Quote

The myths underlying our culture and underlying our common sense have not taught us to feel identical with the universe, but only parts of it, only in it, only confronting it - aliens.

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
Feels
Myth
Parts
Taught
Common
Confronting
Universe
Underlying
Culture
Myths
Sense
Identical
Feel
Aliens

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
People often say to me, 'I understand what you are talking about intellectually, but I don't really feel it, I don't realize it,' and I am apt to reply, 'I wonder whether you do understand it intellectually, because if you did you would also feel it.'
Alan Watts
Image
There is no coming toward it or going away from it it is, and you are it.
Alan Watts
Image
The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.
Alan Watts
Image
Self-improvement is a dangerous form of vanity.
Alan Watts
Image
Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap.
Alan Watts
Image
Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment.
Alan Watts
Image
The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop. Man doesn't learn this secret easily, but to shun pleasure altogether is cowardly avoidance of a difficult job. For we have to learn the art of enjoying things BECAUSE they are impermanent.
Alan Watts
Image
The more we struggle for life as pleasure, the more we are actually killing what we love.
Alan Watts
Image
Religion is not a department of life it is something that enters into the whole of it.
Alan Watts
Image
Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.
Alan Watts
Image
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
Alan Watts
Image
The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
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
To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet.
Alan Watts
Image
For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
We all need to go out of our minds at least once a day. When we go out of our minds we quickly come to our senses.
Alan Watts
Image
The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.
Alan Watts
Image
The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.
Alan Watts
Image
What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.
Alan Watts