Alan Watts Quotes

United States, Philosopher
January 6, 1915 – November, 16, 1973.

Alan Wilson Watts (6 January 1915 – 16 November 1973) was a American philosopher who interpreted and popularised 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 of the American Academy of Asian Studies.

Our trouble is that we have ignored and thus feel insecure in the enormous spectrum of love which lies between rather formal friendship and genital sexuality, and thus are always afraid that once we overstep the bounds of formal friendship we must slide inevitably to the extreme of sexual promiscuity.

Alan Watts
- Lies
- Friendship
The most strongly enforced of all known taboos is the taboo against knowing who or what you really are behind the mask of your apparently separate, independent, and isolated ego.

Alan Watts
- Independent
- Ego

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.

Alan Watts
- World
- Serious
- Risk
It must be obvious... that there is a contradiction in wanting to be perfectly secure in a universe whose very nature is momentariness and fluidity.

Alan Watts
- Nature
- Universe
We have, as a result of two thousand years of Christianity, sex on the brain. Which isn't always the best place for it.

Alan Watts
- Brain
- Sex
So in this idea, then, everybody is fundamentally the ultimate reality. Not God in a politically kingly sense, but God in the sense of being the self, the deep-down basic whatever there is. And you're all that, only you're pretending you're not. And it's perfectly OK to pretend you're not, to be perfectly convinced, because this is the whole notion of drama.

Alan Watts
- God
- Reality
- Deep
We say in popular speech that we come into this world, but we do nothing of the kind. We come out of it. In the same way as the fruit comes out of the tree, the egg from the chicken, and the baby from the womb, we are symptomatic of the universe. Just as in the retina there are myriads of little nerve endings, we are the nerve endings of the universe.

Alan Watts
- World
- Universe
- Baby
I have suggested that behind almost all myth lies the mono-plot of the game of hide-and-seek.

Alan Watts
- Game
- Lies

As a human being it is just my nature to enjoy and share philosophy. I do this in the same way that some birds are eagles and some doves, some flowers lilies and some roses.

Alan Watts
- Nature
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.

Alan Watts
- People
- American
Religion is always falling apart.

Alan Watts