Alan Watts
Alan Watts
Alan Wilson Wattswas a British philosopher, writer, and speaker, best known as an interpreter and populariser of Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. Pursuing a career, he attended Seabury-Western Theological Seminary, where he received a master's degree in theology. Watts became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California, where he joined the faculty...
NationalityEnglish
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth6 January 1915
Alan Watts quotes about
When one speaks of awakening, it means de-hypnotizatio n; coming to your senses. But of course to do that, you have to go out of your mind.
Philosophy is man’s expression of curiosity about everything and his attempt to make sense of the world primarily through his intellect.
Billions of years ago you were a big bang. But now you're a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off. And don't feel that we're still the big bang. But you are.
As the fish doesn't know water, people are ignorant of space. Consciousness is concerned only with changing and varying details; it ignores constants-especially constant backgrounds. Thus only very exceptional people are aware of what is basic to everything.
... preliminary accounting, banking and surveying (known as arithmetic, algebra and geometry).
I have no other self than the totality of the things of which I am aware.
Increasingly, we're developing all kinds of systems for verifying reality by echoing it.
What are we saying when we say now, something is holy? That means you should take a different attitude to what you are doing than if you were, for example, doing it for kicks.
The past and the future are abstractions without any concrete reality.
The mundane and the sacred are one and the same.
Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction.
We tend to regard ourselves as puppets of the Past, driven along by something that is always behind us.
By going out of your mind, you come to your senses
The police have enough work to keep them busy regulating automobile traffic, preventing robberies and crimes of violence and helping lost children and little old ladies find their way home. As long as the police confine themselves to such activities they are respected friends of the public. But as soon as they begin inquiring into people's private morals, they become nothing more than armed clergymen.