Quote

The moralist is the person who tells people that they ought to be unselfish, when they still feel like egos, and his efforts are always and invariably futile.

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
Person
Efforts
Feel
Ego
Feels
Tells
Always
Ought
Moralist
Like
Effort
Egos
People
Stills
Futile
Still
Unselfish
Persons
Invariably

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist.
Alan Watts
Image
When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.
Alan Watts
Image
If you insist on being determined by the past that's your game, but the fact of the matter is it all starts right now.
Alan Watts
Image
You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
Alan Watts
Image
When we look for things there is nothing but mind, and when we look for mind there is nothing but things.
Alan Watts
Image
Do you have any control over being conscious? Do you know how you will?
Alan Watts
Image
Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.
Alan Watts
Image
When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
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
As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.
Alan Watts
Image
Courage is the goal of cowards.
Alan Watts
Image
So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.
Alan Watts
Image
The hostile attitude of conquering nature ignores the basic interdependence of all things and events--that the world beyond the skin is actually an extension of our own bodies--and will end in destroying the very environment from which we emerge and upon which our whole life depends.
Alan Watts
Image
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
Image
The fools standpoint is that all social institutions are games. He sees the whole world as game playing. That's why, when people take their games seriously and take on stern and pious expressions, the fool gets the giggles because he knows that it is all a game.
Alan Watts
Image
If we are unduly absorbed in improving our lives we may forget altogether to live them.
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
Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery -- the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets -- is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.
Alan Watts
Image
If you say that getting the money is the most important thing, you'll spend your life completely wasting your time. You'll be doing things you don't like doing in order to go on living, that is to go on doing thing you don't like doing, which is stupid.
Alan Watts
Image
To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.
Alan Watts