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If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

Alan Watts

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.
ALAN WATTS

Discover Finding Imagination Pain Safety Seek
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
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
ALAN WATTS

Nature System Trust Yourself
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
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
The menu is not the meal.
ALAN WATTS

Food Meal Menu One Liner Philosophy
In looking out upon the world, we forget that the world is looking at itself.
ALAN WATTS

Forget Look Reality Universe World
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.
ALAN WATTS

Arrangement Deal Experience Hospital Interesting Learning 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

Action Expression Individual Leaving Nature Ocean People Process Unique Universe Waves World
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.
ALAN WATTS

Faith Float Freedom Grab Relaxation Swim Trust Water Yourself
The relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
ALAN WATTS

Impossible Love Realize Relationship Self Love Yourself
We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision.
ALAN WATTS

Action Decision Feeling Follow Happen Voluntary
For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.
ALAN WATTS

Life Live Present
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
Playing a violin is, after all, only scraping a cat’s entrails with horsehair.
ALAN WATTS

Music Play Violin
Genuine love comes from knowledge, not from a sense of duty or guilt.
ALAN WATTS

Duty Genius Guilt Knowledge Love Sense
We confuse money with actual wealth.
ALAN WATTS

Actual Confusion Money One Liner Wealth
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.
ALAN WATTS

Gone Imagination Night Sleep Wake Up
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
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
Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present.
ALAN WATTS

Future Inspirational Night Present Significance
People become concerned with being more humble than other people.
ALAN WATTS

Concern Humble People Spiritual
People can’t be talked out of illusions.
ALAN WATTS

Illusion Judgment One Liner People Talk
Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.
ALAN WATTS

Direction Move Philosophy Ready Stay
When you find out that there was never anything in the dark side to be afraid of, Nothing is left but to love.
ALAN WATTS

Afraid Darkness Finding Love
Only doubtful truths need defense.
ALAN WATTS

Deep Defense Doubt Need One Liner
Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.
ALAN WATTS

Attraction Content Inferior Material Package Pleasure Symbol

If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

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If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

More Alan Watts Quotes