Famous Quotes

Quotes by Alan Watts

• And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
• But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.
• But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.
• But to me nothing - the negative, the empty - is exceedingly powerful.
• Faith is a state of openness or trust.
• How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
• 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.
• In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.
• In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.
• No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
• No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.
• Religion is not a department of life it is something that enters into the whole of it.
• So then, the relationship of self to other is the complete realization that loving yourself is impossible without loving everything defined as other than yourself.
• Technology is destructive only in the hands of people who do not realize that they are one and the same process as the universe.
• The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.
• The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
• The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.
• The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.
• The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.
• To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.
• You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.
• You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.
• Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.