Quotes

I love good quotes. Wisdom has been expressed by so many generations, countless times. The expression of one person’s realization can help prompt the same in any of its audience.  This is an ever-growing list, and the source of all quotations found at the bottom of the pages throughout this site.  A good set of quotes helps shape the mind like the potter at the wheel.  These are the ones that have left impressions upon me:

We choose our joys and sorrows long before we experience them.

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding.

Yesterday is but today’s memory, and tomorrow is today’s dream.

For life and death are one, even as the river and the sea are one.

If your heart is a volcano, how shall you expect flowers to bloom?

I have learned silence from the talkative, toleration from the intolerant, and kindness from the unkind; yet, strange, I am ungrateful to those teachers.

You have been told that, even like a chain, you are as weak as your weakest link.
This is but half the truth. You are also as strong as your strongest link.
To measure you by your smallest deed is to reckon the power of the ocean by the frailty of its foam.
To judge you by your failures is to cast blame upon the seasons for their inconstancy.

I attribute my success to this – I never gave or took any excuse.

Few things can help an individual more than to place responsibility upon him, and to let him know that you trust him.

Vision is not enough. It must be combined with venture. It is not enough to stare up the steps; we must also step up the stairs.

You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.

Neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity.

There is nothing so terrible as activity without insight.

It’s the group sound that’s important, even when you’re playing a solo.

Fools ignore complexity. Pragmatists suffer it. Some can avoid it. Geniuses remove it.

The eye sees only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.

In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity.

Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen.

An expert is someone who has succeeded in making decisions and judgments simpler through knowing what to pay attention to and what to ignore.

The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.

The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents, and interests.

We owe almost all our knowledge not to those who have agreed, but to those who have differed.

Never tell people how to do things. Tell them what to do and they will surprise you with their ingenuity.

The simple act of paying positive attention to people has a great deal to do with productivity.

Every situation is a learning situation.

Consider responsibility: the people you interact with will often set their behaviour and actions to your standards. Set yours accordingly.

Money is a tool. Used properly it makes something beautiful – used wrong, it makes a mess!

A man’s feet must be planted in his country, but his eyes should survey the world.

The world is but a school of inquiry.

Real power and energy is generated through relationships. The patterns of relationships and the capacities to form them are more important than tasks, functions, roles, and positions.

I don’t like that man. I must get to know him better.

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you.

Negative results are just what I want. They’re as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.

One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors.

Let him who would be moved to convince others, be first moved to convince himself.

The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority.

The end we aim at must be known before the way can be made.

It is a bad plan that cannot be changed.

Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again.

It’s hard to beat a person who never gives up.

It’s not the lack of resources, it’s your lack of resourcefulness that stops you.

I will either find a way or make one.

The more you know yourself, the more patience you have for what you see in others.

Know yourself to improve yourself.

Celebrate what you’ve accomplished, but raise the bar a little higher each time you succeed.

The only difference between a rut and a grave are the dimensions.

A wise man adapts himself to circumstances, as water shapes itself to the vessel that contains it.

When you are frustrated and do not know a way out, only flexibility and moderation toward difficulties will save you.

Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.

No legacy is so rich as honesty.

Always do right. This will gratify some people and astonish the rest.

If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favorable.

It is not a question of how well each process works, the question is how well they all work together.

Great things are done by a series of small things brought together.

Our greatest weariness comes from work not done.

I do not think much of a man who is not wiser today than he was yesterday.

It is impossible to withhold education from the receptive mind, as it is impossible to force it upon the unreasoning.

Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have the right to do and what is right to do.

Our deeds determine us, as much as we determine our deeds.

It’s amazing what you can accomplish if you don’t care who gets the credit.

If you hire only those people you understand, the company will never get people better than you are. Always remember that you often find outstanding people among those you don’t particularly like.

Faults are more easily recognized in the works of others than in our own.

When you have faults, do not fear to abandon them.

Every political system is an accumulation of habits, customs, prejudices, and principles that have survived a long process of trial and error and of ceaseless response to changing circumstances.

Great learning comes from great questions.

The struggle ends when the gratitude begins.

Everything is an input. What is your output?

If you are irritated by every rub, how will your mirror be polished?

Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance.

The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature.

If you cut an inch of small desires, in the long run you are cutting a mile of larger desires.

With the hinayana, you realize that you have to do things for yourself first; and with the mahayana, you understand that you are not doing things for yourself alone.

You have to relate with yourself and acknowledge your shortcomings before you can go beyond them.

Working right trumps finding the right work.

Nobody cares how much you know, until they know how much you care.

Vision without execution is hallucination.

Just because you have a shiny new solution, the world will not beat a path to your door. Enduring social innovation doesn’t spread by accident. We need to deliberately nurture the conditions in which it can flourish.

“The truth about Stories is that that’s all we are.” The stories we tell ourselves inform so many aspects of our belief structure that it is essential to be mindful of them, and their unspoken assumptions and impacts.

Let the beauty of what you love be what you do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Forgiveness is not an occasional act; it is a permanent attitude.

My religion is not deceiving myself.

Although my view is higher than the sky, my respect for the cause and effect of actions is as fine as grains of flour.

You say such clever things to people, but you do not apply them to yourself. The faults within you are the ones to be exposed.

Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.

Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time; for that’s the stuff life is made of.

The unhappy person resents it when you try to cheer him up, because that means he has to stop dwelling on himself and start paying attention to the universe. Unhappiness is the ultimate form of self-indulgence.

It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it. Life is long enough, and a sufficiently generous amount has been given to us for the highest achievements if it were all well invested. But when it is wasted in heedless luxury and spent on no good activity, we are forced at last by death’s final constraint to realize that it has passed away before we knew it was passing. So it is: we are not given a short life but we make it short, and we are not ill-supplied but wasteful of it… Life is long if you know how to use it.

Happiness does not lead to gratitude. Gratitude leads to happiness.

Whenever you’re in conflict with someone, there is one factor that can make the difference between damaging your relationship and deepening it. That factor is attitude.

The strong manly ones in life are those who understand the meaning of the word patience. Patience means restraining one’s inclinations. There are seven emotions: joy, anger, anxiety, adoration, grief, fear, and hate, and if a man does not give way to these he can be called patient. I am not as strong as I might be, but I have long known and practiced patience. And if my descendants wish to be as I am, they must study patience.

There is no religion, no doctrine higher than brotherhood and sisterhood.

Divide and rule, a sound motto. Unite and lead, a better one.

Sticking your head in the sand…just causes you to suffocate.

Life rewards sincerity.

What you might have thought of as better may have really just been untested.

Gravity IS interconnectedness.

– “I understand the concept.”
“But have you mastered the practice?” –

You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.

Never underestimate the power of a few committed people to change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Ever more people today have the means to live, but no meaning to live for.

When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.

Rudeness is the weak man’s imitation of strength.

The hardest arithmetic to master is that which enables us to count our blessings.

The uncompromising attitude is more indicative of an inner uncertainty than of deep conviction. The implacable stand is directed more against the doubt within than the assailant without.

Quality is not an act, it is a habit.

Choose to accomplish rather than languish. Doesn’t matter what – pick something, and do your best.

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

A man is about as big as the things that make him angry.

Those who do not weep, do not see.

Without courage we cannot practice any other virtue with consistency. We can’t be kind, true, merciful, generous, or honest.

Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies

A little nonsense, now and then, is relished by the wisest men.

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful.

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that. After you’ve not fooled yourself, it’s easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after that.

Let us mock the ego but let us build our spirit.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.

The poorest way to face life is to face it with a sneer. A cynical habit of thought and speech, a readiness to criticize work which the critic himself never tries to perform, an intellectual aloofness which will not accept contact with life’s realities—all these are marks, not … of superiority but of weakness.

If you are going to do something that the world can see, you need to decide if you are doing it for yourself, or for the world to see.

Also – if you are going to do something that the world can see, you need to decide if you are doing it for the world, or for yourself.

The answer changes from sentence to sentence.

The best way to take care of the future is to take care of the present moment.

I am wont to think that men are not so much the keepers of herds as herds are the keepers of men, the former are so much the freer.

In short, I am convinced, both by faith and experience, that to maintain one’s self on this earth is not a hardship but a pastime, if we will live simply and wisely; as the pursuits of the simpler nations are still the sports of the more artificial.

We can be absolutely certain only about things we do not understand.

Looking after oneself, one looks after others.
Looking after others, one looks after oneself.

Man sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.

I don’t need a friend who changes when I change and who nods when I nod; my shadow does that much better.

The art of happiness is also the art of suffering well.

Always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.

The opposite of love is not hate, it’s indifference.

You have possessed youthful qualities all along, but your involvement with preconceived notions of society, tradition, concepts, and ideas has made you old. So in a sense, the bodhisattva path is a path of regaining your youth.

World peace must develop from inner peace. Peace is not the absence of violence. Peace is the manifestation of human compassion.

There is nothing noble in being superior to your fellow man. True nobility is being superior to your former self.

The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.

Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.

The greatest of faults, is to be conscious of none.

If you focus on results, you will never change. If you focus on change, you will get results.

If one gives food to others, one will improve one’s own lot, just as, for example, if one lights a fire for others, one will brighten one’s own way.

A great man shows his greatness by the way he treats little men.

While we are postponing, life speeds by.

I do not hope for enlightenment through sophistry.

Throw me into hell, and I’ll find a way to enjoy it.

Wisdom tends to grow in proportion to one’s awareness of one’s ignorance.

The master is content to serve as an example and not to impose her will.

When you are content to be simply yourself and don’t compare or compete, everyone will respect you.

Those who know do not speak. Those who speak do not know.

The bad news is you are falling through air, nothing to hang on to, no parachute. The good news is there is no ground.

You should sit in meditation for 20 minutes a day, unless you’re too busy; then you should sit for an hour.

A lot of people turn to something that they hope will liberate them without their having to face themselves. That is impossible. We can’t do that. We have to be honest with ourselves. We have to see our gut, our excrement, our most undesirable parts.

The great promise of the Internet was that more information would automatically yield better decisions. The great disappointment is that more information actually yields more possibilities to confirm what you already believed anyway.

It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.

Success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one’s personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself.

People don’t resist change. They resist being changed.

Never allow your knowledge to stand in the way of truth.

Whenever you’re thinking about life, you can’t enjoy life. You’re just listening to the commentary.

The most important rebirth is the one you will undergo in the next moment.

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Sometimes we speak clumsily and create internal knots in others. Then we say, ‘I was just telling the truth.’ It may be the truth, but if our way of speaking causes unnecessary suffering, it is not Right Speech. The truth must be presented in ways that others can accept. Words that damage or destroy are not Right Speech. Before you speak, understand the person you are speaking to. Consider each word carefully before you say anything, so that your speech is ‘Right’ for both form and content.

The essence of the independent mind lies not in what it thinks, but in how it thinks.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

In times of change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped for a world that no longer exists.

Each of you is perfect the way you are … and you can use a little improvement.

Honesty is a very expensive gift. Don’t expect it from cheap people.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.

Whatever you do or dream you can do – begin it. Boldness has genius and power and magic in it.

Systems often hold longer than we think, but they end up collapsing much faster than we imagine.

Community doesn’t just create abundance – community is abundance. If we could learn that equation from the world of nature, the human world might be transformed.

Let no one deceive another
or despise anyone anywhere,
or through anger or resistance
wish for another to suffer.

Your life is designed to get the results you are getting right now.

Whether you realize it or not, you are the architect.

It’s easier to believe that something else is holding us back from what we want than to face the reality that we hold ourselves back.

Never argue with stupid people, they will drag you down to their level and then beat you with experience.

Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, and besides, the pig likes it.

To err is human, to forgive is Buddha-ful.

We are all formed of frailty and error; let us reciprocally pardon each other’s folly.

Power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

When I was a novice, I could not understand why, if the world is filled with suffering, the Buddha has such a beautiful smile. Why isn’t he disturbed by all the suffering? Later I discovered that the Buddha has enough understanding, calmness, and strength; that is why the suffering does not overwhelm him. He is able to smile to suffering because he knows how to take care of it and to help transform it.

We need to be aware of the suffering, but retain our clarity, calmness, and strength so we can help transform the situation.

Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.

All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.

The extent of your realization will be known when you encounter difficult circumstances. You will not know the extent of your realization when things go well.

The difficult circumstances will reveal your hidden faults.

When the student is ready the teacher will appear. When the student is truly ready, the teacher will disappear.

If you wish to improve, be content to appear clueless or stupid in extraneous matters.

You can never do merely one thing.

Contentment is the greatest form of wealth.

Let go or get dragged.

If there’s a remedy when trouble strikes,
What reason is there for dejection?
And if there is no help for it,
What use is there in being glum?

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.

Our enemy is not man, but is our inability to see the situation as it really is.

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it.

If we live consciously, it is easy to discover miracles everywhere.

Do not try to stop your thinking.
Let it stop by itself.

If something comes into your mind,
let it come in, and let it go out.

It will not stay long.

All tremble at violence; life is dear to all. Putting oneself in the place of another, one should not kill nor cause another to kill.

If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.

Our mistakes do not come from appearances:
they arise from fixating on those appearances.

Not knowing how near the truth is, we seek it far away.

Anxiety, the illness of our time, comes primarily from our inability to live in the present moment.

As to methods, there may be a million and then some, but principles are few. The man who grasps principles can successfully select his own methods. The man who tries methods, ignoring principles, is sure to have trouble.

Science is much more than a body of knowledge. It is a way of thinking.

Ignorance more often begets confidence than knowledge.

Who once was heedless,
but later is not,
brightens the world
like the moon set free from a cloud.

Wise men profit by the mistakes of others, while fools will not learn even from their own blunders.

Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.

You must learn from the mistakes of others. You will never live long enough to make them all yourself.

Remember that all models are wrong; the practical question is how wrong do they have to be to not be useful.

What is common to many is taken least care of, for all men have greater regard for what is their own than for what they possess in common with others.

The chief enemy of good decisions is a lack of sufficient perspectives on a problem.

A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it, is committing another mistake.

The precious pot containing my riches becomes my teacher in the very moment it breaks.

If you have good thoughts, they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.

It is very powerful and important to identify with the historical Buddha, the nirmanakaya buddha who actually lived and walked on our earth. Many Buddhists do not pay much attention to Gautama Buddha, the present Buddha. We take for granted that somebody did this thing, and tend to be more concerned with what we have gotten from the Buddhist tradition than with who started it and what kind of lifestyle he had. I am not suggesting hero worship, but a humanizing of Buddhism. It is not a Superman story – it is the story of someone who lived where we do, on this earth.

To be beautiful means to be yourself. You don’t need to be accepted by others. You need to accept yourself.

You are me and I am you.
Isn’t it obvious that we inter-are?
You cultivate the flower in yourself
so that I will be beautiful.
I transform the garbage in myself
so that you do not have to suffer.
I support you – you support me.
I am here to bring you peace
you are here to bring me joy.

I don’t know what’s the matter with people: they don’t learn by understanding; they learn by some other way – by rote or something. Their knowledge is so fragile!

We do not produce mindfulness to chase away or fight our anger but to take good care of it.

Your body is your first home. Breathing in, I arrive in my body. Breathing out, I am home.

When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.

Buddhism teaches that joy and happiness arise from letting go. Please sit down and take an inventory of your life. There are things you’ve been hanging on to that really are not useful and deprive you of your freedom. Find the courage to let them go.

It is not so much the truth of an assertion or the wisdom of a proposal that is likely to win for a policy the support of public opinion, as is the feeling that injustice is being done which can and must be rectified.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

The world is changed by your example, not by your opinion.

We believe only certain conditions will make us happy. But it’s often our ideas of happiness that prevents our happiness.

Mindfulness shows us what is happening in our bodies, our emotions, our minds, and in the world. Through mindfulness, we avoid harming ourselves and others.

Patience is the mark of true love. If you truly love someone, you will be more patient with that person.

Teaching is not done by talking alone. It is done by how you live your life. My life is my teaching. My life is my message.

Peace in oneself, peace in the world.

For things to reveal themselves to us, we need to be ready to abandon our views about them.

Every one of us already has the seed of mindfulness. The practice is to cultivate it.

Everything relies on everything else in the cosmos in order to manifest — whether a star, a cloud, a flower, a tree, or you and me.

Liberty can never be created from foreign force.

You can easily judge the character of a man by how he treats those who can do nothing for him

Talking louder doesn’t make you right – if anything, it’s a sign of weakness.

Failing to accept responsibility, and ‘making it someone else’s problem’ just prolongs the state of things and slows your development. It doesn’t keep you safe.

A serious and good philosophical work could be written consisting entirely of jokes.

As you simplify your life, the rules of the universe will be simpler.

Do not fight against pain; do not fight against irritation or jealousy. Embrace them with great tenderness, as though you were embracing a little baby. Your anger is yourself, and you should not be violent toward it. The same thing goes for all your emotions.

Breath is the bridge which connects life to consciousness, which unites your body to your thoughts. Whenever your mind becomes scattered, use your breath as the means to take hold of your mind again.

To do two things at once is to do neither.

You cannot inject new ideas into a man’s head by chopping it off; neither will you infuse a new spirit into his heart by piercing it with a dagger.

When another person makes you suffer, it is because he suffers deeply within himself, and his suffering is spilling over. He does not need punishment; he needs help. That’s the message he is sending.

Without calmness of mind, it is very hard to have a sense of delight. Without this sense of delight, there is no genuine compassion.

Listening is a very deep practice…You have to empty yourself. You have to leave space in order to listen…especially to people we think are our enemies – the ones we believe are making our situation worse.

When you have shown your capacity for listening and understanding, the other person will begin to listen to you, and you have a chance to tell him or her of your pain, and it’s your turn to be healed. This is the practice of peace.

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

You see the world, not as it is, but as you’ve been conditioned to see it.

A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never go back to its old dimensions.

If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will think it’s stupid.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect.

Madness is rare in individuals, but in groups, states, and societies, it’s the norm

To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.

He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.

You want the praise of people who kick themselves every 15 minutes. The praise of people who despise themselves?

You are mortal in everything you fear and immortal in everything you desire.

We’re all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn’t. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

It’s easy to be a naive idealist.
It’s easy to be a cynical realist.
It’s quite another thing to have no illusions
and still hold the inner flame.

Do not be daunted
by the enormity
of the world’s grief.
Do justly, now.
Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly, now.
You are not obligated
to complete the work,
but neither are you free
to abandon it.

Only armchair politicians are immune from committing mistakes. Errors are inherent in political action. Those who are in the centre of political struggle, who have to deal with practical and pressing problems, are afforded little time for reflection and no precedents to guide them and are bound to slip up many times. But in due course, and provided they are flexible and prepared to examine their work self critically, they will acquire the necessary experience and foresight that will enable them to avoid the ordinary pitfalls and pick out their way ahead amidst the throb of events.

In real life we deal, not with gods, but with ordinary humans like ourselves: men and women who are full of contradictions, who are stable and fickle, strong and weak, famous and infamous, people in whose bloodstream the muckworm battles daily with potent pesticides.

The issues that agitate humanity today call for trained minds and the man who is deficient in this respect is crippled because he is not in possession of the tools and equipment necessary to ensure success and victory in the service of country and people. To lead an orderly and disciplined life, and to give up the glittering pleasures that attract the average boy, to work hard and systematically in your studies throughout the year, will in the end bring you coveted prizes and much personal happiness.

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.

I believe no man was ever scolded out of his sins.

The thieves of private property pass their life in jail and in chains, those of public property in riches and honours.

Immature love says: “I love you because I need you.” Mature love says: “I need you because I love you.

Be in harmony with all; be patient, persevering, virtuous, and noble; and bridle your wandering thoughts. Always talk less and restrain yourself from distractions. Constantly dwell in retreats and spend all your time in furthering the three learnings. You may have realized your own mind to be Buddha, yet you should never abandon your guru. You may have known that all deeds are intrinsically pure, yet you should never abandon even the smallest virtue. You may have realized that all causes and karmas are void, yet you should abstain from committing even the smallest evil. You may have realized that self and others are one in the great equality, yet you should not denounce the dharma and forsake sentient beings.

Simply notice the natural order of things.
Work with it rather than against it.
For to try to change what is only sets up resistance.

Inaction breeds doubt and fear. Action breeds confidence and courage. If you want to conquer fear, do not sit home and think about it. Go out and get busy.

For to understand everything makes one tolerant, and to feel deeply inspires great kindness.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

There are risks and costs to a program of action. But they are far less than the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction.

Hoping to escape suffering, it is to suffering that they run. In the desire for happiness, out of delusion, they destroy their own happiness, like an enemy.

There is but one failure; and that is, not to be true to the best one knows.

The heart is like a garden: it can grow compassion or fear, resentment or love. What seeds will you plant there?

Just as if they were to shoot a man with an arrow and, right afterward, were to shoot him with another one, so that he would feel the pains of two arrows; in the same way, when touched with a feeling of pain, the uninstructed run-of-the-mill person sorrows, grieves, and laments, beats his breast, becomes distraught. So he feels two pains, physical and mental.

In any controversy, the instant we feel angry, we have already ceased striving for Truth, and begun striving for Ourselves.

Imagine a bowl of water, agitated, stirred up, muddied, put in a dark place. If a man with good eyesight were to look at the reflection of his own face in it, he would not know or see it as it really was. In the same way, priest, when a man dwells with his heart possessed and overwhelmed by doubt-and-wavering…then he cannot know or see, as it really is, what is to his own profit, to the profit of others, to the profit of both.

If we are peaceful, if we are happy,
we can blossom like a flower,
and everyone in our family,
our entire society,
will benefit from our peace.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

There are two ways to get enough. One is to continue to accumulate more and more. The other is to desire less.

The search for a scapegoat is the easiest of all hunting expeditions.

We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not common already.

The single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has taken place.

The Buddha’s view of a positive state of mind – let’s take a couple of examples, we all know them; we’re in agreement. They’re called love, empathy, compassion, wisdom, joy, contentment. These words. Forgiveness.

You check yourself and your own experience – the extent to which you have any one of those prevalent in any given moment in your mind, you check – is the extent to which you’re feeling okay, reasonable, connected to others, harmonious, courageous, peaceful – happy.

Then check the other ones – we all know them. Anger, fear, depression, low self esteem, anxiety, panic – check how you feel. It’s like hell. So it’s clear they are disturbing. It’s not a moral judgment, it’s a practical fact.

But the trouble is we can hear this easily enough, and we can see it. But the problem is – it’s like if you learn botany, you get the weed and you can draw it, and you can identify it. You get the flower or the herb, and you can see how they are distinctly different in separate drawings. But when you look out into that big mass of overgrown green stuff out there, and they’re all mixed together, it’s hard to identify them – because they look all mixed up. This is the trouble with our mind. So we need to define what a negative emotion is, and look at its characteristics – this is the Buddhist approach, to be very precise.

John, when people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.

Victory? That, for us, is not the point at all. We should not harbor any illusions. We are realists. And let no one imagine that we have to win, for we are still too weak. The point is not about victory, but about giving the regime a shake, and attracting the masses to the movement. That is the whole point. And so to say that because we cannot win, we should not stage an insurrection – that is simply the talk of cowards, and we have nothing to do with them.

I have the advantage of having found out how hard it is to really get to know something. How careful you have to be about checking your experiments. How easy it is to make mistakes and fool yourself. I know what it means to know something.

Comparison is the thief of joy.

What we see depends mainly on what we look for.

Tsze-Kung asked, “Is there one word with which to act in accordance throughout a lifetime?” The Master said, “Is not reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

Go positive, and go first.

We judge ourselves by our intentions, and others by their actions.

Morality is doing what’s right, no matter what you’re told. Obedience is doing what you’re told, no matter what’s right.

If people are given permission to be their true selves, they’d actually find their best selves.

Treating anxiety is like going into the abyss, and then realizing the abyss is pretty well-lit.

Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.

Worry does not empty tomorrow of its sorrow, it empties today of its strength.

Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.

The moment we cry in a film is not when things are sad but when they turn out to be more beautiful than we expected them to be.

We don’t see things as they are; we see them as we are.

Most people do not really want freedom, because freedom involves responsibility, and most people are frightened of responsibility.

A wise person no longer feels the need to set up dogmas or choose an ideology. All dogmas and ideologies have been abandoned by such a person. A real noble one is never caught in rules or rites. He or she is advancing steadfastly to the shore of liberation and will never return to the realm of bondage.

Criticism of others is a form of self-commendation. We think we make the picture hang straight on our wall by telling our neighbors that all his pictures are crooked.

Let us think that the truth may not perhaps be entirely with us. Let us cooperate with others, let us, even when we do not appreciate what others say, respect their views, and their way of life.

If you determine your course with
force or speed
You miss the way of the Law.
Quietly consider what is right and what
is wrong.
Receiving all opinions equally.
Without haste, wisely observe the law.

Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement.

The purpose of an education is to replace an empty mind with an open one.

It is good to know something of the customs of various peoples, so as to judge our own more soundly and so as not to think that everything that is contrary to our ways is ridiculous and against reason, as those who have seen nothing have a habit of doing.

Not all who wander are lost.

Your child won’t always do what you say, but she will always, eventually, do what you do.

For, like a mass in Newton’s first law of motion, once our minds are set in a direction, they tend to continue in that direction unless acted on by some outside force.

Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.

A man was rowing his boat upstream on a very misty morning. Suddenly, he saw another boat coming downstream, not trying to avoid him. It was coming straight at him. He shouted, “Be careful! Be careful!” but the boat came right into him, and his boat was almost sunk. The man became very angry, and began to shout at the other person, to give him a piece of his mind. But when he looked closely, he saw that there was no one in the other boat. It turned out that the boat just got loose and went downstream. All his anger vanished, and he laughed and he laughed. If our perceptions are not correct, they may give us lots of bad feelings. Buddhism teaches us how to look at things deeply in order to understand their own true nature, so that we will not be misled into suffering and bad feelings.

When you understand, you cannot help but love. You cannot get angry. To develop understanding, you have to practice looking at all living beings with the eyes of compassion. When you understand, you love. And when you love, you naturally act in a way that can relieve the suffering of people.

If you wish to have children, please do something for the world you will bring them into. That will make you someone who works for peace, in one way or another.

Learn to look at other beings with the eyes of compassion.

Smiling is very important. If we are not able to smile, then the world will not have peace. It is not by going out for a demonstration against nuclear missiles that we can bring about peace. It is with our capacity of smiling, breathing, and being peace that we can make peace.

The human mind is always searching for possessions, and never feels fulfilled. Bodhisattvas move in the opposite direction and follow the principle of self-sufficiency. They live a simple life in order to practice the way, and consider the realization of perfect understanding as their only career.

The problem is not to do a lot, but to do it correctly. If you do it correctly, you become kinder, nicer, more understanding and loving. When we practice sitting or walking we should pay attention to the quality and not the quantity.

Thomas Merton once said that the spiritual life is essentially to love. One doesn’t love in order to do what is good or to help or to protect someone. If we act that way, we are perceiving the other as a simple object, and we are seeing ourselves as wise and generous persons. This has nothing to do with love. To love is to be in communion with the other and to discover in that other the spark of God.

Our dreams are our own, and only we can know the effort required to keep them alive.

Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.

Seek first to understand, then to be understood.

If you never want to be criticized, for goodness’ sake don’t do anything new.

Treat objections as requests for further information.

There is the mud, and there is the lotus that grows out of the mud. We need the mud in order to make the lotus.

Adaptation requires leaving or being forced from your comfort zone and into a place where you observe and experience new threats to your security.

Success is measured by persistence.

We must not forget that when radium was discovered no one knew that it would prove useful in hospitals. The work was one of pure science. And this is a proof that scientific work must not be considered from the point of view of the direct usefulness of it. It must be done for itself, for the beauty of science, and then there is always the chance that a scientific discovery may become like the radium a benefit for humanity.

Fiction is truth, even if it is not fact.

The critical factor whenever people work together is that they expect something of each other. It’s not just that the coach expects a lot of the players – it’s the fact that the players expect a lot of each other.

If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.

Wealth consists not in having great possessions, but in having few wants.

Hoard food and it rots. Hoard money and you rot. Hoard power and the nation rots.

I ask myself: are defeats necessary?

Well, necessary or not, they happen. When we first begin fighting for our dream, we have no experience and make many mistakes. The secret of life, though, is to fall seven times and to get up eight times.

However beautiful a song may be, it is just a tune to those who do not understand its meaning.

When each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happen in their lives every day that the sun rises.

People need not fear the unknown if they are capable of achieving what they need and want.

It’s not what enters men’s mouth that’s evil, it’s what comes out of their mouths that is.

The world we live in will be either better or worse, depending on whether we become better or worse. And that’s where the power of love comes in. Because when we love, we always strive to become better than we are.

Give more.
Give what you didn’t get.
Love more.
Drop the old story.

I prefer to be true to myself, even at the hazard of incurring the ridicule of others, rather than to be false, and incur my own abhorrence.

Be good, do good. It’s very simple.

The best apologies are short, and don’t go on to include explanations that run the risk of undoing them. An apology isn’t the only chance you ever get to address the underlying issue. The apology is the chance you get to establish the ground for future communication. This is an important and often overlooked distinction.

A heartfelt apology is not about you. If your intention is to offer a genuine apology, it’s the hurt party’s anger and pain that matters. Save yours for a different conversation.

It’s incredibly difficult to listen to someone’s pain when that someone is accusing us of causing it. We automatically listen for and react to what is unfair and incorrect. To listen with an open heart and ask questions to better help us understand the other person is a spiritual exercise, in the truest sense of the word.

Listening is an intensely active process, and one that comes far less naturally than talking. There is no greater challenge than that of listening without defensiveness, especially when we don’t want to hear what the other person is telling us.

Words of apology, no matter how sincere, will not heal a broken connection if we haven’t listened well to the hurt party’s anger and pain.

When you have fairly solid self-esteem you can admit to being in the wrong, without feeling like you’re weakening the fabric of the self, or losing something to the other person.

Only by enlarging the offender’s platform of self-worth might that person find his way to empathize with the pain and the hurt the party feels, apologize in a heartfelt way, and work to ensure that it will never happen again.

Paradoxically, it’s in our most enduring and important relationships that we’re least likely to be our most mature and thoughtful selves.

If you’re trying to get through to a non-apologizer – or any difficult or defensive person – keep in mind that overtalking on your part will lead to underlistening from the other. This is true whether the offense you’re addressing is large or small.

Shame will not inspire reflection, self-observation, and personal growth. These are essentially self-loving tasks that do not flourish in an atmosphere of self-depreciation and self-blame.

Under stress, people easily get polarized and divide into opposing camps. We get overfocused on what the other party is doing to us or not doing for us, and underfocused on our own creative options to move differently and de-intensify the situation. We want change but we don’t want to change first – a great recipe for relationship failure.

No one – whether nine or ninety – will value criticism if there is not a surrounding climate of appreciation and respect.

Without a spirit of adventure, you’ll be stuck with a narrow vision of who you are and what’s possible in your relationships. The best apologies are offered by people who understand that it is important to be oneself, but equally as important to choose the self that we want to be.

Letting go means protecting ourselves from the corrosive effects of staying stuck. Chronic anger and bitterness dissipate our energy and sap our creativity, to say nothing of ruining an otherwise good day. If nonproductive anger keeps us stuck in the past, we can’t fully inhabit the present, nor can we move forward into the future with our full potential for optimism and joy. There is a difference between healthy anger that preserves the dignity and integrity of the self, and ruminative anger that wakes us up at three in the morning to nurse past and present grievances and drum up fantasies of revenge. The latter accomplishes nothing except to make us unhappy.

You do not need to forgive a person who has hurt you in order to free yourself from the pain of negative emotions. You can even reach a place of love and compassion for the wrongdoer without forgiving a particular action or inaction. You are not a less loving or whole person if there are certain things you do not forgive, and certain people whom you choose not to see. Perhaps you are even a stronger or more courageous person if you have leftover anger, whether from one violation or countless little micro-violations, even as you move on. Most importantly, it is no one else’s job – not that of your therapist, mother, teacher, spiritual guide, best friend, or relationship expert – to tell you to forgive – or not to.

“Don’t take things quite so personally; unhappiness or insecurity can make people say stupid things. When other people act badly, it has to do with them, not you.” My mother’s words helped me to be less reactive, to pass on less intensity than I receive, to see people as more complex than their worst behaviours, to develop empathy, and to be curious about why people do what they do.

People who deceive and diminish others are not deeply happy and fully at peace with themselves.

Often what we need most to learn is not new. Rather, we most need to learn what we already know and to know and live it at a deeper level.

A wholehearted apology means valuing the relationship, and accepting responsibility for our part without a hint of evasion, excuse-making, or blaming. Sometimes the process is less about insisting on justice and more about investing in the relationship and the other person’s happiness. It’s about accepting the people you love as they are, and having the maturity to apologize for our part even when the other person’s feelings seem exaggerated, or they can’t see their own contribution to the problem. Lead with your heart and not your attack dog. It’s difficult and it’s worth it. The courage to apologize, and the wisdom and clarity to do so wisely and well, is at the heart of effective leadership, coupledom, parenting, friendship, personal integrity, and what we call love. It’s hard to imagine what matters more than that.

The nobler type of man is broad-minded and not prejudiced. The inferior man is prejudiced and not broad-minded.

Learning without thinking is useless. Thinking without learning is dangerous.

Shall I teach you the meaning of knowledge? When you know a thing to recognize that you know it; and when you do not, to know that you do not know, – that is knowledge.

To see the right and not do it is cowardice.

The man of honour thinks of his character, the inferior man of his position. The man of honour desires justice, the inferior man favour.

When you see a man of worth, think how to rise to his level. When you see an unworthy man, then look within and examine yourself.

The wise man desires to be slow to speak but quick to act.

“Virtue never dwells alone; it always has neighbours.

It is all in vain! I have never yet seen a man who could perceive his own faults and bring the charge home against himself.

There are men, probably, who do things correctly without knowing the reason why, but I am not like that: I hear much, select the good and follow it; I see much and treasure it up. This is the next best thing to philosophical knowledge.

Learn as if you were not reaching your goal, and as though you were afraid of missing it.

Am I indeed a man with innate knowledge? I have no such knowledge; but when an uncultivated person, in all simplicity, comes to me with a question, I thrash out its pros and cons until I fathom it.

Can any one refuse assent to words of just admonition? But it is amendment that is of value. Can any one be otherwise than pleased with advice persuasively offered? But it is the application that is of value. Mere interest without application, mere assent without amendment, – I can do nothing whatever with men of such calibre.

Make conscientiousness and sincerity your leading principles. Have no friends inferior to yourself. And when in the wrong, do not hesitate to amend.

If the people enjoy plenty,’ was the rejoinder, ‘with whom will the prince share want? But if the people are in want, with whom will the prince share plenty?

To be able everywhere one goes to carry five things into practice constitutes Virtue.’ They are courtesy, magnanimity, sincerity, earnestness, and kindness. With courtesy you will avoid insult, with magnanimity you will win all, with sincerity men will trust you, with earnestness you will have success, and with kindness you will be well fitted to command others.

Love of kindness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by foolishness. Love of knowledge, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by loose speculation. Love of honesty, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by harmful candour. Love of straightforwardness, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by misdirected judgement. Love of daring, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by insubordination. And love for strength of character, without a love to learn, finds itself obscured by intractability.

A wise man honours the worthy and tolerates all; he commends the good and commiserates the incompetent. Am I a man of exceptional worth? Then whom among men may I not tolerate? Am I not a man of worth? Then others would be turning me away. Why should there be this turning of others away then?

Most parents I’ve met try their darndest to do right by their kids, and while I’m not sure about your parents’ intentions or actions, I know for certain that if you cling to the belief that your shortcomings are their fault or, sillier yet, their responsibility, you won’t sink all the way into the fulfillment and contentment you deserve.

Madness is rare in individuals—but in groups, parties, nations and ages it is the rule.

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves and wise people so full of doubts.

Fanaticism consists in redoubling your efforts when you have forgotten your aim.

Most assume mastery is an end result, but at its core, mastery is a way of thinking, a way of acting, and a journey you experience.

The task of a teacher is not to work for the pupil nor to oblige him to work, but to show him how to work.

If you want the truth to stand clear before you, never be for or against. The struggle between “for” and “against” is the mind’s worst disease.

Arrogance is ignorance plus conviction. This is an especially deadly combo because it prevents you from improving. It not only leaves you without real knowledge, it deprives you of the humility needed to gain real knowledge or grow into a better thinker. When you think you’re already doing great, you feel like there’s no room left for improvement. We all collect life experience, but we don’t all take advantage of it. While humility is a permeable filter that absorbs life experience and converts it into knowledge and wisdom, arrogance is a rubber shield that life experience simply bounces off of.

He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion… Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them…he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.

There is the greatest difference between presuming an opinion to be true, because, with every opportunity for contesting it, it has not been refuted, and assuming its truth for the purpose of not permitting its refutation.

To be prepared against surprise is to be trained. To be prepared for surprise is to be educated.

The visions we offer our children shape the future. It matters what those visions are. Often they become self-fulfilling prophecies. Dreams are maps.

If you want to understand the difference between a network and a community, ask your Facebook friends to help paint your house.

When “I” is replaced by “we” even illness becomes wellness.

Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.

If you don’t do everything you can to change things, then they will remain the same. You only pass this way once. You have to give it all you have.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, lacking nothing.

Self-acceptance is my refusal to be in an adversarial relationship with myself.

Happiness is the absence of striving for happiness.

Talent develops itself in solitude; character in the stream of life.

Once more, let me remind you what fascism is. I need not wear a brown shirt or a green shirt.

Fascism begins the moment a ruling class, fearing the people may use their political democracy to gain economic democracy, begins to destroy political democracy in order to retain its power of exploitation and special privilege.

People are often unreasonable and self-centered. Forgive them anyway.
If you are kind, people may accuse you of ulterior motives. Be kind anyway.
If you are honest, people may cheat you. Be honest anyway.
If you find happiness, people may be jealous. Be happy anyway.
The good you do today may be forgotten tomorrow. Do good anyway.
Give the world the best you have and it may never be enough. Give your best anyway.
For you see, in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and them anyway.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Do not correct a fool or he will hate you; correct a wise man, and he will appreciate you.

No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin, or his background, or his religion. People must learn to hate, and if they can learn to hate, they can be taught to love, for love comes more naturally to the human heart than its opposite.

To wear the shirts, you must be men above all others. You must help others before you think of yourself – help the widows, and those who have little to wear and to eat, and have no one to help them or speak for them. Don’t look down on others, or see those who look down on you, and do not let anger guide your mind, or your heart. Be generous, be wise, and show fortitude, so that the people can follow what you do, and then what you say.

Our real enemy is not man; it’s not another human being. Our real enemy is our ignorance, discrimination, fear, craving, and violence.

What convinces masses are not facts,
not even invented facts,
but only the consistency of the illusion

Preempt the time spent on television and organized activities and have them spend it instead on claiming their imaginations. For in the end, that is all we have. If a thing cannot be imagined first — a cake, a relationship, a cure for AIDS– it cannot be. Life is bound by what we can envision. I cannot plant imagination into my children. I can, however, provide an environment where their creativity is not just another mess to clean up but welcome evidence of grappling successfully with boredom. It is possible for boredom to deliver us to our best selves, the ones that long for risk and illumination and unspeakable beauty. If we sit still long enough, we may hear the call behind boredom. With practice, we may have the imagination to rise up from the emptiness and answer.

Education is not the learning of facts, but training the mind to think.

Understanding does not depend on knowing a lot of facts as such, but on having the right concepts, explanations and theories.

The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn.

Change is the end result of all true learning.

The information we consume matters just as much as the food we put in our body. It affects our thinking, our behavior, how we understand our place in the world. And how we understand others.

You may have noticed students who just try to remember and pound back what is remembered. Well, they fail in school and in life. You’ve got to hang experience on a latticework of models in your head.

Truth — or, more precisely, an accurate understanding of reality — is the essential foundation for any good outcome.

It’s in the nature of foundations, that the foundations in one field are also the foundations of other fields…The way that we reach many truths is by understanding things more deeply and therefore more broadly. That’s the nature of the concept of a foundation… just as in architecture, all buildings all literally stand on the same foundation; namely the earth. All buildings stand on the same theoretical base.

Not taking risks one doesn’t understand is often the best form of risk management.

We must ask ourselves: what weakness did I overcome today? What virtue did I acquire?

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

We suffer more often in imagination than in reality.

Now is the best time to start becoming the person you eventually want to be – not only 20 years from now but also for all eternity.

All life is problem solving. All organisms are inventors and technicians, good or not so good, successful or not so successful, in solving technical problems.

The secret to doing good research is always to be a little underemployed. You waste years by not being able to waste hours.

If you really want to escape the things that harass you, what you’re needing is not to be in a different place but to be a different person.

There have been so many times I have seen a man wanting to weep but instead beat his heart until it was unconscious.

Every day of our lives, we are on the verge of making those slight changes that would make all the difference.

We chase extraordinary moments instead of being grateful for ordinary moments until hard shit happens. And then in the face of really hard stuff – illness, death, loss – the only thing we’re begging for is a normal moment.

The measure of a society is found in how they treat their weakest and most helpless citizens.

We must learn to live together as brothers or perish together as fools.

…I had always admired men and women who used their talents to serve the community, and who were highly respected and admired for their efforts and sacrifices, even though they held no office whatsoever in government or society. The combination of talent and humility, of being able to be at home with both the poor and the wealthy, the weak and the mighty, ordinary people and royalty, young and old, men and women with a common touch, irrespective of their race or background, are admired by humankind all over the globe.

To become different from what we are, we must have some awareness of what we are.

One of the biggest challenges we face is staying kind with profound disagreement—and staying kind when a mechanism has been set up to make money and power out of hate.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

We pass through this world but once and opportunities you miss will never be available to you again.

Good leaders fully appreciate that the removal of tensions in society, of whatever nature, puts creative thinkers on center stage by creating an ideal environment for men and women of vision to influence society. Extremists, on the other hand, thrive on tension and mutual suspicion. Clear thinking and good planning was never their weapon.

The leader’s first task is to create a vision.
His second is to create a following to help him implement the vision and to manage the process through effective teams. The people being led know where they are going because the leader has communicated the vision and the followers have bought into the goal he had set as well as the process of getting there.

The leader’s first task is to create a vision.
His second is to create a following to help him implement the vision and to manage the process through effective teams. The people being led know where they are going because the leader has communicated the vision and the followers have bought into the goal he had set as well as the process of getting there.

When you see your strengths properly, your weaknesses matter less.

The soul becomes dyed with the color of its thoughts.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

Your body is away from me, but there is a window open from my heart to yours.

One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. We’re no longer interested in finding out the truth. The bamboozle has captured us. It’s simply too painful to acknowledge, even to ourselves, that we’ve been taken. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed.

The people who are on a team matter much, much less than how those people interact.

Anyone who isn’t embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn’t learning enough.

The biggest problem of success is that the world conspires to stop you doing the thing that you do, because you are successful. I looked up and realized that I had become someone who professionally replied to email, and who wrote as a hobby.

The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.

Habit is a powerful means of advancement, and the habit of eternal vigilance and diligence, rarely fails to bring a substantial reward.

Information is knowledge which is merely acquired and stored up; wisdom is knowledge operating in the direction of powers to the better living of life.

The only way to not be afraid of someone’s suffering is if you’re not afraid of your own.

Do not search for the truth; only cease to cherish opinions.

The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less, we buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get too angry, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too little, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often.

We’ve learned how to make a living, but not a life. We’ve added years to life not life to years. We’ve been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We’ve done larger things, but not better things.

We’ve cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We’ve conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We’ve learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and small character, steep profits and shallow relationships.

These are the days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throwaway morality, one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share this insight, or to just hit delete.

Remember to spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not going to be around forever.

Remember, say a kind word to someone who looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and leave your side.

Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you, because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it doesn’t cost a cent.

Remember, to say, ‘I love you’ to your partner and your loved ones, but most of all mean it. A kiss and an embrace will mend hurt when it comes from deep inside of you.

Remember to hold hands and cherish the moment for someday that person will not be there again.

Give time to love, give time to speak! And give time to share the precious thoughts in your mind.

And always remember, life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by those moments that take our breath away.

To be authentic, we must cultivate the courage to be imperfect – and vulnerable. We have to believe that we are fundamentally worthy of love and acceptance, just as we are.

As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live.

The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.

Behaviour is contagious because we catch it from other people. Much of what we do results from unconscious mimicry of others around us.

There is nothing like a dream to create the future.

What better way to conceal one’s evil from oneself, as well as from others, than to be a deacon or some other highly visible form of Christian within our culture…

I think everybody should get rich and famous, and do everything they ever dreamed of, so they can see that it’s not the answer.

Life inflicts the same setbacks and tragedies on the optimist as on the pessimist, but the optimist weathers them better.

When people speak up, ask questions, debate vigorously, and commit themselves to continuous learning and improvement, good things happen.

Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary.

What is done out of love always takes place beyond good and evil… Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back.

When you defeat a thousand opponents, you still have a thousand opponents. When you change a thousand minds, you have a thousand allies.

Success is as dangerous as failure.
Hope is as hollow as fear.

What does it mean that success is as dangerous as failure?
Whether you go up the ladder or down it,
your position is shaky.
When you stand with your two feet on the ground,
you will always keep your balance.

What does it mean that hope is as hollow as fear?
Hope and fear are both phantoms
that arise from thinking of the self.
When we don’t see the self as self,
what do we have to fear?

See the world as your self.
Have faith in the way things are.
Love the world as your self;
then you can care for all things.

Leadership is about courage, capacity, curiosity and commitment to work with, learn from and give voice to the ‘other.’

Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.

Our capacity to make peace with another person and with the world, depends very much on our capacity to make peace with ourselves.

A heart filled with love
is like a phoenix
that no cage can imprison

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

The size of our universe shrinks considerably when we place ourselves at the center. And the people who are most focused on themselves are the least satisfied in life.

There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.

Don’t waste your precious time asking, ‘Why isn’t the world a better place?’ It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is, ‘How can I make it better?’ To that, there is an answer.

The main difference between a master and a beginner is that the master practices more.

Leadership is not being in charge, it is about taking care of people in your charge.

The two most powerful warriors are patience and time.

One of the biggest problems with big problems is that people give up far too soon.

You never know what you can do until you try.

Hard work IS its own reward. Integrity IS priceless. Art DOES feed the soul.

All hard work brings a profit, but mere talk leads only to poverty.

There are, strictly speaking, no enlightened beings, there is only enlightened activity.

If it is good to pay attention tomorrow…how much better is it to do so today?

Just as the same city viewed from different directions appears entirely different … there are, as it were, just as many different universes, which are, nevertheless, only perspectives on a single one, corresponding to the different points of view.

Those who keep learning will keep rising in life.

The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.

But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.

To a disciple who was forever complaining about others, the Master said, ‘If it is peace you want, seek to change yourself, not other people. It is easier to protect your feet with slippers than to carpet the whole of the earth.’

It has often been said that power corrupts. But it is perhaps equally important to realize that weakness, too, corrupts. Power corrupts the few, while weakness corrupts the many. Hatred, malice, rudeness, intolerance, and suspicion are the faults of weakness… When it is their power to do so, the weak destroy weakness wherever they see it.

Science, the partisan of no country, but the beneficent patroness of all, has liberally opened a temple where all may meet. … The philosopher of one country sees not an enemy in the philosopher of another: he takes his seat in the temple of science, and asks not who sits beside him.

We may not be responsible for the world that created our minds, but we can take responsibility for the mind with which we create our world.

It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent — lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that.

Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it will evade you, but if you notice the other things around you, it will gently come and sit on your shoulder.

Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.

Working with others makes you humble.

When you learn how to suffer, you suffer much less.

Religion is at its best when it makes us ask hard questions of ourselves. It is at its worst when it deludes us into thinking we have all the answers for everybody else.

What objectivity and the study of philosophy require is not an ‘open mind,’ but an active mind – a mind able and eagerly willing to examine ideas, but to examine them critically.

Sometimes when you’re in a dark place you think you’ve been buried, but you’ve actually been planted.

One doesn’t have to operate with great malice to do great harm. The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient. In fact, a man convinced of his virtue even in the midst of his vice is the worst kind of man.

Trying hard and working hard is its own reward. It feeds the soul. It affirms your will and your power. And it radiates from you, lighting the way for all those who see you.

The people of your culture cling with fanatical tenacity to the specialness of man. They want desperately to perceive a vast gulf between man and the rest of creation. This mythology of human superiority justifies their doing whatever they please with the world, just they way Hitler’s mythology of Aryan superiority justified his doing whatever he pleased with Europe. But in the end this mythology is not deeply satisfying. The Takers are a profoundly lonely people. The world for them is enemy territory, and they live in it like an army of occupation, alienated and isolated by their extraordinary specialness.

The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.

If you want to know who controls you, look at who you are not allowed to criticize.

If the world is saved, it will be saved by people with changed minds, people with a new vision. It will not be saved by people with old minds and new programs. It will not be saved by people with the old vision but a new program.

Life is short,
and art long,
opportunity fleeting,
experimentations perilous,
and judgment difficult.

To belittle, you have to be little.

And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, ‘If this isn’t nice, I don’t know what is.’

To understand the heart and mind of a person, look not at what he has already achieved, but at what he aspires to do.

I would maintain that thanks are the highest form of thought, and that gratitude is happiness doubled by wonder.

Appreciation is a wonderful thing: it makes what is excellent in others belong to us as well.

Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love.

It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.

When you love someone, the best thing you can offer is your presence. How can you love if you are not there?

Any religion that professes to be concerned about the souls of men and is not concerned about the slums that damn them, the economic conditions that strangle them and the social conditions that cripple them is a spiritually moribund religion awaiting burial.

Have the patience to wait! Be still and allow the mud to settle.

Do not be dismayed by the brokenness of the world.
All things break. And all things can be mended.
Not with time, as they say, but with intention.
So go. Love intentionally, extravagantly, unconditionally.
The broken world waits in the darkness for the light that is you.

We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice. Not in love with publicity but in love with humanity.

How much time he saves who does not look to see what his neighbor says or does or thinks.

The cost of a thing is the amount of what I will call life which is required to be exchanged for it, immediately or in the long run.

A thousand half-loves must be forsaken to take one whole heart home.

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule but to schedule your priorities.

Chains of habit are too light to be felt until they are too heavy to be broken.

Technology can be our best friend, and technology can also be the biggest party pooper of our lives. It interrupts our own story, interrupts our ability to have a thought or a daydream, to imagine something wonderful, because we’re too busy bridging the walk from the cafeteria back to the office on the cell phone.

Discipline is choosing between what you want now and what you want most.

The universe is full of magical things patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.

You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.

You can discover more about a person in an hour of play than a year of conversation.

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk: Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness; I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.

Health is the greatest possession. Contentment is the greatest treasure. Confidence is the greatest friend.

It is in the shelter of each other that the people live.

Events are in the saddle and ride mankind.

A goal without a plan is just a wish.

Treat those who are good with goodness,
and also treat those who are not good with goodness.
Thus goodness is attained.

Be honest to those who are honest,
and be also honest to those who are not honest.
Thus honesty is attained.

Laughter is the shortest distance between two people.

People today do not know how to rest. They fill their free time with countless diversions. People cannot tolerate even a few minutes of unoccupied time. They have to turn on the TV or pick up a newspaper, reading anything at all, even the advertisements. They constantly need something to look at, listen to, or talk about, all to keep the emptiness inside from rearing its terrifying head.

The practice of Zen is to eat, breathe, cook, carry water, and scrub the toilet – to infuse every act of body, speech, and mind – with mindfulness, to illuminate every leaf and pebble, every heap of garbage, every path that leads to our mind’s return home.

Only a person who has grasped the art of cooking, washing dishes, sweeping, and chopping wood, someone who is able to laugh at the world’s weapons of money, fame, and power, can hope to descend the mountain as a hero. A hero like that will traverse the waves of success and failure without rising or sinking. In fact, few people will recognize him (or her) as a hero at all.

I am no longer accepting the things I can not change. I am changing the things I can not accept.

It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.

What we are not changing, we are choosing.

It may be called the middle way, but it is made up of a series of rights.

If the world is saved, it will not be saved by old minds with new programs but by new minds with no programs at all.

Don’t just teach your children to read. Teach them to question what they read. Teach them to question everything. The value of an education is not the learning of many facts but the training of the mind to think.

Reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that’s being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.

The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.

When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of all. We must admit in ourselves that our own children’s future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled nor enriched by hatred or revenge.

One should respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways. A society composed of men and women who do not bow too much to the conventions is a far more interesting society than one in which all behave alike.

The longer I live, the more deeply I learn that love – whether we call it friendship or family or romance – is the work of mirroring and magnifying each other’s light. Gentle work. Steadfast work. Life-saving work in those moments when life and shame and sorrow occlude our own light from our view, but there is still a clear-eyed loving person to beam it back. In our best moments, we are that person for another.

You have to be odd to be number one.

It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil. If they would only extend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men, the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui.

To have peace in this world, you yourself must be peaceful. To live happily in this competitive society, you yourself must cease to be competitive. You say that it is very difficult not to be competitive, but that is only because you do not love what you are doing. If you love your work, you will not care who is ahead of you, or who is behind you.

The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.

The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.

The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.

We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness

A human being is part of the whole, called by us “Universe”, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.

A great man is hard on himself; a small man is hard on others.

Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife.

Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.

Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations. we have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together – surely a humanizing and character building experience. If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones. But the choice, as H.G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.

Thinking and reflecting deeply nourishes the soul in a way that few other things can.

A man is great not because he hasn’t failed; a man is great because failure hasn’t stopped him.

One can choose to go back toward safety or forward toward growth. Growth must be chosen again and again; fear must be overcome again and again.

Life’s most urgent question is: What are you doing for others?

Self control makes the man. A man without discipline is a boy full of reactions, rather than a man of good actions.

Strong minds discuss ideas, average minds discuss events, weak minds discuss people.

Education: the path from cocky ignorance to miserable uncertainty

Treat people as if they were what they ought to be and you help them to become what they are capable of being.

Spirituality is not religion. It is a path for us to generate happiness, understanding, and love, so we can live deeply each moment of our life. Having a spiritual dimension in our lives does not mean escaping life or dwelling in a place of bliss outside this world but discovering ways to handle life’s difficulties and generate peace, joy, and happiness right where we are, on this beautiful planet.

If we are to survive, we must have ideas, vision, and courage. These things are rarely produced by committees. Everything that matters in our intellectual and moral life begins with an individual confronting his own mind and conscience in a room by himself.

Ingratitude is the most potent information about someone’s future.

There are services so great that they can only be repaid with ingratitude.

If you want to genuinely practice the Dharma, do what is virtuous, even the most minute deed. Renounce what is evil, even the tiniest deed. The largest ocean is made from drops of water; even Mount Sumeru and the four continents are made of tiny atoms.

Silence is something that comes from your heart, not from outside. Silence doesn’t mean not talking and not doing things; it means that you are not disturbed inside. If you’re truly silent, then no matter what situation you find yourself in you can enjoy the silence.

A fool contributes nothing worth hearing and takes offense at everything.

Excellence is never an accident. It is always the result of high intention, sincere effort, and intelligent execution.

Experience is the hardest kind of teacher. It gives you the test first and the lesson afterward.

Tyrants preserve themselves by sowing fear and mistrust among the citizens by means of spies, by distracting them with foreign wars, by eliminating men of spirit who might lead a revolution, by humbling the people, and making them incapable of decisive action.

Greater perspective is the basis of clearer perception.

Every thought I have imprisoned in expression I must free by my deeds.

Impossible is just a big word thrown around by small men who find it easier to live in the world they’ve been given than to explore the power they have to change it. Impossible is not a fact. It’s an opinion. Impossible is not a declaration. It’s a dare. Impossible is potential. Impossible is temporary. Impossible is nothing.

I seek neither your approval nor to influence you toward my way of thinking. I will be more than satisfied if you begin to investigate everything for yourself and cease to uncritically accept prescribed formulas that dictate “this is this” and “that is that.”

If you find from your own experience that something is a fact and it contradicts what some authority has written down, then you must abandon the authority and base your reasoning on your own findings.

Everyone knows that peace has to begin with oneself, but not many people know how to do it.

The question is not, how can we obtain love and understanding? The question is whether we have the capacity of generating love and understanding ourselves.

You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits.

That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital.

Of all the forms of inequality, injustice in health care is the most shocking and inhumane.

The truth that many people never understand, until it is too late, is that the more you try to avoid suffering the more you suffer because smaller and more insignificant things begin to torture you in proportion to your fear of being hurt.

Nothing in the world can bother you as much as your own mind, I tell you. In fact, others seem to be bothering you, but it is not others. It is your own mind.

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

Love is the only force capable of transforming an enemy into a friend.

People try to do all sorts of clever and difficult things to improve life instead of doing the simplest, easiest thing – refusing to participate in activities that make life bad.

Good manners will open doors that the best education cannot.

Treat the earth well: it was not given to you by your parents, it was loaned to you by your children. We do not inherit the Earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.

I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.

If an opinion contrary to your own makes you angry, that is a sign that you are subconsciously aware of having no good reason for thinking as you do. If someone maintains that two and two are five, or that Iceland is on the equator, you should feel pity rather than anger, unless you know so little of arithmetic or geography that his opinion shakes your contrary conviction.

The most savage controversies are those about matters as to which there is no good evidence either way. Persecution is used in theology, not in arithmetic, because in arithmetic there is knowledge, but in theology there is only opinion. So whenever you find yourself getting angry about a difference of opinion, be on your guard; you will probably find, on examination, that your belief is going beyond what the evidence warrants.

People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity no matter how impressive their other talents.

The tragedy of modern man is not that he knows less and less about the meaning of his own life, but that it bothers him less and less.