The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety QUOTES

1 " 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 arrangements of old words and ideas. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

2 " [T]he greater part of human activity is designed to make permanent those experiences and joys which are only lovable because they are changing. Music is a delight because of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the flow and prolong a chord or note beyond its time, the rhythm is destroyed. Because life is a flowing process, change and death are its necessary parts. To work for their exclusion is to work against life. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

3 " In the strictest sense, we cannot actually think about life and reality at all, because this would have to include thinking about thinking, thinking about thinking about thinking, and so ad infinitum. 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. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

4 " What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

5 " The natural world gives us many examples of the great effectiveness of this way. The Chinese philosophy of which judo itself is an expression—Taoism—drew attention to the power of water to overcome all obstacles by its gentleness and pliability. It showed how the supple willow survives the tough pine in a snowstorm, for whereas the unyielding branches of the pine accumulate snow until they crack, the springy boughs of the willow bend under its weight, drop the snow, and jump back again. If, when swimming, you are caught in a strong current, it is fatal to resist. You must swim with it and gradually edge to the side. One who falls from a height with stiff limbs will break them, but if he relaxes like a cat he will fall safely. A building without 'give' in its structure will easily collapse in storm or earthquake, and a car without the cushioning of tires and springs will soon come apart on the road. The mind has just the same powers, for it has give and can absorb shocks like water or a cushion. But this giving way to an opposing force is not at all the same thing as running away. A body of water does not run away when you push it; it simply gives at the point of the push and encloses your hand. A shock absorber does not fall down like a bowling-pin when struck; it gives, and yet stays in the same place. To run away is the only defense of something rigid against an overwhelming force. Therefore the good shock absorber has not only 'give,' but also stability or 'weight. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

6 " I feel cut off only because I am split within myself, because I try to be divided from my own feelings and sensations. What I feel and sense therefore seems foreign to me. And on being aware of the unreality of this division, the universe does not seem foreign any more.

For I am what I know; what I know is I. The sensation of a house across the street or of a star in outer space is no less I than an itch on the sole of my foot or an idea in my brain. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

7 " Tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

8 " To remain stable is to refrain from trying to separate yourself from a pain because you know that you cannot. Running away from fear is fear, fighting pain is pain, trying to be brave is being scared. If the mind is in pain, the mind is pain. The thinker has no other form than his thought. There is no escape. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

9 " If we cling to belief in God, we cannot likewise have faith, since faith is not clinging but letting go. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

10 " To put is still more plainly: the desire for security and the feeling of insecurity are the same thing. To hold your breath is to lose your breath. A society based on the quest for security is nothing but a breath-retention contest in which everyone is as taut as a drum and as purple as a beet. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

11 " What we have to discover is that there is no safety, that seeking is painful, and that when we imagine that we have found it, we don’t like it. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

12 " If, then, my awareness of the past and future makes me less aware of the present, I must begin to wonder whether I am actually living in the real world. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

13 " This, then, is the human problem: there is a price to be paid for every increase in consciousness. We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain. By remembering the past we can plan for the future. But the ability to plan for the future is offset by the "ability" to dread pain and to fear of the unknown. Furthermore, the growth of an acute sense of the past and future gives us a corresponding dim sense of the present. In other words, we seem to reach a point where the advantages of being conscious are outweighed by its disadvantages, where extreme sensitivity makes us unadaptable. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

14 " For man seems to be unable to live without myth, without the belief that the routine and drudgery, the pain and fear of this life have some meaning and goal in the future. At once new myths come into being – political and economic myths with extravagant promises of the best of futures in the present world. These myths give the individual a certain sense of meaning by making him part of a vast social effort, in which he loses something of his own emptiness and loneliness. Yet the very violence of these political religions betrays the anxiety beneath them – for they are but men huddling together and shouting to give themselves courage in the dark. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

15 " 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 W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

16 " Your body does not eliminate poisons by knowing their names. To try to control fear or depression or boredom by calling them names is to resort to superstition of trust in curses and invocations. It is so easy to see why this does not work. Obviously, we try to know, name, and define fear in order to make it “objective,” that is, separate from “I. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

17 " But you cannot understand life and its mysteries as long as you try to grasp it. Indeed, you cannot grasp it, just as you cannot walk off with a river in a bucket. If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

18 " You do not play a sonata in order to reach the final chord, and if the meanings of things were simply in ends, composers would write nothing but finales. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

19 " Indeed, one of the highest pleasures is to be more or less unconscious of one’s own existence, to be absorbed in interesting sights, sounds, places, and people. Conversely, one of the greatest pains is to be self-conscious, to feel unabsorbed and cut off from the community and the surrounding world. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety

20 " If the universe is meaningless, so is the statement that it is so. If this world is a vicious trap, so is its accuser, and the pot is calling the kettle black. "

― Alan W. Watts , The Wisdom of Insecurity: A Message for an Age of Anxiety