Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
ALAN WATTSTrying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
More Alan Watts Quotes
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The present is always changing the past.
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You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.
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If one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.
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You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.
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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.
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People can’t be talked out of illusions.
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Reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot.
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You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were 5 minutes ago.
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The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.
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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.
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Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.
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Only doubtful truths need defense.
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Nothing satisfies an individual incapable of enjoyment.
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If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go.
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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.
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Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
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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.
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Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.
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Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.
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Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.
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One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.
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We feel that our actions are voluntary when they follow a decision and involuntary when they happen without decision.
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The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.
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If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.
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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.
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Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.
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