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Anger
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To be angry about trifles is mean and childish; to rage and be furious is brutish; and to maintain perpetual wrath is akin to the practice and temper of devils; but to prevent and suppress rising resentment is wise and glorious, is manly and divine.
-Alan Watts
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Belief
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Some believe all that parents, tutors, and kindred believe. They take their principles by inheritance, and defend them as they would their estates, because they are born heirs to them.
-Alan Watts
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Change
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The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.
-Alan Watts
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Humanity
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How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.
-Alan Watts
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Identity
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Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.
-Alan Watts
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Meditation
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We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time, somewhat as a courteous audience will stop talking when a concert is about to begin.
-Alan Watts
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Self Respect
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We are at war between consciousness and nature, between the desire for permanence and the fact of flux. It is ourself against ourselves.
-Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity
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Spirituality
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Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.
-Alan Watts
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Truth
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Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
-Alan Watts
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Books by and about Alan Watts