52 Inspirational Alan Watts Quotes (PHILOSOPHER)

Top 11 Most Famous Alan W. Watts Quotes (BEST)

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
Alan Watts

This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

Every intelligent individual wants to know what makes him tick, and yet is at once fascinated and frustrated by the fact that oneself is the most difficult of all things to know.

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

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

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

I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is. — I have realized that the past and **future** are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.

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

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. — 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.

You are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily. — A scholar tries to **learn** something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.

15 Inspirational Alan W. Watts Quotes About Life

“Through our eyes, the universe is perceiving itself. Through our ears, the universe is listening to its harmonies. We are the witnesses through which the universe becomes conscious of its glory, of its magnificence.”
Alan Watts

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

Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up... now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep. — Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.

Hospitals should be arranged in such a way as to make being sick an interesting experience. One learns a great deal sometimes from being sick.

“We do not ‘come into’ this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean ‘waves,’ the universe ‘peoples.’ Every individual is an expression of the whole realm of nature, a unique action of the total universe.”
Alan Watts

When we attempt to exercise power or control over someone else, we cannot avoid giving that person the very same power or control over us.

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.

“The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.”
Alan Watts

Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. — **Meditation** is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

Only words and conventions can isolate us from the entirely undefinable something which is everything.

Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it.

Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.

19 Wise Alan W. Watts Quotes to Live By (WISDOM)

“Life is like music for its own sake. We are living in an eternal now, and when we listen to music we are not listening to the past, we are not listening to the future, we are listening to an expanded present.”
Alan Watts

Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

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. — 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.

The attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be. — The **attitude of faith** is to let go, and become open to **truth**, whatever it might turn out to be.

If you cannot trust yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself – so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of nature you are simply paralyzed. — If you cannot **trust** yourself, you cannot even trust your mistrust of yourself – so that without this underlying trust in the whole system of **nature** you are simply paralyzed.

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

The only Zen you’ll find on mountain tops is the Zen you bring up there with you.

“We seldom realize, for example, that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.”
Alan Watts