Famous Quotes by Alan Watts

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

“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.”

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

Every experience is a form of exploration.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

Life is a series of experiences that we must embrace and learn from.

You are the universe experiencing itself.

What you do is what matters, not what you say you'll do.

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

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

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

The attitude you bring to the moment is everything.

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

We do not see things as they are, we see them as we are.

Life is not a problem to be solved, but an experience to be had.

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.

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.

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

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

When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.

This is the simple truth: you can do anything you want to do.

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

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.

We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.

The only point of dancing is to dance.

You are under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago.

Zen has no goal; it is a traveling without point, with nowhere to go. To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead.

Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.

It is only when there is no goal and no rush that the human senses are fully open to receive the world.

There is no method to arrive at the place where you are.

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

Zen is a liberation from time.

What the devil is the point of surviving, going on living, when it's a drag? But you see, that's what people do.

You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.

Faith is a state of openness or trust.

Nirvana is where you are, provided you don’t object to it.

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

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

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

Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.

We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.

The relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.