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Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.

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
Everything
Make
Primarily
Men
Attempt
World
Curiosity
Intellect
Expression
Philosophy
Sense

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it.
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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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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.
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We see what we believe rather than what we see.
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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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No amount of anxiety makes any difference to anything that is going to happen.
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It is the seeker, who understands there is more than what meets the eye, who is not afraid and makes the choice to go into the unknown. The process of awaking has begun, the discovery is underway.
Alan Watts
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You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
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The best way to convince someone is by making him realize that what you speak came from his own mind.
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To remain caught up in ideas and words about Zen is, as the old masters say, to stink of Zen.
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For a decision-the freest of my actions just happens like hiccups inside me or like a bird singing outside me.
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When you really understand that you are what you see and know, you do not run around the countryside thinking, I am all this! There is simply all this.
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Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
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Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.
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To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape.
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Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
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If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
Alan Watts
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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.
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We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
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Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.
Alan Watts