1. People
    2.  › 
  2. Alan W Watts

Alan W Watts Quotes

Total quotes: 12
“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 W Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture(the Edited Transcripts)
Tagged: Life, Meaning Of Life, alive, Being Alive, Meaning, purpose, My Favorites, What It Means To Be Alive, Living
“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.”
— Alan W Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Tagged: tomorrow, Today, present, Future
“There is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty.”
— Alan W Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Tagged: Nihilism, humanity, The Universe, Reality, Perception
“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”
— Alan W Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Tagged: Problems, Questions, issues
“If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.”
— Alan Watts, Alan W Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Tagged: Nihilism, humanity, The Universe, Reality, Perception
“Human desire tends to be insatiable.”
— Alan W Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Tagged: Nihilism, humanity, The Universe, Reality, Perception
“Slowly it becomes clear...”
— Alan W Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Tagged: The Clearing
“The lowbrow way of forgetting oneself is to get drunk, to be diverted with entertainments, or to exploit such natural means of self-transcendence as sexual intercourse. The highbrow way is to throw oneself into the pursuit of the arts, of social service, or of religious mysticism. These measures are rarely successful because they do not disclose the basic error of the split self. The highbrow ways even aggravate the error to the extent that those who follow them take pride in forgetting themselves by purely mental means — even though the artist uses paints or sounds, the social idealist distributes material wealth, and the religionist uses sacraments and rituals, or such other physical means as fasting, yoga breathing, or dervish dancing. And there is a sound instinct in the use of these physical aids, as in the repeated insistence of mystics that to know about God is not enough: transformation of the self is only through realizing or feeling God. The hidden point is that man cannot function properly through changing anything so superficial as the order of his thoughts, of his dissociated mind. What has to change is the behavior of his organism; it has to become self-controlling instead of self-frustrating.”
— Alan W Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Tagged: Entertainment, Identity, Media Manipulation
“For a long time we have been accustomed to the compartmentalization of religion and science as if they were two quite different and basically unrelated ways of seeing the world. I do not believe that this state of doublethink can last. It must eventually be replaced by a view of the world which is neither religious nor scientific but simply our view of the world. More exactly, it must become a view of the world in which the reports of science and religion are as concordant as those of the eyes and the ears.”
— Alan W Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Tagged: Seeing Seeing
“You cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To ‘have’ running water you must let go of it and let it run.”
— Alan W Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety
Tagged: Nihilism, humanity, The Universe, Reality, Perception
“Our sense of time is notoriously subjective and thus dependent upon the quality of our attention, whether of interest or boredom, and upon the alignment of our behavior in terms of routines, goals, and deadlines. Here the present is self-sufficient, but it is not a static present. It is a dancing present— the unfolding of a pattern which has no specific destination in the future but is simply its own point. It leaves and arrives simultaneously, and the seed is as much the goal as the flower. There is therefore time to perceive every detail of the movement with infinitely greater richness of articulation. Normally we do not so much look at things as overlook them.”
— Alan W Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Tagged: Time
“There is no difference in principle between sharpening perception with an external instrument, such as a microscope, and sharpening it with an internal instrument, such mescaline, LSD, or psilocybin. If they are an affront to the dignity of the mind, the microscope is an affront to the dignity of the eye and the telephone to the dignity of the ear. Strictly speaking, these drugs do not impart wisdom at all, any more than the microscope alone gives knowledge. They provide the raw materials of wisdom, and are useful to the extent that the individual can integrate what they reveal into the whole pattern of his behavior and the whole system of his knowledge.”
— Alan W Watts, The Joyous Cosmology: Adventures in the Chemistry of Consciousness
Tagged: Inner Experience
loading next page...