Alan Watts Quotes

“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.”

“There is no coming toward it or going away from it; it is, and you are it.”

“Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.”

“You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.”

“If you can't meditate in a boiler room, you can't meditate.”

“Altough we all realize that monotony is boring, almost every form of industrial work- banking, accounting, mass-producing, service- is monotonous, and most people are paid for simply putting up with monotony”

“Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.”

“If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it.”

“Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.”

“Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

“For the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increase—oddly enough—to the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.”

“At times almost all of us envy the animals. They suffer and die, but do not seem to make a "problem" of it.”

“The source of all light is in the eye.”

“For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.”

“The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.”

“The further and further we look out with our telescopes and the further and further we look in with our microscopes, the larger and larger and smaller and smaller the universe becomes in order to escape the investigation because we are the universe looking at itself.”

“The power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.”

“What would you do if money was no object?”

“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.”

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

“Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.”

“We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.”

“Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.”

“The 'you' who you think you are does not exist.”