Alan Watts

“But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.”

“In other words, a person who is fanatic in matters of religion, and clings to certain ideas about the nature of God and the universe, becomes a person who has no faith at all.”

“Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes.”

“The style of God venerated in the church, mosque, or synagogue seems completely different from the style of the natural universe.”

“The difficulty for most of us in the modern world is that the old-fashioned idea of God has become incredible or implausible.”

“How is it possible that a being with such sensitive jewels as the eyes, such enchanted musical instruments as the ears, and such fabulous arabesque of nerves as the brain can experience itself anything less than a god.”

“You are that vast thing that you see far, far off with great telescopes.”

“The religious idea of God cannot do full duty for the metaphysical infinity.”

“No work or love will flourish out of guilt, fear, or hollowness of heart, just as no valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

“The only way to make sense out of change is to plunge into it, move with it, and join the dance.”

“You don't look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.”

“And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.”

“To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float.”

“The reason we have poverty is that we have no imagination. There are a great many people accumulating what they think is vast wealth, but it's only money... they don't know how to enjoy it, because they have no imagination.”

“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they exist in the present, which is what there is and all there is.”

“Faith is a state of openness or trust.”

“We identify in our experience a differentiation between what we do and what happens to us.”

“No valid plans for the future can be made by those who have no capacity for living now.”

“But the attitude of faith is to let go, and become open to truth, whatever it might turn out to be.”

“In known history, nobody has had such capacity for altering the universe than the people of the United States of America. And nobody has gone about it in such an aggressive way.”

“Unless one is able to live fully in the present, the future is a hoax.”