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Time Quotes by Alan Watts

49 Time quotes by Alan Watts

All Time quotes Alan Watts’s page

The present moment slips like water through clenched hands, making it harder to hold when we try too hard. Watts reminds us not to hurry or worry about progress, but to be content with awareness. He also points out that past and future are illusions, and that a single flash of insight can illuminate a lifetime.

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

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The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.

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Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.

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No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.

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

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Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

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The destination of life is this eternal moment.

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Change is an illusion because we're always at the place where any future can take us.

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The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that…

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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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Don't hurry anything. Don't worry about the future. Don't worry about what progress you're making. Just be entirely content to be aware…

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We know that from time to time there arise among human beings people who seem to exude love as naturally as the…

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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…

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A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives…

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If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts…

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this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity…

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Time is a social institution and not a physical reality. There is no such thing as time in the natural world -…

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That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could…

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I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate…

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We are not clear as to the role in life of these chemicals; nor are we clear as to the role of…

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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…

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The more we try to catch hold of the present moment the more elusive it becomes. It is like trying to clutch…

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The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is…

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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.…

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We are at the moment looking at space as something to be entered by the tremendous thrust of a rocket because that…

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

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If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present.…

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There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it…

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To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity is no new discovery, just as the concept of light years is no matter for…

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No one imagines that a symphony is supposed to improve as it goes along, or that the whole object of playing is…

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If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are “crying for the moon.”…

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“There is simply no problem of life; it is absolutely purposeless play; it doesn't have to continue; there is no reason whatever…

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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.…

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“Let's suppose that you were able every night to dream any dream that you wanted to dream. And that you could, for…

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“The past and the future, are in the present”

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It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.

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Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

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We have somehow conned ourselves into the notion that this moment is ordinary. This now moment, in which I'm talking and you're…

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It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other…

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More by Alan Watts

“The self-conscious feedback mechanism of the cortex allows us the hallucination that we are two souls in one body -a rational soul and an…

The more we try to catch hold of the present moment the more elusive it becomes. It is like trying to clutch water in…

The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever.

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall…

...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters.

The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.

Although profoundly "inconsequential," the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity,…

Everything is perpetually becoming new.

The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to…

“As you make more and more powerful microscopic instruments, the universe has to get smaller and smaller in order to escape the investigation. Just…

We are at the moment looking at space as something to be entered by the tremendous thrust of a rocket because that is the…

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.

The best way to convince someone is by making him realize that what you speak came from his own mind.

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of…

To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.