The drug culture is full of wisdom, weirdos and literary diatribes to show us just how boring the world would be if the recreational use of mind-altering substances did not exist. Despite the nonsense upstanding society attempts to teach the flock from an early age, there is very little in the way of art, music or literature that could be enjoyed by the masses today had it not been for someone getting really high on drugs. It is worth mentioning, however, that there could be no dynamic of good and evil without the legion of opposing forces filling the minds of the American populous with “Say Nope to Dope” propaganda in order to keep the sheep from realizing that the grass is only greener in the United States as long as you don’t burn it!

Yet, as clever as the anti-drug regime has fought to be throughout the years, their creative forces have been no match for those geniuses who have smoked, snorted, and tripped their way over to the other side. As a celebration of this beautiful madness, we have assembled this list of 36 famous, funny, truly inspiration and asinine quotes about drugs.

Go forth…be stoned and enlightened:

“Why is marijuana against the law? It grows naturally upon our planet. Doesn’t the idea of making nature against the law seem to you a bit . . . unnatural?” – Bill Hicks

“Ignore that nightmare in the bathroom. Just another ugly refugee from the Love Generation, some doom-struck gimp who couldn’t handle the pressure. My attorney has never been able to accept the notion – often espoused by reformed drug abusers and especially popular among those on probation – that you can get a lot higher without drugs than with them. And neither have I, for that matter.” – Hunter S. Thompson

“Fuck the drug war. Dropping acid was a profound turning point for me, a seminal experience. I make no apologies for it. More people should do acid. It should be sold over the counter.” – George Carlin

“The best pitch I ever heard about cocaine was back in the early eighties when a street dealer followed me down the sidewalk going: I got some great blow man. I got the stuff that killed Belushi.” – Denis Leary

“If God dropped acid, would he see people?” – Steven Wright

“Of course drugs were fun. And that’s what’s so stupid about anti-drug campaigns: they don’t admit that. I can’t say I feel particularly scarred or lessened by my experimentation with drugs. They’ve gotten a very bad name.” – Angelica Houston

“Marijuana, when mixed with hay, causes death to the horses that eat it.” – New York Times, 1934

“The face of “evil” is always the face of total need. A dope fiend is a man in total need of dope. Beyond a certain frequency need knows absolutely no limit or control. In the words of total need: “Wouldn’t you?” Yes you would. You would lie, cheat, inform on your friends, steal, do anything to satisfy total need. Because you would be in a state of total sickness, total possession, and not in a position to act in any other way. Dope fiends are sick people who cannot act other than they do. A rabid dog cannot choose but bite.” – William S. Burroughs

“It (LSD) opened my eyes. We only use one-tenth of our brain. Just think of what we could accomplish if we could only tap that hidden part! It would mean a whole new world if the politicians would take LSD. There wouldn’t be any more war or poverty or famine.” – Paul McCartney

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” – Holy Bible

“New Rule: Stop putting psychedelic screensavers on computers. I sit down to check my e-mail, and the next thing I know it’s three days later, I’m in the desert, I’m banging on a drum, I’m naked, and somebody’s pierced my dick.” – Bill Maher

“Avoid all needle drugs – the only dope worth shooting is Richard Nixon.” — Abbie Hoffman

“If we could sniff or swallow something that would, for five or six hours each day, abolish our solitude as individuals, atone us with our fellows in a glowing exaltation of affection and make life in all its aspects seem not only worth living, but divinely beautiful and significant, and if this heavenly, world-transfiguring drug were of such a kind that we could wake up next morning with a clear head and an undamaged constitution — then, it seems to me, all our problems (and not merely the one small problem of discovering a novel pleasure) would be wholly solved and earth would become paradise.” – Aldous Huxley

“I tried marijuana once. I did not inhale.” – Bill Clinton

“All right, brain, I don’t like you and you don’t like me – so let’s just do this and I’ll get back to killing you with beer.” – Homer Simpson

“Reality is just a crutch for people who can’t cope with drugs.” – Robin Williams

“I have absolutely no pleasure in the stimulants in which I sometimes so madly indulge. It has not been in the pursuit of pleasure that I have periled life and reputation and reason. It has been the desperate attempt to escape from torturing memories, from a sense of insupportable loneliness and a dread of some strange impending doom.” – Edgar Allan Poe

“Nobody stopped thinking about those psychedelic experiences. Once you’ve been to some of those places, you think, ”How can I get back there again but make it a little easier on myself?” – Jerry Garcia

“Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself; and where they are, they should be changed. Nowhere is this more clear than in the laws against possession of marijuana in private for personal use.” – Jimmy Carter

“They lie about marijuana. Tell you pot-smoking makes you unmotivated. Lie! When you’re high, you can do everything you normally do just as well — you just realize that it’s not worth the fucking effort. There is a difference.” – Bill Hicks

“I’ve never had a problem with drugs. I’ve had problems with the police.” – Keith Richards

“A drug is not bad. A drug is a chemical compound. The problem comes in when people who take drugs treat them like a license to behave like an asshole.” – Frank Zappa

“Always do sober what you said you’d do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.” – Ernest Hemingway

“I don’t respond well to mellow, you know what I mean, I have a tendency to… if I get too mellow, I ripen and then rot.” — Woody Allen

“Federal and state laws (should) be changed to no longer make it a crime to possess marijuana for private use.” – Richard M. Nixon

“LSD is a psychedelic drug which occasionally causes psychotic behavior in people who have NOT taken it.” – Timothy Leary

“I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to ‘smack,’ and quickly.” – Dan Rather

“You need a good bedside manner with doctors or you will get nowhere.” – William S. Burroughs

“I think that everything should be made available to everybody, and I mean LSD, cocaine, codeine, grass, opium, the works. Nothing on earth available to any man should be confiscated and made unlawful by other men in more seemingly powerful and advantageous positions.” – Charles Bukowski

“Cocaine is God’s way of telling you are making too much money.” – Robin Williams

“I now have absolute proof that smoking even one marijuana cigarette is equal in brain damage to being on Bikini Island during an H-bomb blast.” – Ronald Reagan

“I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”– Hunter S. Thompson

“Why is there so much controversy about drug testing? I know plenty of guys who would be willing to test any drug they could come up with” – George Carlin

“40 million Americans smoked marijuana; the only ones who didn’t like it were Judge Ginsberg, Clarence Thomas and Bill Clinton.” – Jay Leno

“If you didn’t do anything that wasn’t good for you it would be a very dull life. What are you gonna do? Everything that is pleasant in life is dangerous. Have you noticed that? I’d like to find the bastard that thought that one up.” – Lemmy Kilmister

“Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is the destruction.” – Bob Marley