Quote

Self-knowledge leads to wonder, and wonder to curiosity and investigation, so that nothing interests people more than people, even if only one's own person.

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
People
Wonder
Knowledge
Interest
Persons
Person
Investigation
Nothing
Curiosity
Self
Leads
Even
Interests

More quotes by Alan Watts

Image
You must not be afraid of playing wrong notes. Just forget it, play it wrong! But play!
Alan Watts
Image
A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
Alan Watts
Image
Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith-in life, in other people, and in oneself-is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.
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
More and more we try to effect an adaptation to life by means of external gadgets, and attempt to solve our problems by conscious thinking rather than unconscious 'know-how'. This is much less to our advantage than we like to suppose.
Alan Watts
Image
If you want to stay in a state of illusion, stay in it. But you can always wake up.
Alan Watts
Image
Cows scream louder than carrots.
Alan Watts
Image
Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.
Alan Watts
Image
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
Alan Watts
Image
Wonder, and its expression in poetry and the arts, are among the most important things which seem to distinguish men from other animals, and intelligent and sensitive people from morons.
Alan Watts
Image
Your soul isn't in your body your body is in your soul!
Alan Watts
Image
Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
Alan Watts
Image
Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.
Alan Watts
Image
That's a waste of time. If you really understand Zen... you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because... the sound of the rain needs no translation.
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
Yet again, the more you strive for some kind of perfection or mastery—in morals, in art or in spirituality—the more you see that you are playing a rarified and lofty form of the old ego-game, and that your attainment of any height is apparent to yourself and to others only by contrast with someone else's depth or failure.
Alan Watts
Image
Faith is a state of openness or trust.
Alan Watts
Image
To define is to limit, to set boundaries, to compare and to contrast, and for this reason, the universe, the all, seems to defy definition....Just as no one in his senses would look for the morning news in a dictionary, no one should use speaking and thinking to find out what cannot be spoken or thought.
Alan Watts
Image
So the bodhisattva saves all beings, not by preaching sermons to them, but by showing them that they are delivered, they are liberated, by the act of not being able to stop changing.
Alan Watts
Image
What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?
Alan Watts