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We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.
Alan Watts
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Alan Watts
Age: 58 †
Born: 1915
Born: January 6
Died: 1973
Died: November 16
Anglican Priest
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Kent
England
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More quotes by Alan Watts
Any systems approaching perfect self-control also approaches perfect self-frustration.
Alan Watts
There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
Alan Watts
Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination.
Alan Watts
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.
Alan Watts
What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.
Alan Watts
All that you see out in front of you is how you feel inside your head.
Alan Watts
Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I.
Alan Watts
this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana.
Alan Watts
Like too much alcohol,self-consciousness makes us see ourselves double, and we make the double image for two selves - mental and material, controlling and controlled, reflective and spontaneous. Thus instead of suffering we suffer about suffering, and suffer about suffering about suffering.
Alan Watts
A person who thinks too much only ever thinks about his thoughts
Alan Watts
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
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
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
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
Your soul isn't in your body your body is in your soul!
Alan Watts
Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
Alan Watts
What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.
Alan Watts
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
Alan Watts
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
Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.
Alan Watts
