Quote

The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.

Alan Watts

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Ego
Conscious
Focus
Attention
Nothing
Egotism

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
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
Image
We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
Alan Watts
Image
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
Alan Watts
Image
We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.
Alan Watts
Image
The whole process of nature is an integrated process of immense complexity and it is really impossible to tell whether something that happens in it is good or bad. Because you never know what will be the consequences of the misfortune. Or, you never know what will be the consequences of good fortune.
Alan Watts
Image
The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever.
Alan Watts
Image
Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
Alan Watts
Image
The hallucination of being a separate ego will not stand up to biological tests.
Alan Watts
Image
The animal tends to eat with his stomach, and the man with his brain. When the animal's stomach is full, he stops eating, but the man is never sure when to stop. When he has eaten as much as his belly can take, he still feels empty, he still feels an urge for further gratification.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
...mysticism and empiricism go together in opposition to scholasticism...they base themselves on the non-linear world of experience rather than the linear world of letters.
Alan Watts
Image
So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
Alan Watts
Image
The real Zen of the old Chinese masters was wu-shih, or no fuss.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.
Alan Watts
Image
Your soul isn't in your body your body is in your soul!
Alan Watts
Image
The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
Alan Watts
Image
But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.
Alan Watts
Image
The destination of life is this eternal moment.
Alan Watts
Image
Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
Alan Watts