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
If we live, we live; if we die, we die; if we suffer, we suffer; if we are terrified, we are terrified. There is no problem about it.
To play so as to be relaxed and refreshed for work is not to play, and no work is well and finely done unless it, too, is a form of play.
The sense of wrong is simply failure to see where something fits into a pattern, to be confused as to the hierarchical level upon which an event belongs.
To be free from convention is not to spurn it but not to be deceived by it.
The more we struggle for life as pleasure, the more we are actually killing what we love.
Everyone has love, but it can only come out when he is convinced of the impossibility and the frustration of trying to love himself.
Beyond positive and negative, what is Reality?
The problem comes up because we ask the question in the wrong way. We supposed that solids were one thing and space quite another, or just nothing whatever. Then it appeared that space was no mere nothing, because solids couldn't do without it. But the mistake in the beginning was to think of solids and space as two different things, instead of as two aspects of the same thing. The point is that they are different but inseparable, like the front end and the rear end of a cat. Cut them apart, and the cat dies.
The sound of the rain needs no translation.
I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.
You don't need to try to be God, you are! But if you try to be God it means you don't know you are.
We must be careful that the business we build does not become mere busyness.
Truly great companies are built on ideals, not just deals.
Make a spurious division of one process into two, forget that you have done it, and then puzzle for centuries as to how the two get together.