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Alan Watts Quotes

Total quotes: 17
“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”
— Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
Tagged: Universe, Deep, Profound, humanity, humans
“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy, Faith
“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
— Alan Watts, The Culture Of Counter-Culture
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
— Alan Watts, Become What You Are
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”
— Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.”
— Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
“This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.”
— Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”
— Alan Watts, The Way of Zen
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“In a relativistic universe you don't cling to anything, you learn to swim. And you know what swimming is - it's kind of a relaxed attitude with the water. In which you don't keep yourself afloat by holding the water, but by a certain giving to it.”
— Alan Watts, The Essential Alan Watts
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“The desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
Tagged: Philosophy, Psychology, Emotional Intelligence
“A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
“To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“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 is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
Tagged: Philosophy, Psychology, The Person You'll Become, Emotional Intelligence, Presence
“What I am really saying is that you don’t need to do anything, because if you see yourself in the correct way, you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.”
— Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
“You poor baby! And yet—you selfish little bastard! As I try to find the agent behind the act, the motivating force at the bottom of the whole thing, I seem to see only an endless ambivalence. Behind the mask of love I find my innate selfishness. What a predicament I am in if someone asks, 'Do you really love me?' I can't say yes without saying no, for the only answer that will really satisfy is, 'Yes, I love you so much I could eat you! My love for you is identical with my love for myself. I love you with the purest selfishness.' No one wants to be loved out of a sense of duty.”
— Alan Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Tagged: Love, The Center
“We fail so easily to see the difference between fear of the unknown and respect for the unknown, thinking that those who do not hasten in with bright lights and knives are deterred by a holy and superstitious fear. Respect for the unknown is the attitude of those who, instead of raping nature, woo her until she gives herself. But what she gives, even then, is not the cold clarity of the surface but the warm inwardness of the body - a mysteriousness which is not merely a negation, a blank absence of knowledge, but that positive substance which we call wonderful.”
— Alan Watts, Nature, Man and Woman
Tagged: How To Think, The Art of Awareness, Psychology, Philosophy
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