“I have realized that the past and future are real illusions, that they...” — Alan Watts Quote

“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.”

“Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.”

“A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.”

“There is simply no problem of life; it is absolutely purposeless play; it doesn't have to continue; there is no reason whatever to explain it, for explanations are just another form of complexity, a new manifestation of life on top of life, gestures gesturing. If there is any problem at all it is to find out how people come to think there is a problem, whatever made them imagine that life is serious. Basically there is the gesture. Time, space, multiplicity are all complications of it. Pain and suffering are very far-out forms of play, and there just isn't anything at all to be afraid of. There isn't any ego. The ego is a kind of flip, knowing that you know — like being afraid of being afraid. It's a curlicue, an extra jazz to things, a sort of double take or reverberation, a dithering of consciousness which is the same as anxiety.”

“If you study the writings of the mystics, you will always find things in them that appear to be paradoxes, as in Zen, particularly.”

“They might in the future more than ever before engage in hunting beavers.”

“In each action we must look beyond the action at our past, present, and future state, and at others whom it affects, and see the relations of all those things. And then we shall be very cautious.”

“Life is divided into three terms - that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future.”

“The mind that is anxious about the future is miserable.”

“When I think about music in the future, I don't make a distinction between what's radio, what used to be the music library, and so on.”

“Superman was created in the late 1930s, and humankind's idea of what the future would be was very different.”