Alan Watts Quotes

Everything contains its antithesis.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

Two seemingly incompatible conceptions can each represent an aspect of the truth ... They may serve in turn to represent the facts without ever entering into direct conflict.

It is yin and yang. Light is the left hand of darkness ... how did it go? Light, dark. Fear, courage. Cold, warmth. Female, male. It is yourself ... both and one. A shadow on snow.

Light is the left hand of darkness and darkness the right hand of light. Two are one, life and death, lying together like lovers in kemmer, like hands joined together, like the end and the way.

One's not half two. It's two are halves of one.

And watch two men washing clothes, one makes dry clothes wet. The other makes wet clothes dry. they seem to be thwarting each other, but their work is a perfect harmony. Every holy person seems to have a different doctrine and practice, but there's really only one work.

Couples are wholes and not wholes, what agrees disagrees, the concordant is discordant. From all things one and from one all things.

God is day and night, winter and summer, war and peace, surfeit and hunger.

I think the phrase that resonates from 'Just One Year' is something I sort of live by: 'The truth and its opposite are flip sides of the same coin.'

The planet is always half light and half dark, and so are we.

People desire to separate their worlds into polarities of dark and light, ugly and beautiful, good and evil, right and wrong, inside and outside. Polarities serve us in our learning and growth, but as souls we are all.

We are the yin and the yang of the creative process.

The path up is the path down. The way forward is the way back. The universe inside is outside but the universe outside is inside.

The wise see knowledge and action as one.

I'm fascinated by the yin and yang of everything.

There's light and dark in all things, you know?

I think there's a yin and a yang to everything.

If you take the yin-yang, it has a piece of the other inside itself. You can't be too much of one thing and be balanced.

Nothing is the shadow of Everything.

[T]he small is great, the great is small; all is in equilibrium in necessity.

Under heaven all can see beauty as beauty only because there is ugliness. All can know good as good only because there is evil. Therefore having and not having arise together. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short contrast each other. High and low rest upon each other. Voice and sound harmonize each other. Front and back follow one another.

Here, fire turns into water; Here, the dancing of the rain declares the sun. There's no opposition in existence, no contradiction; Everything supports everything else.

Many who have learned from Hesiod the countless names of gods and monsters never understand that night and day are one

I am the form and I am the hollow, the thrust and the contour