Alan Watts Quotes

“Insecurity is the result of trying to be secure.”

“Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.”

“If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.”

“When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.”

“The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.”

“"It is essential to understand this point thoroughly: that the thing-in-itself, whether animal, vegetable, or mineral, is not only unknowable-it does not exist. This is important not only for sanity and peace of mind, but also for the most "practical" reasons of economics, politics, and technology.. This is not to say only that things exist in relation to one another, but that what we call "things" are no more than glimpses of a unified process. Certainly, this process has distinct features which catch our attention, but we must remember that distinction is not separation."”

“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.”

“Life and love generate effort but effort will not generate them.”

“One's life is an act with no actor, and thus it has always been recognized that the insane man that has lost his mind is a parody of the sage who has transcended his ego. If one is paranoid, the other is metanoid.”

“There is only this now. It does not come from anywhere; it is not going anywhere. It is not permanent, but it is not impermanent. Though moving, it is always still. When we try to catch it, it seems to run away, and yet it is always here and there is no escape from it. And when we turn around to find the self which knows this moment, we find that it has vanished like the past.”

“You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!”

“... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).”

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

“What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call "here and now," and you are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing... The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real deep-down you is the whole universe.”

“Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.”

“Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.”

“You can't get wet from the word 'water.'”

“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.”

“Our normal sense of the person as a lonely island of consciousness, is a dramatic illusion based on theological imagery.”

“The problem is to overcome the ingrained disbelief in the power of winning nature by love, in the gentle (ju) way (do) of turning with the skid, of controlling ourselves by cooperating with ourselves.”

“The world is a marvelous system of wiggles.”

“Spiritual awakening is the difficult process whereby the increasing realisation that everything is as wrong as it can be flips suddenly into the realisation that everything is as right is it can be. Or better, everything is as It as it can be.”

“Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it.”

“The menu is not the meal.”

“For the perfect accomplishment of any art, you must get this feeling of the eternal present into your bones - for it is the secret of proper timing. No rush. No dawdle. Just the sense of flowing with the course of events in the same way that you dance to music, neither trying to outpace it nor lagging behind. Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.”