If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe…

If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, acting lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that’s perfectly valid— but don’t go out trying to sell your beliefs to the system. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself.

Sourced, Still Life with Woodpecker
(1980)

Other Tom Robbins Quotes

…she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen them but as she eventually chose to perceive them, not only a capacity to observe the world but a capacity to alter his or her observation of it—which, in the end, is the capacity to alter the world, itself. Those people who recognise that imagination is reality’s master, we call “sages,” and those who act upon it, we call “artists.” - View Quote Details on …she recreated the mountains not as she had originally seen…
So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well, you probably are. What’s wrong with that? In the first place, if you’ve any sense at all you must have learned by now that we pay just as dearly for our triumphs as we do for our defeats. Go ahead and fail. But fail with wit, fail with grace, fail with style. A mediocre failure is as insufferable as a mediocre success. - View Quote Details on So you think that you’re a failure, do you? Well,…
Birth and death were easy. It was life that was hard. - View Quote Details on Birth and death were easy. It was life that was…
A rabbi’s dog could score pork chops in the streets of Tel Aviv easier than Bernard could acquire tequila in King County Jail. - View Quote Details on A rabbi’s dog could score pork chops in the streets…
On the poor use of grammar It’s a matter of usage. If a house is off-plumb and rickety and lets in the wind, you blame the mason, not the bricks. Our words are up to the job. It’s our syntax that’s limiting. - View Quote Details on On the poor use of grammar It’s a matter of…
Most snoring is composed by Beethoven or Wagner, although a few times Wiggs had heard heavy metal rock performed on the somnambulate bassoon. - View Quote Details on Most snoring is composed by Beethoven or Wagner, although a…
…that she was the one who’d made friends with the Snake, that she’d let it lick the blood of her first menstruation, that she… ooo eee, that she… ooo eee, that she… ooo, eee, that she now knew what the Serpent knew. - View Quote Details on …that she was the one who’d made friends with the…
For most people, self-awarness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early adolescence. Its about that time that we start viewing the world as something other than a whoop-de-doo playground, we start to experience personally how threatening it can be, how cruel and unjust. At the very moment when we become, for the first time, both introspective and socially conscientious, we receive the bad news that the world, by and large, doesn’t give a rat’s ass - View Quote Details on For most people, self-awarness and self-pity blossom simultaneously in early…
There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the typewriter. The trick is, when you spill something, make it look like a part of the act. - View Quote Details on There is a similarity between juggling and composing on the…
When a man confines an animal in a cage, he assumes ownership of that animal. But an animal is an individual; it cannot be owned. When a man tries to own an individual, whether that individual be another man, an animal or even a tree, he suffers the psychic consequences of an unnatural act. - View Quote Details on When a man confines an animal in a cage, he…