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Portrait of Alan Watts

Alan Watts

(1915–1973) Opinion Journalist United States

460 quotes in 1790 categories

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Alan Watts was an opinion journalist from the United States, best known for The Way of Zen.

Quick Facts About Alan Watts

Born: January 6, 1915
Died: November 16, 1973
Nationality: United States
Profession: Opinion Journalist
Notable works: The Way of Zen

About Alan Watts

Alan Watts, born Alan Wilson Watts, was a British and American writer, speaker, and self‑styled philosophical entertainer. He became known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy, making these ideas accessible to a Western audience.

Quotes by Alan Watts · Page 3

Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.

Chaos

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The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

Human nature

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Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.

Anxiety

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We see what we believe rather than what we see.

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“When you get the message, it's time to hang up the phone.”

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... nets, grids, and other types of calculus.

Calculus

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Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.

Accountability

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What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present

Happiness

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Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap.

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What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?

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Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as…

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The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.

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At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of…

Animal

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You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it.

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In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life.

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We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.

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“Although the rhythm of the waves beats a kind of time, it is not clock or calendar time. It has no urgency.…

Rhythm

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Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars,…

Astronomy

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Someone once described “Christian Secularism” as the assumption that there is nothing at all to life except a pilgrimage between the maternity…

Christian

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As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that…

Bird

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The self-styled practical man of affairs who pooh-poohs philosophy as a lot of windy notions is himself a pragmatist or a positivist,…

Affair

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What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be…

Movement

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Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a…

Calm

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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and…

Brain

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To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted…

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We have allowed brain thinking to develop and dominate our lives. As a consequence, we are at war within ourselves. The brain…

Body

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Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me…

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We are seeing, then, that our experience is altogether momentary. From one point of view, each moment is so elusive and so…

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To go out of your mind once a day is tremendously important, because by going out of your mind you come to…

Bridges

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But, as Douglas E Harding has pointed out, we tend to think of this planet as a life-infested rock, which is as…

Absurd

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We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time, in which the so-called present moment is felt as…

Consciousness

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Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is…

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There is a deep, peaceful calm in the dawning of a new day.

Calm

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Chaos is always losing, but never defeated

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You are the universe experiencing itself.

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So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.

Discord

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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

Animal

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That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality.

Community

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We are living in a culture entirely hypnotized by the illusion of time

Culture

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Everything in the world is gloriously meaningless.

Inspirational

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Alan Watts by topic

Life (71) Time (49) Inspirational (47) World (46) Universe (44) Love (43) People (32) Thinking (29) Self (29) Meditation (26) Mind (24) Inspiring (23) Religion (22) Men (21)