Quote of Alan Watts - Ego is a social institution with...
Biography - Alan Watts:
British philosopher, writer and speaker.
Born: 1915 - Died: 1973
Period:
20th century
Place of birth: United Kingdom
Born: 1915 - Died: 1973
Period:
20th century
Place of birth: United Kingdom
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.
Translation
(French)
See also...
Quotes about oneself:
Quotes about water:
In rivers, the water that you touch is the last of what has passed and the first of that which comes; so with present time.
Our deeds, our feelings, our thoughts, and our sensations just happen of themselves, as the rain falls and the water flows along the valley.
My books are like water; those of the great geniuses are wine. (Fortunately) everybody drinks water.
Quotes for: symbol
Words are but symbols for the relations of things to one another and to us; nowhere do they touch upon absolute truth.
Letters are signs of things, symbols of words, whose power is so great that without a voice they speak to us the words of the absent.
Nature is a temple in which living columns sometimes emit confused words. Man approaches it through forests of symbols, which observe him with familiar glances.
One characteristic of the symbol is that it is never wholly arbitrary; it is not empty, for there is the rudiment of a natural bond between the signifier and the signified. The symbol of justice, a pair of scales, could not be replaced by just any other symbol, such as a chariot.
My thought is part of the meaning of the world, and hence I use a part of the world as a symbol to express my thought.
Alan Watts also said...
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