The Wisdom of Insecurity Quotes

“The truth is revealed by removing things that stand in its light, an art not unlike sculpture, in which the artist creates, not by building, but by hacking away.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“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. Free from clutching at themselves the hands can handle; free from looking after themselves the eyes can see; free from trying to understand itself thought can think. In such feeling, seeing, and thinking life requires no future to complete itself nor explanation to justify itself. In this moment it is finished.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Ye suffer from yourselves, none else compels,
   None other holds you that ye live and die
And whir upon the wheel, and hug and kiss
     its spokes of agony,
   Its tire of tears, its nave of nothingness.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“you realize that you live in, that indeed you are this moment now, and no other, that apart from this there is no past and no future, you must relax and taste to the full, whether it be pleasure or pain.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“The “natural” man lives for one motive: to protect his body from pain and to associate it with pleasure. Because he can only feel with his own body, he has little interest in the feelings of other bodies. Therefore he will only take interest in other bodies under the stimulus of rewards and punishments, that is, by an exploitation of his self-interest in the interest of the community.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Goethe, West-östlicher Divan. “As long as you do not know how to die and come to life again, you are but a sorry traveler on this dark earth.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“man and his present experience are one, and that no separate “I” or mind can be found.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Seeking for “God” in this way is no more than asking for the stamp of absolute authority and certainty on what you believe in any case, for a guarantee that the unknown and the future will be a continuation of what”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“This is why modern civilization is in almost every respect a vicious circle. It is insatiably hungry because its way of life condemns it to perpetual frustration. [...] [T]he root of this frustration is that we live for the future, and the future is an abstraction, a rational inference from experience, which exists only for the brain. The "primary consciousness," the basic mind which knows reality rather than ideas about it, does not know the future. It lives completely in the present, and perceives nothing more that what is at this moment. The ingenious brain, however, looks at that part of present experience called memory, and by studying it is able to make predictions. These predictions are, relatively, so accurate and reliable (e.g., "everyone will die") that the future assumes a high degree of reality - so high that the present loses its value.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“Kai mėginame pabėgti nuo baimės, mes stengiamės tuojau pat save atskirti nuo šio jausmo ir užfiksuoti jį. Interpretuojame jį, atsižvelgdami į prisiminimus, bandome prisitaikyti prie slėpiningos dabarties, lygindami ją su (prisimenama) praeitimi, įvardydami ir atpažindami ją.
Viskas būtų labai gražu, jei bandytum pasprukti nuo kažko, nuo ko gali pasprukti. Pabėgti naudinga, ieškant pastogės per lietų. Tačiau neaišku, kaip gyventi su dalykais, nuo kurių negalima pasprukti ir kurie jau yra tapę tavo dalimi. Iš tavo kūno nepašalinami nuodai, sužinojus jų pavadinimus. Mėginti kontroliuoti baimę, depresiją ar nuobodulį įvardijant juos - tai tarsi prietaringai tikėti užkeikimais bei užkalbėjimais.
Labai lengva suprasti, kodėl tai neveikia. Aišku, mes bandome atpažinti, įvardyti ir apibrėžti baimę, kad padaryti ją objektyvią, tai yra atskirtume nuo "Aš". Tačiau kodėl mes stengiamėss atsiriboti nuo baimės? Todėl, kad bijome. Kitaip tariant, baimė implikuoja bandymą nuo jos atsiskirti, tarytum galima būtų ugnį užgesinti ugnimi.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“You can, indeed, refuse to admit this, but only at the cost of the immense and futile effort of spending your whole life resisting the inevitable”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“Indeed, the very reason why we do not have this assurance is that we want so much more than the minimum necessities.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“culture is an affront to the wisdom of nature and a ruinous exploitation of the human organism as a whole.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“We must repeat: memory, thought, language, and logic are essential to human life. They are one half of sanity. But a person, a society, which is only half sane is insane. To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words—to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“For the perishability and changefulness of the world is part and parcel of its liveliness and loveliness.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“If, then, we are to be fully human and fully alive and aware, it seems that we must be willing to suffer for our pleasures.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“They are our beliefs, our cherished preconceptions of the truth, which block the unreserved opening of mind and heart to reality. The legitimate use of images is to express the truth, not to possess it.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“sober examination of what lies before you, leaving aside all assumptions.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“This is the—always rare—power of those who can both see the unknown and interpret it. For most of us, the other half of sanity lies simply in seeing and enjoying the unknown, just as we can enjoy music without knowing either how it is written or how the body hears it.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“As soon as it becomes clear that “I” cannot possibly escape from the reality of the present, since “I” is nothing other than what I know now, this inner turmoil must stop. No possibility remains but to be aware of pain, fear, boredom, or grief in the same complete way that one is aware of pleasure. The human organism has the most wonderful powers of adaptation to both physical and psychological pain. But these can only come into full play when the pain is not being constantly restimulated by this inner effort to get away from it, to separate the “I” from the feeling. The effort creates a state of tension in which the pain thrives. But when the tension ceases, mind and body begin to absorb the pain as water reacts to a blow or cut.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“But my brain, which is also I, your brain and the thoughts within it, as well as the house across the street, are all forms of an inextricably interwoven process called the real world. Conscious or unconscious of it as I may be, it is all I in the sense that the sun, the air, and human society are just as vital to me as my brain or my lungs. If, then, this brain is my brain—unaware of it as I am—the sun is my sun, the air my air, and society my society.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“For there is no joy in continuity, in the perpetual. We desire it only because the present is empty. A person who is trying to eat money is always hungry. When someone says, “Time to stop now!” he is in a panic because he has had nothing to eat yet, and wants more and more time to go on eating money, ever hopeful of satisfaction around the corner.

We do not really want continuity, but rather a present experience of total happiness.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“One can only attempt a rational, descriptive philosophy of the universe on the assumption that one is totally separate from it. But if you and your thoughts are part of this universe, you cannot stand outside them to describe them. This is why all philosophical and theological systems must ultimately fall apart.

To “know” reality you cannot stand outside it and define it; you must enter into it, be it, and feel it.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“But it is just this reality of the present, this moving, vital now which eludes all the definitions and descriptions. Here is the mysterious real world which words and ideas can never pin down. Living always for the future, we are out of touch with this source and center of life, and as a result all the magic of naming and thinking has come to something of a temporary breakdown.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“For to define is to isolate, to separate some complex of forms from the stream of life and say, “This is I.” When man can name and define himself, he feels that he has an identity. Thus he begins to feel, like the word, separate and static, as over against the real, fluid world of nature.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“To look at life without words is not to lose the ability to form words—to think, remember, and plan. To be silent is not to lose your tongue. On the contrary, it is only through silence that one can discover something new to talk about. One who talked incessantly, without stopping to look and listen, would repeat himself ad nauseam. It is the same with thinking, which is really silent talking. It is not, by itself, open to the discovery of anything new, for its only novelties are simply rearrangements of old words and ideas.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

“It is in vain that we can predict and control the course of events in the future, unless we know how to live in the present. It is in vain that doctors prolong life if we spend the extra time being anxious to live still longer.”
― Alan W. Watts, Wisdom Of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

“Accustomed, as it is, to think of man as a dualism of mind and body, and to regard the former as "sensible" and the latter as a "dumb" animal, our cultture is an affront to the wisdom of nature and a ruinous exploitation of the human organism as a whole.”
― Alan W. Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety