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
Religion is always falling apart.
...[W]ords can be communicative only between those who share similar experiences.
The world is in an extremely dangerous situation, and serious diseases often require the risk of a dangerous cure like the Pasteur serum for rabies.
I would suggest that today, we know about as much concerning the human mind as we knew about the galaxy in 1300.
Society is our extended mind and body.
You are something that the whole world is doing just as when the sea has waves on it.
Just as the ocean is waving so each one of us is a waving of the whole cosmos, the entire works, all there is.
I am what happens between the maternity ward and the Crematorium
...for thousands of years human history has been a magnificently futile conflict, a wonderfully staged panorama of triumphs and tragedies based on the resolute taboo against admitting that black goes with white.
And it came to pass that in the hands of the ignorant, the words of the Bible were used to beat plowshares into swords
How did you know you're alive, unless you'd once been dead?
How could you say the best form of government is a republic if you think the universe is a monarchy?
Now, you see, if you understand what I'm saying, with your intelligence, and then take the next step and say "But I understood it now, but I didn't feel it." Then, next I raise the question: Why do you want to feel it? You say: "I want something more", because that's again that spiritual greed. And you could only say that because you didn't understand it.
Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or "loyal opposition" to the culture in which it is involved.