Alan Watts

Things are as they are. Looking out into the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.

Join the dance.

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.

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

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.

You are an aperture through which the universe is looking at and exploring itself.

The more natural, the better.

I think I always feel like if everything went to shit, I would just teach improv at a theatre.

Life on the road is murder. It’s as though life begins and ends with your horn in your mouth.

If you believe, you will. If you don’t, you won’t.

There is safety in small beginnings and there is unlimited capital in the experience gained by growing.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.

It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.

Success means different things in different parts of my life, but overall if I have to define ultimately what success means – the bottom line – then for me it’s if the family is healthy and happy.

The more things a man is ashamed of, the more respectable he is.

Possessions are always secondary, loved ones are all that matters.

The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot.

A pessimist is one who makes difficulties of his opportunities; an optimist is one who makes opportunities of his difficulties.

A man must live like a great brilliant flame and burn as brightly as he can. In the end he burns out. But this is far better than a mean little flame.

My definition of a free society is a society where it is safe to be unpopular.

The achievement of one goal should be the starting point of another.