For we have never actually understood the revolutionary sense beneath them โ the incredible truth that what religion calls the vision of God is found in giving up any belief in the idea of God.
Alan WattsThe power of memories and expectations is such that for most human beings, the past and the future are not as real, but rather more real than the present.
Alan WattsBelief, as I use the word here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be. The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits in with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be. Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go.
Alan WattsFor the price of intelligence as we now know it is chronic anxiety, anxiety which appears to increaseโoddly enoughโto the very degree that human life is subjected to intelligent organization.
Alan WattsYou are a function of what the whole universe is doing in the same way that a wave is a function of what the whole ocean is doing.
Alan WattsWhat 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 Watts