Alan Watts Quotes About Purpose

Quotes about: Purpose

• Waking up to who you are requires letting go of who you imagine yourself to be

  Alan Watts

  Letting Go, Ego, Purpose

• The clash between science and religion has not shown that religion is false and science is true. It has shown that all systems of definition are relative to various purposes, and that none of them actually “grasp” reality.

  Alan Watts

  Reality, Purpose, Definitions

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

• We thought of life by analogy with a journey, a pilgrimage, which had a serious purpose at the end, and the thing was to get to that end, success or whatever it is, maybe heaven after you’re dead. But we missed the point the whole way along. It was a musical thing and you were supposed to sing or to dance while the music was being played.

  Alan Watts

  Journey, Heaven, Musical

• Think about a piece of music - some great symphony - we don't expect it to get better as it develops, or that its whole purpose is to reach the final crescendo. The joy is found in listening to the music in each moment.

  Alan Watts

  Thinking, Symphony, Joy

• The greater the scientist, the more he is impressed with his ignorance of reality, and the more he realizes that his laws and labels, descriptions and definitions, are the products of his own thought. They help him to use the world for purposes of his own devising rather than understand and explain it.

  Alan Watts

  Learning, Ignorance, Knowledge

  Alan W Watts (2012). “Wisdom Of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety”, p.98, Random House

• The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance. Like music also, it is fulfilled in each moment of its course. You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meaning of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales.

  Alan Watts

  Spiritual, Writing, Order

  Alan Watts (1951). “The Wisdom of Insecurity”, Vintage

• The real reason why human life can be so utterly exasperating and frustrating is not because there are facts called death, pain, fear, or hunger. The madness of the thing is that when such facts are present, we circle, buzz, writhe, and whirl, trying to get the I out of the experience...
  Sanity, wholeness and integration lie in the realisation that we are not divided, that man and his present experience are one, and that no separate I or mind can be found .... [Life] is a dance, and when you are dancing, you are not intent on getting somewhere. The meaning and purpose of dancing is the dance.

  Alan Watts

  Pain, Real, Lying

• Parts exist only for purposes of figuring and describing, and as we figure the world out we become confused if we do not remember this all the time.

  Alan Watts

  Inspiring, Confused, Purpose

  Alan Watts (2011). “The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are”, p.69, Souvenir Press

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