Busybodies Quote by Alan Watts

“But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.” quote by Alan Watts — Download Open image

“But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.”

Alan Watts

★ ★ ★ ★ ★ 2.5 out of 5 (10 ratings)

Busybodies Freedom Land Law Libertarian Libertarianism Liberty Made Nursery Personal liberty Personal safety Policemen Protect Risk Safety Taken

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 animal soul, a rider and a horse, a good guy with better instincts and finer feelings and a rascal with rapacious lusts and untruly passions. Hence the marvelously involved hypocrisies of guilt and penitence, and the…

Alan Watts

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

Alan Watts

Image

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

Alan Watts

Image

If my happiness at this moment consists largely in reviewing happy memories and expectations, I am but dimly aware of this present. I shall still be dimly aware of the present when the good things that I have been expecting come to pass. For I shall have formed a habit of looking behind and ahead, making it difficult for me…

Alan Watts

...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.

Alan Watts

Image

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

Alan Watts

Image

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

Alan Watts

Image

Everything is perpetually becoming new.

Alan Watts

Image

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

Alan Watts

Image

“As you make more and more powerful microscopic instruments, the universe has to get smaller and smaller in order to escape the investigation. Just as when the telescopes become more and more powerful, the galaxies have to recede in order to get away from the telescopes. Because what is happening in all these investigations is this: Through us and through…

Alan Watts

We are at the moment looking at space as something to be entered by the tremendous thrust of a rocket because that is the attitude of attacking the unknown. And that causes us not to realize that we are already on the most magnificently equipped spaceship, which could hardly be improved upon. It has got a source of temperature and…

Alan Watts

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

Alan Watts

Image

Explore all 460 Alan Watts quotes

More Busybodies quotes

Jane had that happy disposition which would like to imagine that every one really wishes the well-being of his neighbour and struggles, though sometimes…

Phyllis Bottome

Image

The one prediction that never comes true is, 'You'll thank me for telling you this.

Judith Martin

Image

You know how some people are - they always feel they have to do things for other people's good, no matter what happens to…

Frances Parkinson Keyes

Image

The goat's business is none of the sheep's concern.

Edna Ferber

Image

Making those we love happy sounds innocent as a dove, but it can be as destructive as a lion.

Florida Scott-Maxwell

Image

Nest of Soviet fellow travelers clacking busybodies in a Soviet jellyfish front, sitting here in Leesburg oozing out their funny little propaganda and making…

Lyndon LaRouche

Image

People used to complain about 'the idle rich.' But the idle rich did not do the kind of harm being done by today's busybody…

Thomas Sowell

Image

Don't you meddle with me, and I won't meddle with you.

George Eliot

Image

People who seek political power are, with exceptions too rare to matter, never to be trusted; at best, such people are vain and officious busybodies. People who actually achieve political power are to be trusted even less than those who seek it without success; winning elections requires a measure of deceitfulness and Machiavellian immorality that no decent person comes close…

Donald J. Boudreaux