Alan Watts quotes, and the talks they came from

Alan Watts is one of the most misquoted people on the internet. A great deal of what circulates under his name comes from his books rather than his lectures, some of it is paraphrase, and some of it he was explicitly quoting from someone else - "the map is not the territory" is Alfred Korzybski's, and Watts says so on the recording every time he uses it.

Every quote below was matched word-for-word against the transcript of an actual lecture. Click any one to hear him say it. Where his wording differs from the version that circulates online, his wording is what you will find here.

Life is not a journey

In music, though, one doesn't make the end of a composition the point of the composition. If that were so the best conductors would be those who played fastest.

Coincidence of Opposites [Tao of Philosophy]

You don't aim at a particular spot in the room that's where you should arrive the whole point of the dancing is the dance.

Slices of Wisdom [Tao of Philosophy]

This is the real secret of life: to be completely engaged with what you're doing in the here and now.

Work As Play

We thought of life by analogy with a journey with a pilgrimage which had a serious purpose at the end.

Slices of Wisdom [Tao of Philosophy]

You and the universe

What you do is what the whole universe is doing at the place you call here and now. You are something the whole universe is doing.

Man and Nature [Tao of Philosophy]

The universe is sort of watching itself through your eyes. You are an aperture through which the universe is aware of itself.

Unity in Contemplation

You are the whole works that there is that always was and always has been and always will.

Still The Mind

You are the big bang, the original force of the universe coming on as whoever you are.

What Is Reality [Philosophy and Society]

The ego and the self

The ego is a social institution. In other words a convention.

Zen Reconsidered [Buddhism]

You cannot lift yourself up by your own bootstraps however hard you try.

Veil of Thoughts

We always find the interchange of two personality types which I call prickles and goo.

Seeing Through the Net [Tao of Philosophy]

Thinking, spontaneity and the double bind

A person who thinks all the time has nothing to think about except thoughts, so he loses touch with reality and lives in a world of illusions.

Art of Meditation [Zen and Meditation]

The old old basic double bind. You must be spontaneous.

The Joker Part 3

The sound of the rain needs no translation, no explanation.

Why Not Now [Zen And The Arts]

Time and the wiggly world

The future is a concept, it doesn't exist. As the proverb says, tomorrow never comes.

Meditation

The whole world is wiggly lines. Clouds, mountains people, rivers, everything is wiggly lines.

Man is a Hoax [Early Radio Talks]