Alan Watts

This is the real secret of life – to be completely engaged with what you are doing in the here and now. And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.

The menu is not the meal.

The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.

Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.

The art of living… is neither careless drifting on the one hand nor fearful clinging to the past on the other. It consists in being sensitive to each moment, in regarding it as utterly new and unique, in having the mind open and wholly receptive.

The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.

The worst things in history have happened when people stop thinking for themselves and listen to other people and, even worse, start following other people. That’s what gives rise to dictators.

Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment.

There can be no lasting peace where hatred exists. Hatreds will continue to arise as long as the causes of war are not rooted out and exposed.

Every situation needs a hero. Step up and be that for your child.

They’re different kinds of challenges depending upon what phase of life I’m in.

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes.

What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say

Life is trying things to see if they work.

The Smiths dream into my ear on this lost and lonely morning. I sing along like it is the only prayer I know (forgive me, Mother Mary).

If there are no stupid questions, then what kind of questions do stupid people ask? Do they get smart just in time to ask questions?

The concept of shaking hands is absolutely terrible, and statistically I’ve been proven right.

A goal is a dream with a finish line.

Stars are good too. I wish I could get some to put in my hair. But I suppose I never can. You would be surprised to find how far off they are, for they do not look it. When they first showed last night I tried to knock some down with a pole, but it didn’t reach, which astonished me. Then I tried clods till I was all tired out, but I never got one. I did make some close shots, for I saw the black blot of the clod sail right into thee midst of the golden clusters forty or fifty times, just barely missing them, and if I could’ve held out a little longer, maybe I could’ve got one.

Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off your goal.

I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim…