Quotes by Alan W. Watts

“To practice with an end in view is to have one eye on the practice and the other on the end, which is lack of concentration, lack of sincerity.”

“The brush must draw by itself. This cannot happen if one does not practice constantly. But neither can it happen if one makes an effort.”

“Hurrying and delaying are alike ways of trying to resist the present.”

“Whats it gonna be like, dying? To go to sleep and never, never, never wake up.Well, a lot of things its not gonna be like. Its not going to be like being buried alive. Its not going to be like bein...”

“There are various levels above and below the human through which the individual soul may pass in the course of its reincarnationsthe angelic, the titanic, the animal, the purgatories, and the realm...”

“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. ”

“But spontaneity is not by any means a blind, disorderly urge, a mere power of caprice. A philosophy restricted to the alternatives of conventional language has no way of conceiving an intelligence ...”

“Advice? I don’t have advice. Stop aspiring and start writing. If you’re writing, you’re a writer. Write like you’re a goddamn death row inmate and the governor is out of the country and there’s no ...”

“Since opposed principles, or ideologies, are irreconcilable, wars fought over principle will be wars of mutual annihilation. But wars fought for simple greed will be far less destructive, because t...”

“Not long ago Congress voted, with much patriotic rhetoric, for the imposition of severe penalties upon anyone presuming to burn the flag of the United States. Yet the very Congressmen who passed th...”

“For our radically misnamed “materialistic” civilization must above all cultivate the love of material, of earth, air, and water, of mountains and forests, of excellent food and imaginative housing ...”

“It is fundamental to both Taoist and Confucian thought that the natural man is to be trusted, and from their standpoint it appears that the Western mistrust of human nature-whether theological or t...”

“Here's an example: someone says, "Master, please hand me the knife," and he hands them the knife, blade first. "Please give me the other end," he says. And the master replies, "What would you do wi...”

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

“For there is never anything but the present, and if one cannot live there, one cannot live anywhere.”

“[I]t would seem that to be incapable of sitting and watching with the mind completely at rest is to be incapable of experiencing the world in which we live to the full. For one does not know the wo...”

“[I]t is typical of Zen that its style of action has the strongest feeling of commitment, of "follow-through." It enters into everything wholeheartedly and freely without having to keep an eye on it...”

“What’s it gonna be like, dying? To go to sleep and never, never, never wake up.Well, a lot of things it’s not gonna be like. It’s not going to be like being buried alive. It’s not going to be like ...”