"You can't live at all unless you can live fully now."
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Quote collection
Alan Watts quotes (page 7 of 25)
499 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"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."
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"The Tao belongs neither to knowing nor not knowing. Knowing is false understanding; not knowing is blind ignorance. If you really understand the Tao beyond doubt, it's like the empty sky. Why drag in right and wrong?"
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"I am amazed that Congressmen can pass a bill imposing severe penalties on anyone who burns the American flag, whereas they are responsible for burning that for which the flag stands: the United States as a territory, as a people, and as a biological manifestation. That is an example of our perennial confusion of symbols with realities."
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"Substances like LSD, which give away a secret about the nature of the social game - the human game and what underlies it - are potentially dangerous, of course, like any good thing is. Electricity is dangerous, fire is dangerous, cars are dangerous, planes are dangerous, but not so dangerous as driving on the freeway. The only way to handle danger is to face it. If you start getting frightened of it, then you make it worse. Because you project onto it all kinds of bogeys and threats which don't exist in it at all."
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"Zen is a way of liberation, concerned not with discovering what is good or bad or advantageous, but what is."
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"Without birth and death, and without the perpetual transmutation of all the forms of life, the world would be static, rhythm-less, undancing, mummified."
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"And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on."
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"Stay in the center, and you will be ready to move in any direction."
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"The biggest ego trip is getting rid of your ego, and of course the joke of it all is that your ego does not exist."
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"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."
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"So many people of wealth understand much more about making and saving money than about using and enjoying it. They fail to live because they are always preparing to live."
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"We think that the world is limited and explained by its past. We tend to think that what happened in the past determines what is going to happen next, and we do not see that it is exactly the other way around! What is always the source of the world is the present; the past doesn't explain a thing. The past trails behind the present like the wake of a ship and eventually disappears."
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"Just as true humor is laughter at oneself, true humanity is knowledge of oneself."
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"this present moment never comes to be and it never ceases to be, it is simply our minds that construct the continuity of thoughts we call time. In the present moment is nirvana."
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"Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment."
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"And the more you become aware of the unknown self - if you become aware of it - the more you realize that it is inseparably connected with everything else that is."
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"The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality."
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"The Universe is the game of the self, which plays hide and seek forever and ever."
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"You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate "you" to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real "you" is the one that comes and goes, manifests and withdraws itself eternally in and as every conscious being. For "you" is the universe looking at itself from billions of points of view, points that come and go so that the vision is forever new."
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