Alan Watts Quotes

Every act is an act of self definition.

When a man no longer confuses himself with the definition of himself that others have given him, he is at once universal and unique. He is universal by virtue of the inseparability of his organism from the cosmos. He is unique in that he is just this organism and not any stereotype of role, class, or identity assumed for the convenience of social communication.

First you have to know who you are. That is the most important thing, as if you don't know who you are you will either get swallowed up or you follow some unsuitable trends and just become a nonentity.

I never had time to dream about being anyone else.

I have never regarded myself as this or that. I have been too busy being myself to bother about regarding myself.

It seems that different people have an idea of what I am, and what I should be. And then there's me.

I've never, ever labeled myself.

The fact is that all of us have only one personality, and we wring it out like a dishtowel. You are what you are.

I'm going to do what I want to do. I'm going to be who I really am. I'm going to figure out what that is.

When you don't inherit an identity you have to define it on your own.

I am my own person with my own experiences, personality, and definition of success.

I am who I am. I'm unique. I'm my own self.

Nobody else can tell you what you are.

All I know is myself and I don't plan on changing that.

I started coming into my own at 30, discovering what's important to me, not caring what other people think.

I have lived life enough to know that I define myself.

I find myself both as man and as myself something more determined and distinctive, at pitch, more distinctive and higher pitched than anything else I see.

One of the basic laws of human existence is: find yourself, know yourself, be yourself.

You cannot really be too concerned with what people think of you. You're on your own adventure of growth and discovery. So it's not always good to be who people think you are, especially if you subscribe to it as well ... which is easily done, because then you don't have to figure out who you are, you just ask somebody else.

Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said "In the coming world, they will not ask me: 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me: 'Why were you not Zusya?

The greatest discovery in life is self-discovery. Until you find yourself you will always be someone else. Become yourself.

I'm history! No, I'm mythology! Nah, I don't care what I am, I'm free!

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique.

This wasn't the person he'd thought he was, or would have chosen to be if he'd been free to choose, but there was something comforting and liberating about being an actual definite someone, rather than a collection of contradictory potential someones.

When we're growing up there are all sorts of people telling us what to do when really what we need is space to work out who to be.