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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

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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
System
Anything
Able
Never
Gobble
Irreducible
Definition
Definitions
Explain

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You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.
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The only serious side-effect of # marijuana is that you might get arrested.
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Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.
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A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted.
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The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
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And although our bodies are bounded with skin, and we can differentiate between outside and inside, they cannot exist except in a certain kind of natural environment.
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A paradox is only a truth standing on its head to attract attention.
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If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
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People become concerned with being more humble than other people.
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Perhaps there is no other knowing than the mere competence of the act. If at the heart of one's being, there is no self to which one ought to be true, then sincerity is simply nerve it lies in the unabashed vigor of the pretense. But pretense is only pretense when it is assumed that the act is not true to the agent. Find the agent.
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What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.
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No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.
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The source of all light is in the eye.
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You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are.
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I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities.
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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.
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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.
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I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
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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.
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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.
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