If you’re at all familiar with the work of Alan Watts, you know that he was a master of conveying complex philosophical concepts in a way that was easy for everyone to understand.
His quotes are timeless pieces of wisdom that can be applied to everyday life, and they are just as relevant today as they were when he first said them.
In this blog post, we’ll take a look at some of our favorite Alan Watts quotes and explore what they mean in depth. We hope you enjoy!
Alan Watts Quotes On Love Life and Peace 2024
1. “The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple.” ― Alan Watts
2. “We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” ― Alan Watts
3. “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” ― Alan Watts
4. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” ― Alan Watts
5. “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the God made for fun.” ― Alan Watts
6. “No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” ― Alan Watts
7. “A scholar tries to learn something every day, a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.” ― Alan Watts
8. “The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.” ― Alan Watts
9. “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.” ― Alan Watts
10. “Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.” ― Alan Watts
11. “Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.”― Alan Watts
12. “Stay in the centre, and you will be ready to move in any direction.” ― Alan Watts
13. “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.”― Alan Watts
14. “Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.”― Alan Watts
15. “Just as true humour is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.”― Alan Watts
16. “A scholar tries to learn something every day; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.”― Alan Watts
17. “The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”― Alan Watts
18. “The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.”― Alan Watts
19. “You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.”― Alan Watts
20. “Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.” ― Alan Watts
21. “You and I are all as much continuous with the physical universe as a wave is continuous with the ocean.” ― Alan Watts
22. “I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.” ― Alan Watts
23. “Never pretend to a love which you do not actually feel, for love is not ours to command.” ― Alan Watts
24. “No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.” ― Alan Watts
25. “You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.” ― Alan Watts
26. “This is the real secret of life — to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it to work, realize it is played.” ― Alan Watts
27. “Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” ― Alan Watts
28. “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.” ― Alan Watts
29. “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.” ― Alan Watts
30. “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.” ― Alan Watts
31. “The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.” ― Alan Watts
32. “One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.” ― Alan Watts
33. “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
34. “Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.” ― Alan Watts
35. “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
36. “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
37. “Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.” ― Alan Watts
38. “It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.” ― Alan Watts
39. “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.” ― Alan Watts
40. “People become concerned with being more humble than other people.” ― Alan Watts
41. “Jesus was not the man he was as a result of making Jesus Christ his personal savior.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
42. “The source of all light is in the eye.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
43. “You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
44. “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 Watts
45. “the future is a concept—it doesn’t exist There is no such thing as tomorrow There never will be because time is always now. That’s one of the things we discover when we stop talking to ourselves and stop thinking. We find there is only present, only an eternal now.” ― Alan Watts
46. “Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
47. “I owe my solitude to other people.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
48. “In reality, there are no separate events. Life moves along like water, it’s all connected to the source of the river is connected to the mouth and the ocean.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
49. “Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
50. “Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
51. “We know that from time to time, there arise among human beings, people who seem to exude love as naturally as the sun gives out heat.” ― Alan W. Watts
52. “The morning glory which blooms for an hour differs not at heart from the giant pine, which lives for a thousand years.” ― Alan Watts
53. “A man does not really begin to be alive until he has lost himself until he has released the anxious grasp which he normally holds upon his life, his property, his reputation and position.” ― Alan W. Watts
54. “You didn’t come into this world. You came out of it, like a wave from the ocean. You are not a stranger here.” ― Alan W. Watts
55. “Just as money is not real, consumable wealth, books are not life. To idolize scriptures is like eating paper currency.” ― Alan Watts
56. “It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.” ― Alan Wilson Watts
57. “I have no other self than the totality of things of which I am aware.” ― Alan W. Watts
58. “The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.” ― Alan Watts
59. “Instant coffee, for example, is a well–deserved punishment for being in a hurry to reach the future.” ― Alan W. Watts
60. “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 W. Watts
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Conclusion : Alan W. Watts Quotes 2024
The wisdom of Alan Watts is as relevant today as it ever was. If you are looking for a way to change your perspective on life and find some peace in these turbulent times, his words are worth reading.
We hope that you have enjoyed these quotes from one of the most insightful thinkers of our time. What is your favorite quote from Alan Watts?
