"A meme is the smallest unit of meaning of an idea. Ideas are made of Memes, and I think the art community might function with more efficiency in the production of visionary esthetic breakthroughs if we would think of ourselves as an environment. Modelled after the natural environment, where we as artists are attempting to create Memes which enter an environment of other Memes that are in competition with each other. And out of this competition of memes ever more appropriate adapted and suitable ideas can gather and link themselves together into higher and higher organisms.

Now in order for this to happen there is an obligation upon each one of us to carry our ideas clearly, because in the same way that a Gene must be copied correctly to be replicated or it will cause some pathological mutation, a meme must be correctly replicated or it will cause a pathological mutation."

- Terrence McKenna, 1990