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

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

More quotes by Alan Watts

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Every explicit duality is an implicit unity.
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Zen is a liberation from time. For if we open our eyes and see clearly, it becomes obvious that there is no other time than this instant, and that the past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
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Total situations are, therefore, patterns in time as much as patterns in space.
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Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.
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What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life?
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Lack of love for the vegetative, subtle, cthonic, pagan, and sexy aspect of the world means death.
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What we need to realize is that there can be, shall we say, a movement, a stirring among people, which can be organically designed instead of politically designed.
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Courage is the goal of cowards.
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Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home.
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You can't live at all unless you can live fully now.
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If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.
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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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But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.
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Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.
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Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
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What is the next step, the practical application? —I will answer that the absolutely vital thing is to consolidate your understanding, to become capable of enjoyment, of living in the present, and of the discipline which this involves. Without this you have nothing to give.
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No one is more dangerously insane than one who is sane all the time: he is like a steel bridge without flexibility, and the order of his life is rigid and brittle.
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The destination of life is this eternal moment.
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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.
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There is a peculiar contradiction in trying to be a member of a republic while believing that the universe is a monarchy.
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