All Alan Watts Quotes
- Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it… Age
- We do not "come into" this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every… Action
- Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them. Awareness
- ...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences. Communicative
- Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the… Amazing Life
- When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us. Attempt
- We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision. But if a decision itself were… Action
- You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so… Able
- In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the… All
- Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick. Arranged
- What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a… Absurd
- Belief…is the insistence that the truth is what one would ‘lief’ or (will or) wish to be…Faith is an unreserved opening of the mind to… Any
- But the transformation of consciousness undertaken in Taoism and Zen is more like the correction of faulty perception or the curing of a disease. It… Acquisitive
- Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content. Attractively
- Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way. Asked
- Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two… Centuries
- But nirvana is a radical transformation of how it feels to be alive: it feels as if everything were myself, or as if everything---including "my"… Action
- One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is… Act
- If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself - so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of… Cannot Even
- Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. Buddhism
- Jesus Christ knew he was God. So wake up and find out eventually who you really are. In our culture, of course, they’ll say you’re… Blasphemous
- Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior. Atheism
- One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt. Anxiety
- And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning,… All
- But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know. Blot