What we have forgotten is ...

What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are \
What we have forgotten is that thoughts and words are conventions, and that it is fatal to take conventions too seriously. A convention is a social convenience, as, for example, money ... but it is absurd to take money too seriously, to confuse it with real wealth ... In somewhat the same way, thoughts, ideas and words are "coins" for real things.
 Alan Watts

Quotes from the same author

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.
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 Alan Watts
We cannot be more sensitive to pleasure without being more sensitive to pain.
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 Alan Watts
Things are as they are. Looking out into it the universe at night, we make no comparisons between right and wrong stars, nor between well and badly arranged constellations.
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 Alan Watts
And the attitude of faith is the very opposite of clinging to belief, of holding on.
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 Alan Watts
But at any rate, the point is that God is what nobody admits to being, and everybody really is.
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 Alan Watts