Watts Quotes

The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists. ~ Alan Watts

The habitual dualist's solution to the problem of dualism: to solve the dilemma by chopping off one of the horns. ~ Alan Watts

Lao-tzu didn't actually say very much more about the meaning of Tao. The Way of Nature, the Way of happening self-so, or, if you like, the very process of life, was something which he was much too wise to define. For to try to say anything definite about the Tao is like trying to eat your mouth: you can't get outside it to chew it. To put it the other way round: anything you can chew is not your mouth. ~ Alan W. Watts

Meditation is the way in which we come to feel our basic inseparability from the whole universe, and what that requires is that we shut up. ~ Alan Watts

Instructors should not only be skilful in those sciences which they teach, but have skill in the method of teaching, and patience in the practice. ~ Isaac Watts

Fictions are useful so long as they are taken as fictions. They are then
simply ways of "figuring" the world which we agree to follow so that
we can act in cooperation, as we agree about inches and hours, numbers
and words, mathematical systems and languages. If we have no
agreement about measures of time and space, I would have no way of
making a date with you at the corner of Forty-second Street and Fifth
Avenue at 3 P.M. on Sunday, April 4. ~ Alan W. Watts

I love the whole futuristic landscape of dark, rainy neon, the mix of Eastern and Western cultures and the beautiful shots of the flying cars. ~ Reggie Watts

I am the bridge between the bleeding edge and the dead center. I stand between the Wizard of Oz and the man behind the curtain.
I am the curtain. ~ Peter Watts

We see it as an eternal arena in which the individual is no more than a temporary stranger - a visitor who hardly belongs - for the thin ray of consciousness does not shine upon its own source. In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself - through our eyes and IT's. ~ Alan W. Watts

Floaters swarmed through his eyeballs like schools of panicked fish. ~ Peter Watts

Hush! my dear, lie still and slumber, Holy angels guard thy bed! Heavenly blessing without number Gently falling on thy head. ~ Isaac Watts

Life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished. ~ Alan W. 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 W. Watts

that was how plenty of people felt in 634 BC in Rome, as well, when they were convinced that the city was destined to collapse after 120 years of existence. It is how people have felt at countless points in history since then. Try searching Google's library of digitised manuscripts for the phrase 'these uncertain times', and you'll find that it occurs over and over, in hundreds of journals and books, in virtually every decade the database encompasses, reaching back to the seventeenth century. 'As a matter of fact,' Watts insisted, 'our age is no more insecure than any other. Poverty, disease, war, change and death are nothing new. ~ Oliver Burkeman

You can make any human activity into meditation simply by being completely with it and doing it just to do it. ~ 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

Out of Mind spring in-numerable things, conditioned by discrimination (i.e., classification) and habit-energy; these things people accept as an external world. ... ~ Alan W. Watts

I want collaboration, but if they don't have a plan or their vision isn't clear, it's nerve-wracking. So, someone that's very sure of the vision is what you want, most of all. ~ Naomi Watts

Do not spend the day in gathering flowers by the way side, lest night come upon you before you arrive at your journey's end, and then you will not reach it. ~ Isaac Watts

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun. ~ Alan W. Watts

It is generally forgotten that our guarantees of religious freedom were designed to protect precisely those who were not members of established denominations, but rather such (then) screwball and subversive individuals as Quakers, Shakers, Levellers, and Anabaptists. There is little question that those who use cannabis or other psychedelics with religious intent are now members of a persecuted religion which appears to the rest of society as a grave menace to "mental health," as distinct from the old-fashioned "immortal soul." But it's the same old story. ~ Alan W. Watts

Who believe more firmly in the Devil than in God are always afraid that if they let go, the Devil will take over first, unaware that not having let go is the Devil already in full control. ~ Alan W. Watts

With gritty action and realistic science, Peter Watts brings to life a dark and vivid world. ~ David Brin

Misty Copeland is making history. During American Ballet Theatre's current season at the Metropolitan Opera House, Copeland will alight on that storied Lincoln Center stage, making her New York debut as the Swan Queen in the iconic masterpiece Swan Lake - a crowning achievement for any dancer, regardless of the color of her skin. ~ Heather Watts

If to enjoy even an enjoyable present we must have the assurance of a happy future, we are "crying for the moon." We have no such assurance. The best predictions are still matters of probability rather than certainty, and to the best of our knowledge every one of us is going to suffer and die. ~ Alan W. Watts

Have you any idea what it takes to catch a ball, or raise a cup to your lips, or make immediate sense of a word, a phrase or an ambiguous sentence? We didn't, not at first. Solving maths problems is the tiniest fraction of what human intelligence does. We learned from a new angle just how wondrous a thing the brain is. A one-litre, liquid-cooled, three-dimensional computer. Unbelievable processing power, unbelievably compressed, unbelievable energy efficiency, no overheating. The whole thing running on twenty-five watts -- one dim light bulb. ~ Ian McEwan

The way of Wisdom lies, therefore, in recognizing things which happen to you as your own karma - not as punishments for misdeeds or rewards for virtue (for there really is no "bad" or "good" karma), but as your own doing. For in this way you come to see that the real "you" includes both the controlled and the uncontrolled aspects of your experience. ~ Alan W. Watts

Naturally, for a person who finds his identity in something other than his full organism is less than half a man. He is cut off from complete participation in nature. Instead of being a body, he 'has' a body. Instead of living and loving he 'has' instincts for survival and copulation. ~ Alan W. Watts

All too easily, we confuse the world as we symbolize it with the world as it is. As semanticist Alfred Korzybski used to say, it is an urgent necessity to distinguish between the map and the territory and, he might have added, between the flag and the country. ~ Alan W. Watts

W might 'conquer' nature if we could first, or at the same time, conquer our own nature, though we do not see that human nature and 'outside' nature are all of a piece. ~ Alan W. Watts

Oh, I'm definitely a wild child. ~ Naomi Watts

Trust in human nature is acceptance of the good-and-bad of it, and it is hard to trust those who do not admit their own weakness. ~ Alan W. Watts

People can't be talked out of illusions. If a person believes that the earth is flat, you can't talk him out of that, he knows that it's flat. He'll go down to the window and see that its obvious, it looks flat. So the only way to convince him that it isn't is to say, "Well let's go and find the edge ~ Alan W. Watts

Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery - in
morals, in art or in spirituality - the more you see that you are playing a
rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of
any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with
someone else's depth or failure. ~ Alan W. Watts

For one drop calls another down, till we are drowned in seas of grief. ~ Isaac Watts

To know that you are God is another way of saying that you feel completely with this universe. You feel profoundly rooted in it and connected with it. You feel, in other words, that the whole energy, which expresses itself in the galaxies, is intimate. It is not something to which you are a stranger, but it is that with which you, whatever it is, are intimately bound up. That in your seeing, your hearing, your talking, your thinking, your moving, you express that which it is that moves the sun and other stars. ~ Alan Watts

It is surely absurd to seek God in terms of a preconceived idea of what God is. To seek thus is only to find what we know already, which is why it is so easy to deceove oneself into all manner of "supernatural" experiences and visions. To believe in God and to look for the God you believe in is simply to seek confirmation of an opinion. ~ Alan W. Watts

But civilized human beings are alarmingly ignorant of the fact that they are continuous with their natural surroundings. It is as necessary to have air, water, plants, insects, birds, fish, and mammals as it is to have brains, hearts, lungs, and stomachs. The former are our external organs in the same way that the latter are our internal organs. If then, we can no more live without the things outside than without those inside, the plain inference is that the words "I" and "myself " must include both sides. The sun, the earth, and the forests are just as much features of your own body as your brain. Erosion of the soil is as much a personal disease as leprosy, and many "growing communities" are as disastrous as cancer. ~ Alan W. Watts

We know that human love is genuine only when it is felt in the depth of the heart. And we know that this is true whether it be love for another human or love of God. And, of course, we are always looking to receive genuine love. We don't want others to love us because they are forced to. We want them to love us because they really do love us in their hearts. ~ Alan W. Watts

Whene'er I take my walks abroad,How many poor I see!What shall I render to my GodFor all his gifts to me? ~ Isaac Watts

If we could just trust the moment that we're in and live it in the way that you best can embrace it, it would be much better for all of us. ~ Naomi Watts

These are amongst the last memories I shall relinquish to the page, though I am hanging onto them for now and for as long as I can. When they are gone, will there be anything left of me? Am I nothing but memory? ~ J.S. Watts

Sometimes when you see too much, you miss a lot. ~ Peter Watts

The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or "no fuss." ~ Alan Watts

I'll kill you if I can."

"I'll save you," it said. "If you let me. ~ Peter Watts

An unpopular apres-garde filmmaker (Watt) either suffers a temporal lobe seizure and becomes mute or else is the victim of everyone else's delusion that his (Watt's) temporal lobe seizure has left him mute. ~ David Foster Wallace

Does it really take any considerable time or effort just to understand that you depend on enemies and outsiders to define yourself, and that without some opposition you would be lost? To see this is to acquire, almost instantly, the virtue of humor, and humor and self-righteousness are mutually exclusive. Humor is the twinkle in the eye of a just judge, who knows that he is also the felon in the dock. How could he be sitting there in stately judgment, being addressed as "Your Honor" or "Mi Lud," without those poor bastards being dragged before him day after day? It does not undermine his work and his function to recognize this. ~ Alan W. Watts

I believe government should be loyal to parents, teachers and children. ~ J. C. Watts

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing. ~ Alan W. Watts

When you look at the results that Newt Gingrich got when he was speaker, he got results for the American people. ~ J. C. Watts

The key to successful change is sensitivity towards that which is indigenous and, in the long run, diversity will always be more resilient than monoculture despite the current unsustainable trends in the opposite direction. ~ Jonathan Watts

If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go. ~ Alan W. Watts

Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one's own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world. ~ Alan W. Watts

Not long ago Congress voted, with much patriotic rhetoric, for the imposition of severe penalties upon anyone presuming to burn the flag of the United States. Yet the very Congressmen who passed this law are responsible, by acts of commission or omission, for burning, polluting, and plundering the territory that the flag is supposed to represent. Therein, they exemplified the peculiar and
perhaps fatal fallacy of civilization: the confusion of symbol with reality. ~ Alan W. Watts

Wars based on principle are far more destructive ... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after. ~ Alan Watts

The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression - Taoism - drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight. ~ Alan W. Watts

Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen. ~ Alan Watts

Birds in their little nests agree; And 'tis a shameful sight When children of one family Fall out, and chide, and fight. ~ Isaac Watts

Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself. ~ Alan Watts

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form. ~ Watts Humphrey

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. ~ Alan Watts

The highest that man can attain in these matters," said Goethe, "is wonder; if the primary phenomenon causes this, let him be satisfied; more it cannot bring; and he should forbear to seek for anything further behind it: here is the limit. But the sight of a prime phenomenon is generally not enough for people. They think they must go still further; and are thus like children, who, after peeping into a mirror, turn it round directly to see what is on the other side. ~ Alan W. Watts

Szpindel's eyebrows drew together like courting caterpillars. ~ Peter Watts

A hermit who has been shut up in his cell in a college has contracted a sort of mould and rust upon his soul. ~ Isaac Watts

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

Question and Answer
Durban, Birmingham,
Cape Town, Alabama,
Johannesburg, Watts,
The earth around
Struggling, fighting,
Dying
for what?
A world to gain.
Groping, hoping,
Waiting
for what?
A world to gain.
Dreams kicked asunder,
Why not go under?
There's a world to gain.
But suppose I don't want it,
Why take it?
To remake it. ~ Langston Hughes

I know, I know: it can be frustrating as hell. But people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the little tyke's liable to grab a microwave scalpel and start cutting when no one's looking. ~ Peter Watts

Western science has made nature intelligible in terms of its symmetries and regularities, analyzing its most wayward forms into components of a regular and measurable shape. As a result we tend to see nature and to deal with it as an "order" from which the element of spontaneity has been "screened out." But this order is maya, and the "true suchness" of things has nothing in common with the purely conceptual aridities of perfect squares, circles, or triangles - except by spontaneous accident. Yet this is why the Western mind is dismayed when ordered conceptions of of the universe break down. and when the basic behavior of the physical world is found to be a "principle of uncertainty. ~ Alan W. Watts

Newton's First was a real bitch, not open to negotiation. ~ Peter Watts

Suppressing the fear of death makes it all the stronger. The point is only to know, beyond any shadow of doubt, that "I" and all other "things" now present will vanish, until this knowledge compels you to release them - to know it now as surely as if you had just fallen off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Indeed you were kicked off the edge of a precipice when you were born, and it's no help to cling to the rocks falling with you. If you are afraid of death, be afraid. The point is to get with it, to let it take over - fear, ghosts, pains, transience, dissolution, and all. And then comes the hitherto unbelievable surprise; you don't die because you were never born. You had just forgotten who you are. ~ Alan W. Watts

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter. ~ Alan W. Watts

Here is a person who knows that in two weeks' time he has to undergo a surgical operation. In the meantime he is feeling no physical pain; he has plenty to eat; he is surrounded by friends and human affection; he is doing work that is normally of great interest to him. But his power to enjoy these things is taken away by constant dread. He is insensitive to the immediate realities around him. His mind is preoccupied with something that is not yet here. It is not as if he were thinking about it in a practical way, trying to decide whether he should have the operation or not, or making plans to take care of his family and his affair if he should die. These decisions have already been made. Rathre, he is thinking about the operation in an entirely futile way, which both ruins his present enjoyment of life an dcontributes nothing to the solution of any problem. But he cannot help himself. ~ Alan W. Watts

You can't kill the thing under the bed. You can only keep it outside the covers. ~ Peter Watts

The result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien,
and mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It's just my opinion against yours, and therefore the most aggressive and violent (and thus insensitive) propagandist makes the decisions. A muddle of conflicting opinions united by force of propaganda ~ Alan W. Watts

Wanted to dream when you went to sleep at night. For at least a month you would live out all your wishes in your dreams. You would have banquets and music and everything that you ever thought you wanted. But then, after a few weeks of this, you would say, "Well, this is getting a little dull. Let's have an adventure. Let's get into trouble." It is all right to get into trouble because you know you are going to wake up at the end of it. So you could fight dragons and rescue princesses, and all that sort of thing. ~ Alan W. Watts

It is simply being aware of this present experience, and realizing that you can neither define it nor divide yourself from it. There is no rule but "Look! ~ Alan W. Watts

In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life. ~ Alan Watts

You don't have to know how to shine the sun, you just do it. Like you breathe. Now doesn't it just astonish you that you are this fantastically complex thing? And you are doing all of this and you never had any education in how to do it? ~ Allan Watts

When each moment becomes an expectation life is deprived of fulfillment, and death is dreaded for it seems that here expectation must come to an end. ~ Alan W. Watts

You're the first person I've seen here who's actually dressed like a monk." "It's a bathrobe. ~ Peter Watts

I am not going to stress the usual argument that the police habitually mistreat Negroes. Every Negro knows this. There is scarcely any black man, woman, or child in the land who at some point or other has not been mistreated by a policeman. (A young man in Watts said, "The riots will continue because I, as a Negro, am immediately considered to be a criminal by the police and, if I have a pretty woman with me, she is a tramp even if she is my wife or mother.") ~ Bayard Rustin

If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones. The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away and works on what he has seen. ~ Alan W. Watts

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

I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish. ~ Alan Watts

Vampires did this all the time, you remember. It was normal for them, it was their own unique take on resource conservation. They could have taught your kind a few things about restraint, if that absurd aversion to right-angles hadn't done them in at the dawn of civilization. Maybe they still can. They're back now, after all - raised from the grave with the voodoo of paleogenetics, stitched together from junk genes and fossil marrow steeped in the blood of sociopaths and high-functioning autistics. One of them commands this very mission. A handful of his genes live on in your own body so it too can rise from the dead, here at the edge of interstellar space. Nobody gets past Jupiter without becoming part vampire. ~ Peter Watts

The phenomenon moon-in-the-water is likened to human experience. The water is the subject, and the moon the object. When there is no water, there is no moon-in-the-water, and likewise when there is no moon. But when the moon rises the water does not wait to receive its image, and when even the tiniest drop of water is poured out the moon does not wait to cast its reflection. For the moon does not intend to cast its reflection, and the water does not receive its image on purpose. The event is caused as much by the water as by the moon, and as the water manifests the brightness of the moon, the moon manifests the clarity of the water. Another poem in the Zenrin Kushu says: Trees show the bodily form of the wind; Waves give vital energy to the moon.g ~ Alan W. Watts

In books, or work, or healthful play. ~ Isaac Watts

Do you define yourself as a victim of the world? Or, as the world? ~ Alan Watts

Liev cares about a lot things. Israel is one of them. We had the good fortune of going there a couple of years ago. To share that experience with him was a great pleasure. ~ Naomi Watts

Every one of his opinions appears to himself to be written with sunbeams. ~ Isaac Watts

Rags-to-riches story? I've heard that gospel before, no thanks. I find no greater inspiration than the riches-to-rags story of redemption, the story of God leaving His golden throne to pursue a wretch like me. ~ T. William Watts

Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality. ~ Alan W. Watts

I try not to eat right before I perform. It's better to perform on an empty stomach - it just feels better. You just feel like a leaner machine. You're not worrying about digesting things. ~ Reggie Watts

God likes to play hide-and-seek, but because there is nothing outside of God, he has no one but himself to play with! But he gets over this difficulty by pretending that he is not himself. This is his way of hiding from himself. He pretends that he is you and I and all the people in the world, all the animals, plants, all the rocks, and all the stars. In this way he has strange and wonderful adventures, some of which are terrible and frightening. But these are just like bad dreams, for when he wakes up they will disappear.

Now when God plays "hide" and pretends that he is you and I, he does it so well that it takes him a long time to remember where and how he hid himself! But that's the whole fun of it-just what he wanted to do. He doesn't want to find himself too quickly, for that would spoil the game. That is why it is so difficult for you and me to find out that we are God in disguise, pretending not to be himself. But- when the game has gone on long enough, all of us will WAKE UP, stop pretending, and REMEMBER that we are all one single Self- the God who is all that there is and who lives forever and ever.
You may ask why God sometimes hides in the form of horrible people, or pretends to be people who suffer great disease and pain. Remember, first, that he isn't really doing this to anyone but himself. Remember too, that in almost all the stories you enjoy there have to be bad people as well as good people, for the thrill of the tale is to find out how the ~ Alan W. Watts

The highest good is like water, for the good of water is that it nourishes everything without striving. It occupies the place which all men think bad [i.e., the lowest level].17 [102d] It is thus that Tao in the world is like a river going down the valley to the ocean.18 [102e] The most gentle thing in the world overrides the most hard.19 [102g] How do coves and oceans become kings of a hundred rivers? Because they are good at keeping low - That is how they are kings of the hundred rivers.20 [102f] Nothing in the world is weaker than water, But it has no better in overcoming the hard.21 [101a] ~ Alan W. Watts

In Hindu philosophy the whole creation is regarded as the Vishnu Lila, the play of Vishnu. Lila means dance or play. Also in Hindu philosophy, they call the world illusion; and in Latin the root of the word illusion is ludere, to play. ~ Alan Watts

Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity. ~ Alan Watts

The underlying melody via every rock, plant, animal, sky and star, inside the water, from the dirt, through the light: only love lasts. ~ Melina Sempill Watts

Evil" read backwards is "live." Demon est deus inversus. ~ Alan W. Watts

Hell, rationality itself - the exalted Human ability to reason - hadn't evolved in the pursuit of truth but simply to win arguments, to gain control: to bend others, by means logical or sophistic, to your will. ~ Peter Watts