Alan Watts Quotes

Alan Watts (1915 – 1973)

Alan Watts (1915 – 1973) was a British-American philosopher who interpreted and popularized Eastern philosophy for a Western audience. Born in Chislehurst, England, he moved to the United States in 1938 and began Zen training in New York. He received a master’s degree in theology, became an Episcopal priest in 1945, then left the ministry in 1950 and moved to California where he joined the faculty of the American Academy of Asian Studies. Watts gained a large following in the San Francisco Bay Area while working as a volunteer programmer at KPFA, a Pacifica Radio station in Berkeley. He wrote more than 25 books and articles on subjects important to Eastern and Western religion.

One Journey Quotations

Quotes by Alan Watts…

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.

Alan Watts (1915 – 1973)

Discovering this the mind becomes whole: the split between I and me, man and the world, the ideal and the real, comes to an end. Paranoia, the mind beside itself, becomes metanoia, the mind with itself and so free from itself.

Alan Watts (1915 – 1973)

Really, the fundamental, ultimate mystery — the only thing you need to know to understand the deepest metaphysical secrets — is this: that for every outside there is an inside and for every inside there is an outside, and although they are different, they go together.

Alan Watts (1915 – 1973)