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Portrait of Alan Watts

Alan Watts

(1915–1973) Opinion Journalist United States

460 quotes in 1790 categories

For a concise taste of Alan Watts’s cross‑cultural wisdom, these 460 reflections offer a clear window. His ability to translate complex ideas into everyday language makes each line approachable.

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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 Wilson Watts was a British and American writer, speaker, and self-styled "philosophical entertainer", known for interpreting and popularising Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu philosophy for a Western audience.

Biography source: Wikipedia

Quotes by Alan Watts

Faith is a state of openness or trust.

Faith

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The wake doesn't drive the ship

Funny

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Duality is always secretly unity.

Duality

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You can't make love without art.

Art

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I owe my solitude to other people.

Loneliness

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The menu is not the meal.

Food

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Cows scream louder than carrots.

Animal

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Saints need sinners.

Need

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Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be

Imagine

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If a flower had a God it would not be a transcendental flower but a field.

Fields

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Omnipotence is not knowing how everything is done; it's just doing it.

Doing

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“You don't have to let go, because there's nothing to hold onto. --Alan Watts”

Hold

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Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

Cleared

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Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.

Dangerous

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You can't get wet from the word 'water.'

Language

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What would you do if money was no object?

Funny

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You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

Aperture

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

Forever

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I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is…

Illusion

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Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.

Aspect

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...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to…

Animal

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Many people think that the Bible is the authentic word of God and they worship the Bible, making it an idol...

Bible

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Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing,…

Birth

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To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely…

Done

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If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear,…

Afraid

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The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether something that…

Complexity

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It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice…

Choices

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Buddha's doctrine: Man suffers because of his craving to possess and keep forever things which are essentially impermanent...this frustration of the desire…

Acceptance

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So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to…

Enjoy

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The Godhead is never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn't cut itself, fire doesn't burn itself, light…

Cutting

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We live in a culture where it has been rubbed into us in every conceivable way that to die is a terrible…

Culture

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For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree…

Anxiety

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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.”…

Accidents

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When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal…

Class

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Belief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to…

Belief

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We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing…

Analogies

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We accepted a definition of ourselves which confined the self to the source and to the limitations of conscious attention. This definition…

Accepted

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I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are…

Amazed

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For when you see that the universe cannot be distinguished from how you act upon it, there is neither fate nor free…

Accepting

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“Most of us assume as a matter of common sense that space is nothing, that it's not important and has no energy.…

Astronomy

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Alan Watts by topic

Life (71) Ifs (54) Time (49) Inspirational (47) World (46) Universe (44) Love (43) Way (41) People (32) Thinking (29) Self (29) Knows (28) Meditation (26) Trying (25) Mind (24) Inspiring (23) Whole (22) Religion (22) Men (21) Feels (20) Psychology (19) Humans (19) Moments (17) Reality (16) Nature (16)