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

Alan Watts

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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
Author
Dramaturge
Musician
Philosopher
Theologian
Videographer
Writer
Kent
England
Teeth
Identity
Humor
Trying
Like
Bite
Mindfulness
Bites
Define

More quotes by Alan Watts

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The agnostic, the skeptic, is neurotic, but this does not imply a false philosophy it implies the discovery of facts to which he does not know how to adapt himself. The intellectual who tries to escape from neurosis by escaping from the facts is merely acting on the principle that “where ignorance is bliss, ‘tis folly to be wise.
Alan Watts
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Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
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But when no risk is taken there is no freedom. It is thus that, in an industrial society, the plethora of laws made for our personal safety convert the land into a nursery, and policemen hired to protect us become selfserving busybodies.
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The sound of the rain needs no translation.
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If you are ready to wake up, you are going to wake up. If you're not you are going to stay pretending that you are just a poor little me.
Alan Watts
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Western religions are more concerned with behavior, doctrine, and belief than with any transformation of the way in which we are aware of ourselves and our world.
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I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, You shall be my disciple.I looked at him and said, Who was Buddha's teacher? He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover.
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However much I may be impressed by the difference between a star and the dark space around it, I must not forget that I can see the two only in relation to each other, and that this relation is inseparable.
Alan Watts
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But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.
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I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.
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A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts. So he loses touch with Reality, and lives in a world of illusion.
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Courage is the goal of cowards.
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...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
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Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.
Alan Watts
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You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.
Alan Watts
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Sex is no longer a serious taboo. Teenagers sometimes know more about it than adults.
Alan Watts
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Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
Alan Watts
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You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.
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To the Taoist mentality, the aimless, empty life does not suggest anything depressing. On the contrary, it suggests the freedom of clouds and mountain streams, wandering nowhere, of flowers in impenetrable canyons, beautiful for no one to see, and of the ocean surf forever washing the sand, to no end.
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Someone once described “Christian Secularism” as the assumption that there is nothing at all to life except a pilgrimage between the maternity ward and the crematorium, and that it is within that span that Christian concern must be exercised because that is all there is.
Alan Watts