Watts Rebellion Quotes

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

Men must be capable of imagining and executing and insisting on social change if they are to reform or even maintain civilization, and capable too of furnishing the rebellion which is sometimes necessary if society is not to perish of immobility. ~ Rebecca West

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

You can't get wet from the word 'water.' ~ Alan Watts

Punk has been portrayed as music by and for angry white males, but in its inception, it was a rebellion against all rock cliches. Gender, ethnic, sexual and class taboos were all challenged by our early punk community and that is a story which is not very often told. People of color, queer folk, women - all were present from the very beginning of Punk. ~ Alice Bag

Los Angeles was the most glamorous, tackiest, most elegant, seediest, most clever, dumbest, most beautiful, ugliest, forward-looking, retro-thinking, altruistic, self-absorbed, deal-savvy, politically ignorant, artistic-minded, criminal-loving, meaning-obsessed, money-grubbing, laid-back, frantic city on the planet. And any two slices of it, as different as Bel Air and Watts, were nevertheless uncannily alike in essence: rich with the same crazy hungers, hopes, and despairs. ~ Dean Koontz

The heart's optimism always
conquers reality ~ J.S. Watts

Mick's not good on his own problems, but he's very good at other people's. He's been wonderful over the years. I don't mean I ring him up every week, but he's fantastic. ~ Charlie Watts

How is an elephant like a schizophrenic?"
"I – what?"
"An elephant never forgets."
He said nothing.
"That's an AI joke," she said after a while. ~ Peter Watts

..and the only law,
that there need be
you shall not take away the free
from any man
though different he. ~ Malcolm Watts

the flicker of a memory
is all we can cling to
for our cherished ghosts

From "Cat Paws on a Windscreen ~ J.S. Watts

As you and I march across the decades of time, we are going to meet a lot of unpleasant situations that are so. They cannot be otherwise. We have our choice. We can either accept them as inevitable and adjust ourselves to them, or we can ruin our lives with rebellion and maybe end up with a nervous breakdown. ~ Dale Carnegie

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 do fear for the generations of people who came of age thinking that pop-punk is what punk is, and that all the rebellion you need is just to stick your tongue out in the mirror every once in a while. ~ Jello Biafra

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

God is the Self of the world, but you can't see God for the same reason that, without a mirror, you can't see your own eyes, and you certainly can't bite your own teeth or look inside your head. Your self is that cleverly hidden because it is God hiding. 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 good people will get the better of the bad. ~ Alan W. Watts

Life should be lived on the edge of life. You have to exercise rebellion: to refuse to tape yourself to rules, to refuse your own success, to refuse to repeat yourself, to see every day, every year, every idea as a true challenge - and then you are going to live your life on a tightrope. ~ Philippe Petit

Meanwhile, the government of the United States was behaving almost exactly as Karl Marx described a capitalist state: pretending neutrality to maintain order, but serving the interests of the rich. Not that the rich agreed among themselves; they had disputes over policies. But the purpose of the state was to settle upper-class disputes peacefully, control lower-class rebellion, and adopt policies that would further the long-range stability of the system. The arrangement between Democrats and Republicans to elect Rutherford Hayes in 1877 set the tone. Whether Democrats or Republicans won, national policy would not change in any important way. ~ Howard Zinn

I'm hypoglycemic, so if I don't eat I start to get really blood-sugar crazy. I feel like I'm going insane. ~ Reggie Watts

Do you remember me telling you we are practicing non-verbal spells, Potter?"
"Yes," said Harry stiffly.
"Yes, sir."
"There's no need to call me "sir" Professor."
The words had escaped him before he knew what he was saying. ~ J.K. Rowling

In that silence the angel of death brooded over many a sleeper there. The jackal took the opportunity offered to him to prowl among the animal remains around the intrenchment, without alarm from the guns; and daybreak disclosed to view hosts of adjutant birds and vultures gloating over their carnivorous breakfast. These are the only parties who have any cause to thank the Sepoys for the rebellion of 1857. ~ Mowbray Thompson

But we try to pretend, you see, that the external world exists altogether independently of us. ~ Alan Watts

Rebellion is impossible in a closed world where there is no way out. ~ Boualem Sansal

Perhaps the most exasperating thing about "me," about nature and the universe, is that it will never "stay put." It is like a beautiful woman who will never be caught, and whose very flightiness is her charm. For the perishability and changefulness of the world is part and parcel of its liveliness and loveliness. ~ Alan W. Watts

The future is unknown. Prophecy contaminates it with the past, which is why liberated people do not bother with fortunetelling or astrology, and why the happy traveler wanders and does not let himself be the slave of maps, guidebooks, and schedules, using them but not being used by them. ~ Alan W. Watts

Watts said that real freedom was not freedom of choice but freedom from choice. ~ Gil Friedman

I was never completely destitute. I think I borrowed money once off a friend, but I've always been quite careful with my money, having come from not much of it. ~ Naomi Watts

Aesthetics is really a much better approach to ethics than theology is. ~ Alan W. 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

It's time to question a job or career move when it seems like most energy is devoted to making things appear other than what they really are. ~ Alan Watts

The proud wish God would agree with them. They are not interested in changing their opinions to agree with God's. ~ Ezra Taft Benson

Life is renewed by death because it is again and again set free from what would otherwise become an insufferable burden of memory and monotony. Genuine reincarnation lies in the fact that whenever a child is born "I" - or human awareness - arises into the world again with memory wiped clean and the wonder of life restored. ~ Alan W. Watts

Disobey. Don't comply. Rebellion is fucking romantic.
-Johnny Ox ~ Amo Jones

Joy to the world, the Lord is come / Let earth receive her King / Let every heart, prepare him room / And heaven and nature sing. ~ Isaac Watts

Actually, the world is not complex. It is the task of trying to figure it out with words or numbers that is complex. ~ Alan W. Watts

There is a calamitous difference between a people who have been immersed in paganism for centuries and a post-Christian society. While the culture of the latter may carry a deep tradition influenced by Christian values, its posture of rebellion will give it a direction that is more explicitly and consciously anti-Christian. ~ Edmund Clowney

If we want justice for minorities and cooled wars with our natural enemies, whether human or nonhuman, we must first come to terms with the minority wand the enemy in ourselves and in our own hearts, for the rascal is there as much as anywhere in the 'external' world - especially when you realize that the world outside your skin is as much yourself as the world inside. ~ Alan Watts

I ask you to come down to earth," said the Baron in a calm, rather faint voice, "and to take up the duties of your station!"
"I have no intention of obeying you, my Lord Father," said Cosimo. "I am very sorry."
They were ill at ease, both of them, bored. Each knew what the other would say. "And what about your studies? Your devotions as a Christian?" said the father. "Do you intend to grown up like an American Savage?"
Cosimo was silent. These were thoughts he had not yet put to himself and had no wish to. Then he exclaimed: "Just because I'm a few yards higher up, does it mean that good teaching can't reach me?"
This was an able reply too, though it diminished, in a way, the range of his gesture; a sign of weakness.
His father realized this and became more pressing. "Rebellion cannot be measured by yards," said he. "Even when a journey seems no distance at all, it can have no return."
Now was the moment for my brother to produce some other noble reply, perhaps a Latin maxim, but at that instant none came into his head, though he knew so many by heart. Instead he suddenly got bored with all this solemnity, and shouted: "But from the trees I can piss farther," a phrase without much meaning, but which cut the discussion short.
As though they had heard the phrase, a shout went up from the ragamuffins around Porta Capperi. The Baron of Rondo's horse shied, the Baron pulled the reins and wrapped himself more tightly in his cloak, ready to leave. ~ Italo Calvino

Education is the most effective form of rebellion. ~ Thorin

Revolt is the violence of an entire people; rebellion the unruliness of an individual or an uprising by a minority; both are spontaneous and blind. Revolution is both planned and spontaneous, a science and an art. ~ Octavio Paz

A human being, appearances to the contrary, doesn't create his own purposes. These are imposed by the time he's born into; he may serve them, he may rebel against them, but the object of his service or rebellion comes from the outside. To experience complete freedom in seeking his purposes he would have to be alone, and that's impossible, since a person who isn't brought up among people cannot become a person. ~ Stanislaw Lem

The atonement was God's extending favor to people who deserved not favor but wrath. The atonement was God's bridging the awful "Grand Canyon" of sin to reach people who were in rebellion against Him. And He did this at infinite cost to Himself by sending Jesus to die in our place. ~ Jerry Bridges

[T]o be forever looking beyond is to remain blind to what is here. ~ Alan W. Watts

Death is going to take the boundaries away from us, that we should no more be persons. That's what death is about. When that is what life also wants to be about, how can you feel except rebellious? ~ Saul Bellow

Property damage is so much easier to live with than murder. ~ Peter Watts

But our deepest difficulties cannot be resolved merely on a narrowly intellectual plane. Our deepest difficulty is sin, rebellion against God. We have desires in our hearts that resist the Bible's views and what God has to say. We want to be our own master. ~ Vern Sheridan Poythress

I don't know, it is a very quiet rebellion. [ ... ] I don't get angry. I sit quietly in the corner and say 'no'. ~ Bobbie Ann Mason

Just because I don't look like a freak show, it doesn't mean I'm not part of the circus... ~ Colin Watts

The only real recourse that [Russian] people had against tsarist rule was violence and rebellion. It was once remarked that Russia's constitution was absolutism moderated by assassination. ~ Alan Beattie

In 1989 when I switched from Democrat to Republican, with God as my witness, not one thing changed about what I believed about one man and one woman in a marriage or about diversity of color. That's a good thing. ~ J. C. Watts