man in one confounded bind, I’d say.” McMurphy.”

— Ken Kesey

44. “His whole body shakes with the strain as he tries to lift something he knows he can’t lift, something everybody knows he can’t lift. But, for just a second, when we hear the cement grind at our feet, we think, by golly, he might do it.”

— Ken Kesey

45. “There’s something about taking a plow and breaking new ground. It gives you energy.”

— Ken Kesey

46. “I listened to them fade away till all I could hear was my memory of the sound.”

— Ken Kesey

47. “There’s no doubt in my mind that McMurphy’s won, but I’m not sure what.”

— Ken Kesey

48. “Look... Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier. And the lives of such stuff as dreams are made of may be rounded with a sleep but they are not tied neatly with a red bow. Truth doesn’t run on time like a commuter train, though time may run on truth. And the Scenes Gone By and the Scenes to Come flow blending together in the sea-green deep while Now spreads in circles on the surface. So don’t sweat it. For focus simply move a few inches back or forward. And once more... look.”

— Ken Kesey

49. “People think love is an emotion. Love is good sense.”

— Ken Kesey

50. “Man, when you lose your laugh you lose your footing.”

— Ken Kesey