Alan Watts Quotes: top 100 famous quotes about Alan Watts

Alan Watts Quotes & Sayings

Happy to read and share the best inspirational Alan Watts quotes, sayings and quotations on Wise Famous Quotes.

Aesthetics is really a much better approach to ethics than theology is. — Alan W. Watts

I am basically an eternal existence
momentarily and perhaps needlessly
terrified by one half of itself.. — Alan W. Watts

When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind. — Alan Watts

To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play. — Alan Watts

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone. — Alan W. Watts

Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up ... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep. — Alan W. Watts

But we must not suffer over the suffering. — Alan Watts

A holy person is someone who is whole; who has, as it were, reconciled his opposites. — Alan Watts

Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything. — Alan W. Watts

Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency. — Alan W. Watts

What is real, if you have decided to live in the dimension of space and time, is muscle and nerve. — Alan W. Watts

There is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it. — Alan Watts

Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality ... — Alan Watts

Read Theodore Schwenk's marvelous book Sensitive Chaos (London, Rudolph Steiner Press, 1965), — Alan W. Watts

When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of ... Nothing is left but to love. — Alan W. Watts

The biggest ego trip going is getting rid of your ego — Alan Watts

We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. — Alan Watts

Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality? — Alan Watts

It seems obvious that the universe is a system which, by means of living bodies, becomes aware of itself - up to a point. — Alan W. Watts

To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses. — Alan Watts

I assume that maybe you are not serious, but sincere. — Alan W. Watts

But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know. — Alan W. Watts

How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy? — Alan Watts

But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful. — Alan Watts

But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. — Alan Watts

Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is. — Alan Watts

Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults. — Alan Watts

For me, being literate and articulate is a form of judo, of overcoming the [system] by its own method. — Alan Watts

Nobody believes in God like an atheist: "There is no God, and I am His prophet. — Alan W. Watts

Our view of reality is like a chart of the sea - the truer it is, the less likely we will become lost. — Alan Watts

Running away from fear is fear; fighting pain is pain; trying to be brave is being scared — Alan Watts

My death will be the disappearance of a particular pattern in the water. — Alan W. Watts

The person who is constantly anxious is the person who is resisting the flip-flopability of things. — Alan W. Watts

If a man seeks the Buddha, that man loses the Buddha. — Alan W. Watts

Is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer. — Alan W. Watts

You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. — Alan Watts

Basically, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe. — Alan Watts

If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me ... — Alan Watts

We usually don't look. We overlook. — Alan Watts

[A] certain amount of "sitting just to sit" might well be the best thing in the world for the jittery minds and agitated bodies [...]. — Alan W. Watts

The habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns. — Alan Watts

A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention. — Alan Watts

Everyone is the fabric and structure of existence. — Alan Watts

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination. — Alan W. Watts

They are enlightened who join in this play knowing it as play, for people suffer only because they take as serious what the gods made for fun. — Alan Watts

Faith ... is letting go and trusting oneself to the unknown. — Alan Watts

How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven and hell are all a monarchy? — Alan W. Watts

Essays in Zen Buddhism — Alan W. Watts

Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present. — Alan W. Watts

Like words, memories never really succeed in "catching" reality. — Alan W. Watts

I too realize that the less I preach the more likely I am to be heard. — Alan Watts

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily. — Alan W. Watts

For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere. — Alan W. Watts

What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself. — Alan Watts

There is no way of making a hedge grow like pruning it. There is no way of making sex interesting like repressing it. — Alan Watts

When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things. — Alan Watts

Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time. — Alan Watts

What will happen to me when I die is, after all, like asking what happens to my fist when I open my hand — Alan W. Watts

Black implies white self implies other — Alan Watts

All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head. — Alan Watts

Actually, the world is not complex. It is the task of trying to figure it out with words or numbers that is complex. — Alan W. Watts

LSD is simply an exploratory instrument like a microscope or telescope, except this one is inside of you instead of outside of you. — Alan Watts

Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver. — Alan Watts

You can't figure out the Universe, especially if you're using figures to figure it. — Alan Watts

If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate. — Alan Watts

Do you have any control over being conscious? Do you know how you will? — Alan Watts

Salvation and sanity consist in the most radical recognition that we have no way of saving ourselves. This — Alan W. Watts

But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is. — Alan Watts

Where do I begin and end in space? I have relations to the sun and air which are just as vital parts of my existence as my heart. — Alan Watts

We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. — Alan Watts

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge
of oneself. — Alan W. Watts

The mind's the standard of the man. — Alan Watts

Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration. — Alan Watts

We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us. — Alan Watts

What do you desire? What makes you itch? What sort of a situation would you like? — Alan W. Watts

Indeed, the power of words has gone to man's head in more than one way. To define has come to mean almost the same thing as to understand. — Alan W. Watts

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes. — Alan W. Watts

People become concerned with being more humble than other people. — Alan W. Watts

I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek. — Alan Watts

Nets, grids, and other types of calculus. — Alan Watts

There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can't be said. — Alan W. Watts

The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity. — Alan Watts

If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now. — Alan Watts

You can't live at all unless you can live fully now. — Alan Watts

We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day.
When we go out of our minds we quickly come to our senses. — Alan Watts

Thought is a means of concealing Truth. — Alan Watts

The question is not what I should do in the future to get it, but rather, what am I presently doing that prevents me from realizing it right now? — Alan Watts

We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness. — Alan Watts

To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen. — Alan Watts

No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen. — Alan Watts

The role of the Guru is to show the person that he already has what he is looking for. — Alan Watts

I owe my solitude to other people. — Alan W. Watts

For eternally and always there is only now, one and the same now; the present is the only thing that has no end. — Alan W. Watts

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

That society is strong and viable which recognizes its own provisionality. — Alan Watts

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 of what is. — Alan Watts

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years. — Alan W. Watts

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. — Alan W. Watts

The whole point of Zen is to suspend the rules we have superimposed on things and to see the world as it is — Alan Watts

To "know" reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it. — Alan W. Watts