Quote

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are coins for real thing

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
Way
Wealth
Convenience
Things
Example
Fatal
Words
Conventions
Social
Somewhat
Money
Absurd
Ideas
Seriously
Confuse
Take
Forgotten
Convention
Real
Thoughts
Coins

More quotes by Alan Watts

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But we must not suffer over the suffering.
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The idea of the Universe being ruled by that marvelous old gentleman, is no longer plausible. It isn't that anybody has disproved it, but it just somehow doesn't go with the vast infinitude of the Universe.
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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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When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.
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No one's mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing.
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Just as the ocean is waving so each one of us is a waving of the whole cosmos, the entire works, all there is.
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Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.
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Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or loyal opposition to the culture in which it is involved.
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Ego is a social institution with no physical reality. The ego is simply your symbol of yourself. Just as the word “water” is a noise that symbolizes a certain liquid without being it, so too the idea of ego symbolizes the role you play, who you are, but it is not the same as your living organism.
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When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.
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You can't have something without nothing.
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We are not clear as to the role in life of these chemicals nor are we clear as to the role of the physician. You know, of course, that in ancient times there was no clear distinction between priest and physician.
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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.
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... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).
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The soul is something which contains the body. The body doesn't contain the soul. The soul, if we put it into modern language, is the entire complex of relationships in whose context this organism exists.
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The greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing.
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Of course, you can’t force your mind to be silent. That would be like trying to smooth ripples in water with a flatiron. Water becomes clear and calm only when left alone.
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Change is an illusion because we're always at the place where any future can take us.
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Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.
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The world is a marvelous system of wiggles.
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