Alan Watts

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.

Man suffers only because he takes seriously what the gods made for fun.

Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

The more a thing tends to be permanent, the more it tends to be lifeless.

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

There are four things every person has more of than they know; sins, debt, years, and foes.

Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.

Vision without execution is just hallucination.

If money is your hope for independence, you will never have it. The only real security that a man can have in this world is a reserve of knowledge, experience and ability.

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?

All punishments by which the human body might be maimed are barbarbarism.

Heaven knows we need never be ashamed of our tears, for they are rain upon the blinding dust of earth, overlying our hard hearts. I was better after I had cried, than before–more sorry, more aware of my own ingratitude, more gentle.

Loyalty to petrified opinion never yet broke a chain or freed a human soul.

Some days, your perfume falls from your skin and settles in the staircase. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve stopped on the fourth step and felt all the ways I’ve fallen in love with you.

You generate the results in your life that you believe you deserve.

Any company large enough to have a research lab is too large to listen to it.

When I was fourteen, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have him around. When I got to be twenty-one, I was astonished at how much he had learned in seven years.

No matter how carefully and assiduously and how deeply you bury shit, the American public will find it and buy it in large quantity, It’s true, absolutely true.

If a man is offered a fact which goes against his instincts, he will scrutinize it closely, and unless the evidence is overwhelming, he will refuse to believe it. If, on the other hand, he is offered something which affords a reason for acting in accordance to his instincts, he will accept it even on the slightest evidence. The origin of myths is explained in this way.

You need to listen to your body because your body is listening to you.