Alan Watts Quotes

There are always two forces warring against each other within us.

[Neurotics are] torn by inner conflicts ... Every neurotic ... is at war with himself.

The mind at war with itself does war with any other mind, and that produces war in the world - all of it.

There are times when things are clear in your head and your heart and everything comes all aligned and it's easy and it just feels good to do something. But most of the time it's not like that. Most of the time there's conflict between your head and your heart.

The interior of a teenager’s mind is an endless war between Stupid and Clever.

Modern science knows much about such conflicts. We call the mental state that engenders it "ambivalence": a collision between thought and feeling.

Neurosis is an inner cleavage-the state of being at war with oneself.

I've always been at war with myself, for right or wrong.

It's not like you make a decision and everything inside you is 100 percent happy.

There is nothing in the world more pitiable than an irresolute man, oscillating between two feelings, who would willingly unite the two and who does not perceive that nothing can unite them

I could almost see common sense and denial fighting away at each other within her. In the end, denial won, as it so often does.

I'm battling with myself and every day it's a war.

Your soul is oftentimes a battlefield, upon your reason and your judgment wage war against your passion and your appetite.

Under peaceful conditions a warlike man sets upon himself.

We are not at war (except with our own demons).

Let me say to begin with: It is not neurotic to have conflict ... Conflicts within ourselves are an integral part of human life.

Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out.

The world will be at war as long as the mind is at war with itself.

I'm used to a feeling of doubleness, of thinking one thing and having to do another, a constant tug-of-war.

Doing battle with themselves that way, every day, all the time and sometimes it sucks, but other times it results in people making sort of a dream comprehensible to someone else.

I go back to my room and lie under the covers, trying not to think of Gale and thinking of nothing else.

The mind and heart is the field upon which war is waged within us. If we can stop that internal fear-based battle, then those outside of us will be affected as well.

I'm mad in the front of my mind, but business-minded in the back.

What a man knows is everywhere at war with what he wants.