Quote

We have a strange anxiety in us that if we don't interfere then it won't happen. Now that's the root of an enormous amount of trouble.

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
Root
Happens
Enormous
Anxiety
Roots
Amount
Strange
Trouble
Interfere
Happen

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
Do you see yourself as a victim of the world, or do you see yourself as the world?
Alan Watts
Image
Once you've learned to think you can't stop. And an enormous number of people devote their lives to keeping their minds busy and feel extremely uncomfortable with silence.
Alan Watts
Image
How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
Alan Watts
Image
You can't have something without nothing.
Alan Watts
Image
You know that if you get in the water and have nothing to hold on to, but try to behave as you would on dry land, you will drown. But if, on the other hand, you trust yourself to the water and let go, you will float. And this is exactly the situation of faith.
Alan Watts
Image
The harder we try to catch hold of the moment, to seize a pleasant sensation..., the more elusive it becomes... It is like trying to clutch water in one's hands - the harder one grips, the faster it slips through one's fingers.
Alan Watts
Image
Wars based on principle are far more destructive... the attacker will not destroy that which he is after.
Alan Watts
Image
It takes time for an acorn to turn into an oak, but the oak is already implied in the acorn.
Alan Watts
Image
The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever.
Alan Watts
Image
It's so important to consider this question: What do I desire?
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
Man is a little germ that lives on an unimportant rock ball that revolves about a small star at the outskirts of an ordinary galaxy. ... I am absolutely amazed to discover myself on this rock ball rotating around a spherical fire. It's a very odd situation. And the more I look at things I cannot get rid of the feeling that existence is quite weird.
Alan Watts
Image
The mind's the standard of the man.
Alan Watts
Image
The art of living... is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.
Alan Watts
Image
The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
Alan Watts
Image
There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
Alan Watts
Image
The problem is to overcome the ingrained disbelief in the power of winning nature by love, in the gentle (ju) way (do) of turning with the skid, of controlling ourselves by cooperating with ourselves.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.
Alan Watts
Image
But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
Alan Watts