Alan Watts Quotes

Man is pre-eminently endowed with the power of voluntarily and consciously determining his own point of view.

Human freedom involves our capacity to pause between the stimulus and response and, in that pause, to choose the one response toward which we wish to throw our weight. The capacity to create ourselves, based upon this freedom, is inseparable from consciousness or self-awareness. (p. 100)

the touchstone of a free act - from the decision to get out of bed in the morning or take a walk in the afternoon to the highest resolutions by which we bind ourselves for the future - is always that we know that we could also have left undone what we actually did.

It is not a sacrifice, it's a choice. If you choose to do something, then you shouldn't say it's a sacrifice, because nobody forced you to do it

Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.

If I decide to be an idiot, then I'll be an idiot on my own accord.

A life lived of choice is a life of conscious action. A life lived of chance is a life of unconscious creation.

Unless someone truly has the power to say no, they never truly have the power to say yes.

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life. You can find the freedom that comes from being in charge of yourself.

This is as true in everyday life as it is in battle: we are given one life and the decision is ours whether to wait for circumstances to make up our mind, or whether to act, and in acting, to live.

If you choose to do something, then you shouldn't say it's a sacrifice, because nobody forced you to do it.

With awareness come responsibility and choice.

The more decisions that you are forced to make alone, the more you are aware of your freedom to choose.

If you are not free to choose wrongly and irresponsibly, you are not free at all.

I respect every guy that has walked away. I think every single guy in this league makes his own decision, and that's perfectly fine. The reason I respect that and the reason I think every guy has his own way of dealing with things is because, in my personal opinion, I know what I'm getting into.

If I wrestle in 2020, I want it to be my own decision and not the IOC's.

If we become aware of what's happening before we act, behaviour becomes a function of choice rather than a result of an impulse or trigger. You begin to control your world more as opposed to the outside world controlling you.

It's up to the individual to decide when he wants to quit.

If someone wants to do something, they should just do it as long as they're happy with it.

Man is man because he is free to operate within the framework of his destiny. He is free to deliberate, to make decisions, and to choose between alternatives.

People have to make their own decisions about their lives.

He is free who lives as he wishes to live; who is neither subject to compulsion nor to hindrance, nor to force; whose movements to action are not impeded, whose desires attain their purpose, and who does not fall into that which he would avoid.

A part of fate is the freedom of man. Forever wells up the impulse of choosing and acting in his soul.

Choice is destiny's soul mate.

Mankind's greatest gift... is that we have free choice.