212 Quotes by Alan W. Watts

[T]here is some other way of understanding and getting along with the process of nature than by translating it into words. After all, the brain, the very organ of intelligence, defies linguistic description by even the greatest neurologists.

[T]he world as described is included in but is not the same as the world as it is. As a way of contemplation, it is being aware of life without thinking about it, and then carrying this on even while one is thinking, so that thoughts are not confused with nature.

[T]he chances of survival are best when there is no anxiety to survive, and [...] the greatest power is available to those who do not seek power and who do not use force. To be anxious to survive is to wear oneself out, and to seek power and to use force is to overstrain one's system. One is best preserved by floating along without stress.

[W]hen "the rule of law" becomes absolutized and everything is done by the book or the computer, people call out in desperation for the intervention of a reasonable human being.

[W] are belatedly realizing that the ill-treatment of the environment is damage to ourselves - for the simple reason that the subject and object cannot be separated, and that we and our surroundings are the process of a unified field[.]

[I]n trying to figure out the brain, the obstacle is that we have no finer instrument than the brain itself for the purpose. The greatest hindrance to objective knowledge is our own subjective presence.

[S]een as a whole the universe is a harmony or symbiosis of patterns which cannot exist without each other.

[W]hat is ordinarily felt as the wayward, unpredictable, dangerous, and even hostile world - including one's capricious emotions and inner feelings - is actually one's own being and doing. The very sense that this is not so is, in turn, part of its being so,

W might 'conquer' nature if we could first, or at the same time, conquer our own nature, though we do not see that human nature and 'outside' nature are all of a piece.