Alan Watts Quotes

Learning to accept failure on multiple levels is, to my way of thinking, the key to become a world-class therapist. But that means humility, and setting your ego aside, while you develop superb new technical skills.

When I grab the microphone, I am the greatest rapper, musician, and artist that ever lived, ever, in the entire universe - but when I put that microphone down, I am a man with so much to learn, personally and professionally.

People become concerned with being more humble than other people.

If anyone steps on your ego, instantly, he becomes your enemy. But a Guru is a friend who constantly tramples your ego.

Such excessive preoccupation with his faults is not a truly spiritual activity but, on the contrary, a highly egoistic one.The recognition of his own faults should make a man humbler, when it is beneficial, not prouder, which the thought that he ought to have been above these faults makes him.

I can maintain my sense of the sacredness of existence only by understanding my own limitations and losing my self-importance.

We cannot achieve greatness unless we lose all interest in being great.

Perfection is impossible without humility. Why should I strive for perfection, if I am already good enough?

We live in a culture that encourages us to be big about ourselves, and I think the starting point of trying to build inner goodness is to be a little bit smaller about yourself.

We can deceive ourselves into thinking we are developing spirituality when instead we are strengthening our egocentricity through spiritual techniques.

Each of us is merely one human being, merely an experiment, a way station. But each of us should be on the way toward perfection, should be striving to reach the center, not the periphery.

Three things differentiate living from the soul verses living from the ego only: the ability to sense and learn new ways, the tenacity to ride a rough road, and the patience to learn deep love over time.

If you are under the impression you have already perfected yourself, you will never rise to the heights you are no doubt capable of.

Fill yourself with the power of wisdom and enlightenment.

He who comes up to his own idea of greatness must always have had a very low standard of it in his mind.

I make plenty of mistakes and I'll make plenty more mistakes, too. That's part of the game. You've just got to make sure that the right things overcome the wrong ones.

Do you have any idea how many lives we must have gone through before we even get the first idea that there is more to life than eating, or fighting, or power in the Flock? A thousand lives, Jon, ten thousand! And then another hundred lives until we began to learn that there is such a thing as perfection, and another hundred again to get the idea that our purpose for living is to find that perfection and show it forth... we choose our next world through what we learn in this one. Learn nothing, and the next world is the same as this one, all the same limitations and lead weights to overcome.

It's better that you're criticized than complimented as a person.

Quantum wellness isn’t about deprivation and it’s not about perfection. It is about pointing yourself in the direction of growth, training yourself to get comfortable with your highest potential, and then taking small steps to support that shift. It’s about showing up for yourself, day by day, and then one day finding that you’ve undergone a transformation.

Extirpate two thoughts within thyself: do not consider thyself worthy of anything great, and do not think that any other man is much lower than thou in worthiness. Learn humble mindedness beforehand, which the Lord commanded in word and showed forth in deed. Hence, do not expect obedience from others, but be ready for obedience thyself.

Cease to be a disobedient child in the school of experience, and begin to learn, with humility and patience, the lessons that are set for your ultimate perfection.

The more a human being feels himself a self, tries to intensify this self and reach a never-attainable perfection, the more drastically he steps out of the center of being.

The ablest man I ever met is the man you think you are.

In martial arts, the biggest enemy is self. Inside you struggle because you want to prove something.

It is always so much easier to be moral than it is to be spiritual.