Quotes by Alan Watts

Here are 39 cool quotes by Alan Watts - the man who was God for 10 minutes. Got any favorites?

1. So, the whole idea, you see, is that everything's falling apart, so don't try and stop it. When you're falling off a precipice, it doesn't do you any good to hang onto a rock that's falling with you. See? But everything is doing that. And so, again, this is another case of our completely wasting our energy in trying to prevent the world from falling apart. Don't do it. And then you'll be able to do something interesting with the free energy.
   
   
2. Your soul isn't in your body; your body is in your soul.
   
   
3. It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about "I".
   
   
4. It seems that I know that I know. What I would like to see is the 'I' that knows me when I know that I know that I know.
   
   
5. Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
   
   
6. Advice? I don't have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you're writing, you're a writer. Write like you're a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there's no chance for a pardon. Write like you're clinging to the edge of a cliff, white knuckles, on your last breath, and you've got just one last thing to say, like you're a bird flying over us and you can see everything, and please, for God's sake, tell us something that will save us from ourselves. Take a deep breath and tell us your deepest, darkest secret, so we can wipe our brow and know that we're not alone. Write like you have a message from the king. Or don't. Who knows, maybe you're one of the lucky ones who doesn't have to.
   
   
7. The only Zen you'll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you.
   
   
8. No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
   
   
9. 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.
   
   
10. 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.
    
    
11. Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.
    
    
12. And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.
    
    
13. And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
    
    
14. Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal, for the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever....
    
    
15. Buddhism has in it no idea of there being a moral law laid down by somekind of cosmic lawgiver.
    
    
16. A living body is not a fixed thing but a flowing event, like a flame or a whirlpool: the shape alone is stable, for the substance is a stream of energy going in at one end and out at the other. We are particularly and temporarily identifiable wiggles in a stream that enters us in the form of light, heat, air, water, milk, bread, fruit, beer, beef Stroganoff, caviar, and pate de foie gras. It goes out as gas and excrement - and also as semen, babies, talk, politics, commerce, war, poetry, and music. And philosophy.
    
    
17. But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.
    
    
18. But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
    
    
19. The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
    
    
20. 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.
    
    
21. The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.
    
    
22. We do not "come into" into this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean "waves," the universe "peoples." Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe. This fact is rarely, if ever, experienced by most individuals. Even those who know it to be true in theory do not sense or feel it, but continue to be aware of themselves as isolated "egos" inside bags of skin.
    
    
23. The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
    
    
24. The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
    
    
25. Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
    
    
26. To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
    
    
27. Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.
    
    
28. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
    
    
29. When your eyes are functioning well you don't see your eyes. If your eyes are imperfect you see spots in front of them. That means there are some lesions in the retina or wherever, and because your eyes aren't working properly, you feel them. In the same way, you don't hear your ears. If you have a ringing in your ears it means there's something wrong with your ears. Therefore, if you do feel yourself, there must be something wrong with you. Whatever you have, the sensation of I is like spots in front of your eyes - it means something's wrong with your functioning.
    
    
30. When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.
    
    
31. We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.
    
    
32. What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.
    
    
33. You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
    
    
34. If you love a person, you say to that person, "Look, I love you, whatever that may be. I've seen quite a bit of it and I know there's lots that I haven't seen, but still it's you and I want you to be what you want to be. And I won't be happy if I've got you in a cage. You'd be a bird without song."
    
    
35. You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
    
    
36. You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.
    
    
37. Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
    
    
38. You didn't come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
    
    
39. No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.