Any fool can make things bigger, more complex and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.
--Albert Einstein
I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.
- Umberto Eco
For every ailment under the sun,
There be a cure - or there be none.
If there be one, try and find it.
If there be none, then never mind it.
--Mother Goose
If we do not change our direction we are likely to end up where we are headed for.
--Chinese Proverb
In separateness lies the world's great misery; in compassion lies the world's true strength.
--Buddha
Life is swept along,
next-to-nothing its span.
For one swept on by aging
no shelters exist.
Perceiving this danger in death,
one should drop the world's bait
and look for peace.
--The Buddha
“To initiate a war of aggression… is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole”
--Robert Jackson, US representative at the Nuremberg trials
Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
--Thomas Edison
Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.
--Dwight D. Eisenhower
Until lions have their historians, tales of the hunt shall always glorify the hunters.
--African Proverb
Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. When you look into an abyss, the abyss also looks into you.
--Friedrich Nietzsche
He who does not strike nor makes others strike, who robs not nor makes
others rob, sharing love with all that live, finds enmity with none.
--Itivuttaka 22
And they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruninghooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more.
--Isaiah 2:4
Warmaking doesn't stop warmaking. If it did, our problems would have stopped millennia ago.
--Colman McCarthy
One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal. We must pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means.
--Martin Luther King, Jr.
"Heroism at command, senseless brutality, deplorable love-of-country stance, how violently I hate all this, how despiceable an ignoble war is; I would rather be torn to shreds than be a part of so base an action! It is my conviction that killing under the cloak of war is nothing but an act of murder."
-- Albert Einstein
Through violence, you may 'solve' one problem, but you sow the seeds for another.
--H.H. The 14th Dalai Lama
The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth.
- Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.
- Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
He should not kill a living being, nor cause it to be killed, nor should he incite another to kill. Do not injure any being, either strong or weak in the world.
--Sutta Nipata II,14
There is no honorable way to kill, no gentle way to destroy. There is nothing good in war. Except its ending.
--Abraham Lincoln
Of all footprints
That of the elephant is supreme;
Of all mindfulness meditations
That on death is supreme.
--The Buddha
Human happiness and human satisfaction must ultimately come from within oneself. It is wrong to expect some final satisfaction to come from money or from a computer.
--His Holiness the Dalai Lama
You can't step twice into the same river.
--Heraclitus of Ephesus (c. 540 BC - c. 480 BC)
"It is necessary to help others, not only in our prayers, but in our daily lives. If we find we cannot help others, the least we can do is to desist from harming them."
--His Holiness the Dalai Lama
"From one viewpoint, Buddhism is a religion, from another viewpoint Buddhism is a science of mind and not a religion. Buddhism can be a bridge between these two sides. Therefore, with this conviction I try to have closer ties with scientists, mainly in the fields of cosmology, psychology, neurobiology and physics. In these fields there are insights to share, and to a certain extent we can work together."
--His Holiness the Dalai Lama
Renunciation is not getting rid of the things of this world, but accepting that they pass away.
--Aitken Roshi
"Whether one believes in a religion or not, and whether one believes in rebirth
or not, there isn't anyone who doesn't appreciate kindness and compassion."
--His Holiness the Dalai Lama
It is absurd to divide people into good and bad. People are either charming or tedious.
--Oscar Wilde
The mind, the Buddha, living creatures - these are not three different things.
—Avatamasaka Sutra
When it is impossible for anger to arise within you, you find no outside enemies anywhere. An outside enemy exists only if there is anger inside.
--Lama Zopa Rinpoche
Shariputra,
Form does not differ from emptiness;
Emptiness does not differ from form.
Form itself is emptiness;
Emptiness itself is form.
So too are feeling, cognition, formation, and consciousness.
--Heart Sutra
"Since everything is but an apparition, having nothing to do with good or bad, acceptance or rejection, one may well burst out in laughter."
—Longchenpa (14th century)
Samsara, our conditioned existence in the perpetual cycle of habitual tendencies and nirvana - genuine freedom from such an existence - are nothing but different manifestations of a basic continuum. So this continuity of consciousness us always present. This is the meaning of tantra.
--HH The 14th Dalai Lama
