Quote

The 'you' who you think you are does not exist.

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
Exist
Doe
Think
Thinking

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
Spiritual awakening is the difficult process whereby the increasing realisation that everything is as wrong as it can be flips suddenly into the realisation that everything is as right is it can be. Or better, everything is as It as it can be.
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
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords
Alan Watts
Image
There is no coming toward it or going away from it it is, and you are it.
Alan Watts
Image
Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.
Alan Watts
Image
But I'll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you'll come to understand that you're connected with everything.
Alan Watts
Image
I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.
Alan Watts
Image
You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
Alan Watts
Image
No worthwhile life can be lived without risks, despite current American superstitions to the contrary.
Alan Watts
Image
Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.
Alan Watts
Image
You find out that the universe is a system that creeps up on itself and says 'Boo' and then laughs at itself for jumping.
Alan Watts
Image
To feel that life is meaningless unless “I” can be permanent is like having fallen desperately in love with an inch.
Alan Watts
Image
The psychotherapist ... tries to help the individual to be himself and to go it alone without giving unnecessary offense to his community, to be in the world (of social convention) but not of the world.
Alan Watts
Image
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.
Alan Watts
Image
Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.
Alan Watts
Image
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
Image
...for since there is no real 'way' to sartori, the way you are following makes very little difference.
Alan Watts
Image
I owe my solitude to other people.
Alan Watts
Image
The anitya doctrine is, again, not quite the simple assertion that the world is impermanent, but rather that the more one grasps at the world, the more it changes.
Alan Watts
Image
To perceive that form reveals the void, and to see that the void reveals form, is the secret for the overcoming of death. To the extent that one is unaware of space, one is unaware of one's own eternity — it's the same thing!
Alan Watts