Matthieu Ricard quotes

Matthieu Ricard is a French Buddhist monk, author, and photographer, renowned for both his spiritual teachings and humanitarian work. Often referred to as "the happiest man in the world," he has sought to bridge the gap between science and meditation through his writings and collaborations. He promotes altruism, compassion, and inner peace as essential values for global well-being. Here are 65 of his quotes:

We try to fix the outside so much, but our control of the outer world is limited, temporary, and often, illusory.

Matthieu Ricard

We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.

Matthieu Ricard

Empathy is the faculty to resonate with the feelings of others. When we meet someone who is joyful, we smile. When we witness someone in pain, we suffer in resonance with his or her suffering.

Matthieu Ricard

Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time - toward the same object, the same person - want to harm and want to do good.

Matthieu Ricard

Neuroscience has proven that similar areas of the brain are activated both in the person who suffers and in the one who feels empathy. Thus empathic suffering is a true experience of suffering.

Matthieu Ricard

In the rich countries, depending on the species, 80 to 95 percent of the animals we eat are "produced” in industrial breeding operations where their short lives are an uninterrupted continuity of pain. All of that becomes possible the moment we begin to regard other living beings as objects for consumption or reserves of meat that we can deal with however we please.

Matthieu Ricard

Working to spare animals the immense suffering they undergo does not diminish by one iota my determination to alleviate human misery. Needless suffering must be done away with wherever it is, in whatever form it takes. This is a war that has to be waged on all fronts, and it can be.

Matthieu Ricard

It is not more anthropomorphic to postulate the existence of mental states in certain animals than it is to compare their anatomy, their nervous system, and their physiology to ours. When an animal is visibly joyous or sad, why not call things by their names?

Matthieu Ricard

We continue to live in ignorance concerning the harm we inflict on animals; very few of us have ever visited an industrial breeding site or a slaughterhouse. We maintain a kind of moral schizophrenia that has us lavishing pampering our pets and at the same time planting our forks in the pigs that have been sent to the slaughter by the millions, even though they are in no way less conscious, less sensitive to pain, or less intelligent than our cats and dogs.

Matthieu Ricard

The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering. Why do we still blind ourselves, now at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to the immeasurable suffering that we inflict on animals, knowing that a great part of the pain that we cause them is neither necessary nor unavoidable? Certainly we should know that there is no moral justification for inflicting needless pain and death on any being.

Matthieu Ricard

Kindness, altruistic love, and compassion are qualities that do not harmonize well with bias. Restricting the field of our compassion not only diminishes it quantitatively but also qualitatively. Applying our compassion only to certain beings, human beings in this case, makes it a lesser and a poorer thing.

Matthieu Ricard

That's what Buddhism has been trying to unravel - the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.

Matthieu Ricard

By breaking down our sense of self-importance, all we lose is a parasite that has long infected our minds. What we gain in return is freedom, openness of mind, spontaneity, simplicity, altruism: all qualities inherent in happiness.

Matthieu Ricard

Happiness is a skill, emotional balance is a skill, compassion and altruism are skills, and like any skill they need to be developed. That's what education is about.

Matthieu Ricard

While it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.

Matthieu Ricard

We do all kinds of things to remain beautiful. Yet, we spend surprisingly little time taking care of what matters most - the way our mind functions.

Matthieu Ricard

There is no such thing as good and bad in an absolute sense. There is only the good and bad- the harm in terms of happiness and suffering- that our thoughts and our actions do to ourselves and others.

Matthieu Ricard

I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation.

Matthieu Ricard

Worries are pointless. If there's a solution, there's no need to worry. If no solution exists, there's no point to worry.

Matthieu Ricard

Nothing goes right on the outside when nothing is going right on the inside.

Matthieu Ricard

At each point in our lives, we are at a crossroads. We are the fruit of our past and we are the architects of our future... If you want to know your past, look at your present circumstances. If you want to know your future, look at what is in your mind.

Matthieu Ricard

To love oneself is to love life. It is essential to understand that we make ourselves happy in making others happy.

Matthieu Ricard