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The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.

Alan Watts

A priest once quoted to me the Roman saying that a religion is dead when the priests laugh at each other across the altar. I always laugh at the altar, be it Christian, Hindu, or Buddhist, because real religion is the transformation of anxiety into laughter.
ALAN WATTS

Anxiety Dead Each Other Equality Laugh Priest Religion Transformation
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

Conscious Glory Listen Magnificant Perceive Universe Witness
There is nothing at all that can be talked about adequately, and the whole art of poetry is to say what can’t be said.
ALAN WATTS

Adequate Poetry Talk Words
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.
ALAN WATTS

Music Play Violin
The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.
ALAN WATTS

Life Permanent
We confuse money with actual wealth.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Confusion Money One Liner Wealth
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.
ALAN WATTS

Function Ocean Process Universe Yourself
If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Aware Awareness Beginning Future Live Past Present Real World
Human desire tends to be insatiable.
ALAN WATTS

Desire Human One Liner
To travel is to be alive, but to get somewhere is to be dead, for as our own proverb says, To travel well is better than to arrive.
ALAN WATTS

Alive Arrive Dead Proverb Travel
Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
ALAN WATTS

Destruction Hand People Process Realize Same Technology Universe
Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Command Feeling Love Pretend
You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.
ALAN WATTS

Final Play Reach Writing
Do not let the rapidity with which these thoughts can change deceive you into feeling that you think them all at once.
ALAN WATTS

Change Deceive Thinking
Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
ALAN WATTS

Concentration Look World
A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.
ALAN WATTS

Inspirational Learning Scholar Student Try

The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.

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The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually ‘grasp’ reality.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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