A Norman > A's Quotes

“But my dear man, reality is only a Rorschach ink-blot, you know.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“The startling truth is that our best efforts for civil rights, international
peace, population control, conservation of natural resources, and
assistance to the starving of the earth—urgent as they are—will destroy
rather than help if made in the present spirit. For, as things stand, we
have nothing to give. If our own riches and our own way of life are not
enjoyed here, they will not be enjoyed anywhere else. Certainly they
will supply the immediate jolt of energy and hope that methedrine, and
similar drugs, give in extreme fatigue. But peace can be made only by
those who are peaceful, and love can be shown only by those who love.
No work of love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart,
just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no
capacity for living now.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“Philosophers, for example, often fail to recognize that their remarks about the universe apply also to themselves and their remarks. If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“There was a young man who said though, it seems that I know that I know, but what I would like to see is the I that knows me when I know that I know that I know.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“We therefore work, not
for the work's sake, but for money—and money is supposed to get us
what we really want in our hours of leisure and play. In the United
States even poor people have lots of money compared with the wretched
and skinny millions of India, Africa, and China, while our middle andupper classes (or should we say "income groups") are as prosperous as
princes. Yet, by and large, they have but slight taste for pleasure. Money
alone cannot buy pleasure, though it can help. For enjoyment is an art
and a skill for which we have little talent or energy.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“It is hard indeed to notice anything for which the languages available to us have no description.”
― Alan Wilson Watts

“Society is our extended mind and body.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“Nothing fails like success—because the self-imposed task of our
society and all its members is a contradiction: to force things to happen
which are acceptable only when they happen without force.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

“God, when I cross the truth, give me
the awareness to receive it
the consciousness to recognize it
the presence to personalize it
the patience to preserve it
and the courage to live it.”
― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

“We cannot fully appreciate the light without the shadows.”
― Matthew McConaughey, Greenlights

“Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”
― John Stuart Mill, Inaugural Address Delivered to the University of St Andrews, 2/1/1867