Top 25 Best Alan Watts Quotes & Sayings 2023

Alan watts quotes

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself.

“We do not “come into” this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree. As the ocean “waves,” the universe “peoples.”” – Alan Watts

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.” – Alan Watts

“Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.” – Alan Watts

Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now. 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

“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 work, realize it is play.” – Alan Watts

“If you really understand Zen… you can use any book. You could use the Bible. You could use Alice in Wonderland. You could use the dictionary, because… the sound of the rain needs no translation.” – Alan Watts

“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

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.

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.

Problems that remain persistently insoluble should always be suspected as questions asked in the wrong way.

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 quotes on waking up

One is a great deal less anxious if one feels perfectly free to be anxious, and the same may be said of guilt.

“Life and love generate effort, but effort will not generate them. Faith in life, in other people, and in oneself, is the attitude of allowing the spontaneous to be spontaneous, in its own way and in its own time.” – Alan Watts

“Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.” – Alan Watts

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.” – Alan Watts

“What you are basically, deep, deep down, far, far in, is simply the fabric and structure of existence itself.” – Alan Watts

The world is filled with love-play, from animal lust to sublime compassion.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

“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 Watts

“To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.” – Alan Watts

“The more we struggle for life (as pleasure), the more we are actually killing what we love.” – Alan Watts

Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.

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.

Normally, we do not so much look at things as overlook them.

Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content.

It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.

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.

Society is our extended mind and body.

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.

Words can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.

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.

“We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.” – Alan Watts

Alan watts quotes on dream

“Life exists only at this very moment, and in this moment it is infinite and eternal, for the present moment is infinitely small; before we can measure it, it has gone, and yet it exists forever….” – Alan Watts

“There will always be suffering. But we must not suffer over the suffering.” – Alan Watts

“Every individual is a unique manifestation of the Whole, as every branch is a particular outreaching of the tree.” – Alan Watts

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.” – Alan Watts

“But I’ll tell you what hermits realize. If you go off into a far, far forest and get very quiet, you’ll come to understand that you’re connected with everything.” – Alan Watts

“When you get free from certain fixed concepts of the way the world is, you find it is far more subtle, and far more miraculous, than you thought it was.” – Alan Watts

A scholar tries to learn something everyday; a student of Buddhism tries to unlearn something daily.

We seldom realize, for example that our most private thoughts and emotions are not actually our own. For we think in terms of languages and images which we did not invent, but which were given to us by our society.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the Gods made for fun.

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 work, realize it is play.