"Of what use is the universe? What..." - Quote by Alan Watts
Of what use is the universe? What is the practical application of a million galaxies? Yet just because it has no use, it has a use - which may sound like a paradox, but is not. What, for instance, is the use of playing music? If you play to make money, to outdo some other artist, to be a person of culture, or to improve your mind, you are not really playing - for your mind is not on the music. You don't swing. When you come to think of it, playing or listening to music is a pure luxury, an addiction, a waste of valuable time and money for nothing more than making elaborate patterns of sound.
More by Alan Watts
“Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat's entrails with horsehair.”
“These people, as far as I can see, do not congregate in the notorious centers of the movement, like the North Beach in San Francisco or Greenwich Village, or Venice, California.”
“What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.”
More on Purpose
“We wanted to more richly experience why we were alive, not just make a better life, and so people went in search of things. The great thing that came from those that time was to realize that there was definitely more to life than the materialism of the late sixties and early sixties. We were going in search of something deeper.”
“What I'm trying to do is to maximise the probability of the future being better.”
“We’re all alive, but we don’t know why or what for; we’re all searching for happiness; we’re all leading lives which are different and yet the same.”
More on Universe
“Nature which governs the whole will soon change all things which you see, and out of their substance will make other things and again other things... in order that the world may be ever new.”
“The man who doesn't know what the universe is doesn't know where he lives.”
“The basic laws of the universe are simple, but because our senses are limited, we can’t grasp them. There is a pattern in creation.”