What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and…

Alan Watts
313 citations
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.
Thought
15

More Author Quotes

Increasingly, the world around us looks as if we hated it. ✨ Alan W. Watts (2010). Does It Matter?: Essays on Man s Relation to Materiality, p.36, New World Library
Our pleasures are not material pleasures, but symbols of pleasure – attractively packaged but inferior in content. ✨ Alan Watts (2011). The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are, p.59, Souve … ▶
So what is discord at one level of your being is harmony at another level.
You have seen that the universe is at root a magical illusion and a fabulous game, and that there is no separate you to get something out of it, as if life were a bank to be robbed. The only real you … ▶
We are sick with fascination for the useful tools of names and numbers, of symbols, signs, conceptions and ideas. Meditation is therefore the art of suspending verbal and symbolic thinking for a time … ▶

More Author Quotes

Most Cited Authors

The Best Quotes

Most Liked Authors

Curated Author Quotes