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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.

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
Things
Wrong
Constellations
Peace
Arranged
Universe
Badly
Night
Comparison
Wells
Inspiring
Well
Judging
Right
Stars
Make
Looking
Comparisons

More quotes by Alan Watts

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...the materialism of modern civilization is paradoxically founded on a hatred of materiality, a goal-oriented desire to obliterate all natural limits through technology, imposing an abstract grid over nature.
Alan Watts
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You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
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We do not come into this world we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.
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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.
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How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
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The trouble with many religions, accused of wishful thinking, is that they are not wishful enough. They show a deplorable lack of imagination.
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What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.
Alan Watts
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Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.
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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
Alan Watts
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The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.
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A less 'brainy-culture' would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.
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If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
Alan Watts
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The Art of Being: A state of wholeness in which the mind functions freely and easily, without the sensation of a second mind or ego standing over it with a club.
Alan Watts
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The best way to convince someone is by making him realize that what you speak came from his own mind.
Alan Watts
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...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
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There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion.
Alan Watts
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In reality there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it's all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.
Alan Watts
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Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.
Alan Watts
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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.
Alan Watts
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In life as well as in art Zen never wastes energy in stopping to explain it only indicates.
Alan Watts