Alan Watts Quotes

“You are the universe experiencing itself.”

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.”

“We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree.”

“You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”

“When you get the message, hang up the phone.”

“This is the real secret of life—to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now.”

“Stop measuring days by degree of productivity and start experiencing them by degree of presence.”

“You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean.”

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

“The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”

“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment, it is infinite and eternal.”

“Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.”

“The ego is nothing other than the focus of conscious attention.”

“Real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.”

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

“If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.”

“To remain stable is to be stagnant.”

“You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.”

“The more we struggle for life as pleasure, the more we are actually killing what we love.”

“There is nothing wrong with meditation, but there is also nothing wrong with making spaghetti while listening to loud music.”

“People become very upset when you break the rules, even if the rules are arbitrary.”

“To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.”

“Our real work is to look upon the world with love.”

“Each moment is a place you’ve never been.”

“The future is a concept—it doesn’t exist.”

“To practice with an open hand is to let go of trying to control the world.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water.”

“What we see as death, empty space, or nothingness is only the trough between the crests of this endlessly waving ocean.”

“Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel.”

“Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.”

“Nature is not a collection of objects, but an ever-flowing stream of life.”

“The attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief.”

“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.”

“The sense of unity is the basis of all compassion.”

“If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself.”

“What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously.”

“Trying to force change in the universe is like trying to teach a snake to play piano.”

“It’s better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing than a long life spent in a miserable way.”

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”

“The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.”

“One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious.”

“Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”

“This is the beginning of meditation: to let go of ourselves, to let go of control.”

“If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself.”

“We are the witness through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory.”

“The only Zen you find on the tops of mountains is the Zen you bring up there.”

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