Watts Quotes & Sayings

This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. — Alan W. Watts

In a certain sense, Zen is feeling life instead of feeling something about life. — Alan Watts

Life and Reality are not things you can have for yourself unless you accord them to all others. They do not belong to particular persons any more than the sun, moon and stars. — Alan Watts

You can't judge a book by its cover," he said. "No," said Watts. "But you can tell how much it's gonna cost! — David Bischoff

Essays in Zen Buddhism — Alan W. Watts

But as I revisit the arguments offered so boldly in The Wisdom of Insecurity, I can feel the shock of truth that it produced in me. His — Alan W. Watts

What would you do if money was no object? — Alan Watts

A philosopher is a sort of intellectual yokel who gawks at things that sensible people take for granted. — Alan Watts

Innovation is the process of turning ideas into manufacturable and marketable form. — Watts Humphrey

Never say never - and I certainly don't judge anyone who does it. But most of the characters I play are going through some kind of emotional turmoil, so my job requires me to have expression. If my face was froze, what right do I have to play that part? All the women who haven't done anything to their faces are still able to play great roles. And some of the ones who have done something have messed it up- they look freakish. Anyway, for me it's about playing women with rich lives - and the longer the life, the deeper the wrinkles. — Naomi Watts

Sexual love is a troubled and problematic relationship in cultures where there is a strong sense of man's separation from nature, especially when the realm of nature is felt to be inferior or contaminated with evil. — Alan Watts

Common knowledge, but important nonetheless — Reggie Watts

I could be the only sentient being in the universe. If I'm even that much. Because I don't know if there is such a thing as a reliable narrator. — Peter Watts

Love is the movement within life that carries us, that enables us, that causes us to break out of what Alan Watts calls the "skin-encapsulated ego." Without love, we are self-centered, but love enables us to move the center of our lives outside our ego. Therefore it expands our lives and, needless to say, enriches it. Any human being would give anything to love or be loved. When it really happens, it is like heaven on earth. — Huston Smith

Acquaint yourself with your own ignorance. — Isaac Watts

Everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality ... — Alan Watts

Well, Mark, I led the charge for five or six years to get reforms for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. I was chairman of an organization called 'FM Policy Focus.' What we were saying was, if there was blip in the housing market, Fannie and Freddie would destabilize the greatest economy in the world. — J. C. Watts

The most basic Buddhist stance: sober examination of what lies before you, leaving aside all assumptions. — Alan W. Watts

Everything I am I owe to my faith and secondly to parents who were old school. — J. C. Watts

On the one hand, there are people known as straight, regular, square (and there are also cubes and tesseracts), classified, degreed, graduated, and moneyed, who live in little boxes made of ticky-tacky, cultivate lawn order, and want to get things ironed out in nothing flat. On the other, there are bohemians, nuts, bums, freaks, eccentrics, beatifics, whollymen, courtesans, vagrants, and hippies (a name which ought to have something to do with the dangerous curves of women's hips), who want to experience the universe in a groovy, swinging, ecstatic, syncopated, rock-and-rolling, mind-blown, turned-on, and far-out way. — Alan W. Watts

Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. — Alan Watts

Like love, the light or guidance of truth that influences us exists only in living form, not in principles or rules or expectations or advice, however widely circulated — Alan W. Watts

You, yourself, are the eternal energy which appears as this Universe. You didn't come into this world; you came out of it. Like a wave from the ocean. — Alan Watts

You have to make peace with yourself. The key is to find the harmony in what you have. — Naomi Watts

And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is. — Alan Watts

Unplanned process improvement is wishful thinking. — Watts Humphrey

He's smarter than all of us put together, but sometimes he talks like he's got a fifty-word vocabulary." A soft snort. "It's not like it'd kill him to use an adverb once in a while. — Peter Watts

One of my favourite actresses is Kate Winslet. She plays strong female characters and seems like she has a strong political awareness. I really like Naomi Watts and Juliette Lewis. — Emily Perkins

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment. — Alan W. Watts

Who believe more firmly in the Devil than in God are always afraid that if they let go, the Devil will take over first, unaware that not having let go is the Devil already in full control. — Alan W. Watts

It is obvious that the only interesting people are interested people, and to be completely interested is to have forgotten about I. — Alan W. Watts

When I can read my title clear To mansions in the skies, I'll bid farewell to every fear, And wipe my weeping eyes. — Isaac Watts

[F]or Zen there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control. The constructive powers of the human mind are no more artificial than the formative actions of plants or bees, so that from the standpoint of Zen it is no contradiction to say that artistic technique is discipline in spontaneity and spontaneity in discipline. — Alan W. Watts

Therefore, at about the age of twenty-one, I made to myself the solemn vow that I would never be an employee or put up with a "regular job." I have not always been able to fulfill this vow. I have had to work (in a reasonably independent manner) for the Church and for a graduate school, but since the age of forty-two I have been a free lance, a rolling stone, and a shaman ... — Alan W. Watts

I never had lessons. Used to try to play to records, which I hated doing. Still can't play to them. — Charlie Watts

Nobody used an industrial vortex engine to run kitchen appliances. — Peter Watts

In a relativistic universe you don't cling to anything, you learn to swim. And you know what swimming is - it's kind of a relaxed attitude with the water. In which you don't keep yourself afloat by holding the water, but by a certain giving to it. — Alan W. Watts

Maintain a constant watch at all times against a dogmatical spirit: fix not your assent to any proposition in a firm and unalterable manner, till you have some firm and unalterable ground for it, and till you have arrived at some clear and sure evidence. — Isaac Watts

I find that the sensation of myself as an ego inside a bag of skin is really a hallucination. — Alan W. Watts

Backwards law. When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink; but when you try to sink, you float. — Alan W. Watts

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. — Alan W. Watts

I had a job at a movie theater for like a year and a half and then a job at a health food store for, like, two years. Those were the only two jobs I ever had. — Reggie Watts

It is in vain that we can predict and control the course of events in the future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer. It is in vain that engineers devise faster and easier means of travel if the new sights that we see are merely sorted and understood in terms of old prejudices. It is in vain that we get the power of the atom if we are just to continue in the rut of blowing people up. — Alan W. Watts

I think every time you take on a new role, you're trying to help find that voice and you add your own bits and pieces along the way but with Noah [Baumbach] it's already done. — Naomi Watts

Plus it'll triple your assimilation rate over anything filtered through the senses. Perfect for porn. — Peter Watts

She was attractive, but so was everyone in this kind of light; the longer the wavelength, the softer the focus. There's a reason fuckcubbies don't come with fluorescent lights. — Peter Watts

If the human race develops an electronic nervous system, outside the bodies of individual people, thus giving us all one mind and one global body, this is almost precisely what has happened in the organization of cells which compose our own bodies. We have already done it. [ ... ] If all this ends with the human race leaving no more trace of itself in the universe than a system of electronic patterns, why should that trouble us? For that is exactly what we are now! — Alan W. Watts

In Job and the Psalms we shall find more sublime ideas, more elevated language, than in any of the heathen versifiers of Greece or Rome. — Isaac Watts

I was talking to a Zen master the other day and he said, "You shall be my disciple."I looked at him and said, "Who was Buddha's teacher?" He looked at me in a very odd way for a moment and then he burst into laughter and handed me a piece of clover. — Alan Watts

Self-consciousness is a stoppage because it is like interrupting a song after every note so as to listen to the echo, and then feeling irritated because of the loss of rhythm. — Alan W. Watts

Irrevocable commitment to any religion is not only intellectual suicide; it is positive unfaith because it closes the mind to any new vision of the world. Faith is, above all, openness - an act of trust in the unknown. — Alan W. Watts

The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years. — Alan W. Watts

Sometimes airport security people recognize me. I'll go through the whole screening process and at the end they'll go, 'Hey, man, I really like your work.' That's so cool. — Reggie Watts

I know, I know: it can be frustrating as hell. But people have an unfortunate habit of assuming they understand the reality just because they understood the analogy. You dumb down brain surgery enough for a preschooler to think he understands it, the little tyke's liable to grab a microwave scalpel and start cutting when no one's looking. — Peter Watts

But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful. — Alan Watts

Vedanta is the teaching of the Upanishads, a collection of dialogues, stories, and poems, some of which go back to at least 800 B.C. Sophisticated Hindus do not think of God as a special and separate super-person who rules the world from above, like a monarch. Their God is "underneath" rather than "above" everything, and he (or it) plays the world from inside. One might say that if religion is the opium of the people, the Hindus have the inside dope. What is more, no Hindu can realize that he is God in disguise without seeing at the same time that this is true of everyone and everything else. In the Vedanta philosophy, nothing exists except God. There seem to be other things than God, but only because he is dreaming them up and making them his disguises to play hide-and-seek with himself. — Alan W. Watts

Spiritual awakening is the difficult process whereby the increasing realisation that everything is as wrong as it can be flips suddenly into the realisation that everything is as right is it can be. Or better, everything is as It as it can be. — Alan Watts

To go out of your mind at least once a day is tremendously important. By going out of your mind, you come to your senses. — Alan Watts

Once the mind has seen through all fear and all hope, it finds peace within itself, in a state of awareness beyond thought. — Alan W. Watts

One principle problem of educating software engineers is that they will not use a new method until they believe it works and, more importantly, that they will not believe the method will work until they see it for themselves. — Watts Humphrey

Serving in Congress has been more than an honor; it has been one of the most exhilarating experiences of my life ... It has been a wonderful ride. It has been a wonderful journey. — J. C. Watts

There is always something taboo, something repressed, unadmitted, or just glimpsed quickly out of the corner of one's eye because a direct look is too unsettling. Taboos lie within taboos, like the skin of an onion. — Alan Watts

Everyone is the fabric and structure of existence. — Alan Watts

In theater, they say a theater piece is only as good as its transitions. — Reggie Watts

The human brain is a marvel. A mere 20 watts of energy are required to power the 22 billion neurons in a brain that's roughly the size of a grapefruit. To field a conventional computer with comparable cognitive capacity would require gigawatts of electricity and a machine the size of a football field. — John E. Kelly III

Faith is a state of openness or trust. — Alan Watts

All this careful conservatism, these shackled environments that barely edged beyond the laws of physics - they only guarded against the Inner Heckler, not these unwelcome sensations intruding from outside. — Peter Watts

Essentially Satori is a sudden experience, and it is often described as a "turning over" of the mind, just as a pair of scales will suddenly turn over when a sufficient amount of material has been poured into one pan to overbalance the weight in the other. Hence it is an experience which generally occurs after a long and concentrated effort to discover the meaning of Zen. — Alan Watts

The world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure like the Pasteur serum for rabies. — Alan Watts

Other people teach us who we are. Their attitudes to us are the mirror in which we learn to see ourselves, but the mirror is distorted. We are, perhaps, rather dimly aware of the immense power of our social enviornment. — Alan W. Watts

(At least one theory suggests that while great apes and adult
Humans are sentient, young Human children are not. I admit to a
certain fondness for this conclusion; if childen aren't nonsentient,
they're certainly psychopathic) — Peter Watts

Every in group distinguishes itself from the outgroup by some process of "going through the mill" or enduring sufferings which are subsequently worn as the proud badge of graduation — Alan W. Watts

Noah Baumbach writing is really wonderful. I think the way he plays out each character with a unique voice is really impressive, and rhythmically his dialogue works. — Naomi Watts

These are amongst the last memories I shall relinquish to the page, though I am hanging onto them for now and for as long as I can. When they are gone, will there be anything left of me? Am I nothing but memory? — J.S. Watts

The secret of the enjoyment of pleasure is to know when to stop. Man doesn't learn this secret easily, but to shun pleasure altogether is cowardly avoidance of a difficult job. For we have to learn the art of enjoying things BECAUSE they are impermanent. — Alan Watts

But deceleration is for pansies. We're headed for the stars. — Peter Watts

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. — Alan Watts

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself. — Alan W. Watts

The result of feeling that we are separate minds in an alien,
and mostly stupid, universe is that we have no common sense, no way of making sense of the world upon which we are agreed in common. It's just my opinion against yours, and therefore the most aggressive and violent (and thus insensitive) propagandist makes the decisions. A muddle of conflicting opinions united by force of propaganda — Alan W. Watts

So why are you here?" Watts asked Santo.
"Because, Paul, is it Paul? I'm here to put the f in freedom. — Richard House

In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way. — Alan Watts

I know this hasn't been a seamless narrative. I've had to shatter the story and string its fragments out along a death lasting decades. — Peter Watts

When you no longer make the distinction between the universe and how you are acting upon it, you are really on your own and so acquire a sense of responsibility. — Alan W. Watts

I like that feeling of discombobulation that comes in creating an absurd world that doesn't make sense. 'Monty Python' does a good job of it; 'Bugs Bunny,' too. — Reggie Watts

fear is born of duality - — Alan W. Watts

In my wildest imagination, I never thought that the fifth of six children born to Helen and Buddy Watts - in a poor black neighborhood, in the poor rural community of Eufaula, Oklahoma - would someday be called Congressman. — J. C. Watts

I think it's an awful drink, to be honest with you. — Charlie Watts

Te is thus the natural miracle of one who seems born to be wise and humane, comparable to what we call "perfect specimens" of flowers, trees, or butterflies - though sometimes our notions of the perfect specimen are too formal. Thus Chuang-tzu enlarges on the extraordinary virtue of being a hunchback, and goes on to suggest that being weird in mind may be even more advantageous than being weird in body. He compares the hunchback to a vast tree which has grown to a great old age by virtue of being useless for human purposes because its leaves are inedible and its branches twisted and pithy.5 Formally healthy and upright humans are conscripted as soldiers, and straight and strong trees are cut down for lumber; wherefore the sage gets by with a perfect appearance of imperfection, such as we see in the gnarled pines and craggy hills of Chinese painting. — Alan W. Watts

Almost all civilized peoples have been brought up to think of themselves as ghosts in machines, — Alan W. Watts

The life of Zen begins, therefore, in a disillusion with the pursuit of goals which do not really exist the good without the bad, the gratification of a self which is no more than an idea, and the morrow which never comes. — Alan Watts

Actually John, Paul Rutherford, and Trevor Watts, and several other rather well known English jazz musicians had got their training by joining the Air Force, which was a pretty standard way for people to get some kind of musical education in those days. — Evan Parker

For Lao-tzu's Taoism is the philosophical equivalent of jujitsu, or judo, which means the way of gentleness. Its basis is the principle of Tao, which may be translated the Way of Nature. But in the Chinese language the word which we render as "nature" has a special meaning not found in its English equivalent. Translated literally, it means "self-so." For to the Chinese, nature is what works and moves by itself without having to be shoved about, wound up, or controlled by conscious effort. Your heart beats "self-so," and, if you would give it half a chance, your mind can function "self-so" - though most of us are much too afraid of ourselves to try the experiment. — Alan W. Watts

The next aspect of the mystical feeling is even more difficult to assimilate into our ordinary practical intelligence. It is the overwhelming sense that everything that happens - everything that I or anybody else has ever done - is part of a harmonious design and that there is no error at all. — Alan W. Watts

We identify in our exerience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us. — Alan Watts

For longer than I've been involved in the political process, the Republican establishment has claimed to want to provide an alternative for the black community, yet party elite refuse to show up for the game. — J. C. Watts

We have seen the Democrat solution to an energy crisis; it's called California. — J. C. Watts

[H]uman experience is determined as much by the nature of the mind and the structure of its senses as by the external objects whose presence the mind reveals. — Alan W. Watts

Choices are usually decisions motivated by pleasure and pain, and the divided mind acts with the sole purpose of getting "I" into pleasure and out of pain.

But the best pleasures are those for which we do not plan, and the worst part of pain is expecting it and trying to get away from it when it has come. — Alan W. Watts

It takes a lot of strength to let go — J. C. Watts

Whenever I find my will to live becoming too strong, I read Peter Watts — James Nicoll