Quote

You will never get to the irreducible definition of anything because you will never be able to explain why you want to explain, and so on. The system will gobble itself up.

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
Explain
System
Anything
Able
Never
Gobble
Irreducible
Definition
Definitions

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
Alan Watts
Image
I seem to be a brief light that flashes but once in all the aeons of time a rare, complicated, and all-too-delicate organism on the fringe of biological evolution , where the wave of life bursts into individual, sparkling, and multicolored drops that gleam for a moment... only to vanish forever.
Alan Watts
Image
Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
Alan Watts
Image
The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
Alan Watts
Image
Just what should a young man or woman know to be 'in the know'? Is there, in other words, some inside information, some special taboo, some real lowdown on life and existence that most parents and teachers either don't know or won't tell?
Alan Watts
Image
This is the real secret of life -- to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
Alan Watts
Image
It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.
Alan Watts
Image
If a flower had a God it would not be a transcendental flower but a field.
Alan Watts
Image
What keeps us from happiness is our inability to fully inhabit the present
Alan Watts
Image
I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.
Alan Watts
Image
And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is.
Alan Watts
Image
Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.
Alan Watts
Image
It is interesting that Hindus, when they speak of the creation of the universe do not call it the work of God, they call it the play of God, the Vishnu lila, lila meaning play. And they look upon the whole manifestation of all the universes as a play, as a sport, as a kind of dance — lila perhaps being somewhat related to our word lilt
Alan Watts
Image
The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?
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
Paradoxical as it may seem, the purposeful life has no content, no point. It hurries on and on, and misses everything. Not hurrying, the purposeless life misses nothing, for it is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.
Alan Watts
Image
A less 'brainy-culture' would learn to synchronise its body rhythms rather than its clocks.
Alan Watts
Image
Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated
Alan Watts
Image
...the whole universe is through and through the playing of love in every shade of the word's use, from animal lust to divine charity.
Alan Watts
Image
The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.
Alan Watts