Alan Watts

Find the best quotes, maxims and aphorisms of Alan Watts

Biography : British philosopher, writer and speaker.
Born: 1915 - Died: 1973
Period:
20th century
Place of birth: United Kingdom

United Kingdom

Alan Watts - Quotes

When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point.
Alan Watts /

Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself.
Alan Watts /

universe

Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
Alan Watts

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 that this is play.
Alan Watts /

You are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that the wave is something that the whole ocean is doing.
Alan Watts

universe

If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
Alan Watts /

Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word 'water' is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
Alan Watts /

Faith is a state of openness or trust.
Alan Watts

trust

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

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

You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.
Alan Watts

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

And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
Alan Watts

The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
Alan Watts

So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
Alan Watts

No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
Alan Watts

The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.
Alan Watts

In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
Alan Watts

universe

The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
Alan Watts

universe

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Alan Watts /

universe

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

trust

Religion is not a department of life it is something that enters into the whole of it.
Alan Watts

life

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

truth

How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
Alan Watts

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