Quote

What was it like to wake up after having never gone to sleep? That was when you were born.

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
Wake
Sleep
Gone
Born
Never
Like

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
As muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone, it could be argued that those who sit quietly and do nothing are making one of the best possible contributions to a world in turmoil.
Alan Watts
Image
The real you is not a puppet that life pushes around, the real deep down you is the whole universe.
Alan Watts
Image
What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now, and you are something the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is something that the whole ocean is doing... The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around. The real deep-down you is the whole universe.
Alan Watts
Image
Conscious attention is a designed function of the brain which scans the environment for any trouble making changes. If you identify yourself with your trouble shooter, then naturally you define yourself as being in a perpetual state of anxiety.
Alan Watts
Image
The more we try to live in the world of words, the more we feel isolated and alone, the more all the joy and liveliness of things is exchanged for mere certainty and security. On the other hand, the more we are forced to admit that we actually live in the real world, the more we feel ignorant, uncertain, and insecure about everything.
Alan Watts
Image
How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
Alan Watts
Image
The 'you' who you think you are does not exist.
Alan Watts
Image
What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.
Alan Watts
Image
Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
Alan Watts
Image
We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
Alan Watts
Image
The reason we want to go on and on is because we live in an impoverished present.
Alan Watts
Image
To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
Alan Watts
Image
If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.
Alan Watts
Image
Religion is always falling apart.
Alan Watts
Image
If we are not totally blind, what we are seeking is already here. This is it.
Alan Watts
Image
When death comes, it's just like winter. We don't say, There ought not to be winter. That the winter season, when the leaves fall and the snow comes, is some kind of defeat, something which we should hold out against. No. Winter is part of the natural course of events. No winter, no summer. No cold, no heat.
Alan Watts
Image
Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified.
Alan Watts
Image
There is no formula for generating the authentic warmth of love. It cannot be copied.
Alan Watts
Image
Enjoyment is an art and a skill for which we have little talent or energy... your entire education has has deprived you of this capacity because it was preparing you for the future, instead of showing you how to be alive now.
Alan Watts
Image
Although profoundly inconsequential, the Zen experience has consequences in the sense that it may be applied in any direction, to any conceivable human activity, and that wherever it is so applied it lends an unmistakable quality to the work.
Alan Watts