Source: Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Chapter Three, "Primordial Debts", p. 43
“everyone has a religion, whether admitted or not, because it is impossible to be human without having some basic assumptions (or intuitions) about existence and the good life.”
Source: In My Own Way: An Autobiography 1915-1965 (1972), p. 123
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Alan Watts 107
British philosopher, writer and speaker 1915–1973Related quotes
“Human life without some form of poetry is not human life but animal existence.”
"The Obscurity of the Poet", p. 16
Poetry and the Age (1953)
Source: Man’s Search for Himself (1953), p. 180
Context: We define religion as the assumption that life has meaning. Religion, or lack of it, is shown not in some intellectual or verbal formulations but in one's total orientation to life. Religion is whatever the individual takes to be his ultimate concern. One's religious attitude is to be found at that point where he has a conviction that there are values in human existence worth living and dying for.
Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996)
In response to statement "You once told me that progress is made only by intuition, and not by the accumulation of knowledge."
Variant transcription from "Death of a Genius" in Life Magazine: "It is not quite so simple. Knowledge is necessary too. A child with great intuition could not grow up to become something worthwhile in life without some knowledge. However there comes a point in everyone's life where only intuition can make the leap ahead, without knowing precisely how.":
Source: Attributed in posthumous publications, Einstein and the Poet (1983), p. 137