Buddhism Quotes

A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, could never have succeeded with the masses of mankind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and its beautiful morality. (William Winwood Reade)
There's a phrase in Buddhism, ‘Beginner's mind.' It's wonderful to have a beginner's mind. View quote
Steve Jobs
Buddhism teaches that a craving for things outside ourselves causes an unhappy and pointless search for security. It teaches me to stop following every impulse and to learn restraint. Obviously, I lost track of what I was taught. View quote
Tiger Woods
I grew up in a mostly Buddhist environment. My father, when very young, was the first American to be ordained as a Buddhist monk. He now teaches Indo-Tibetan studies at Columbia University and is regarded as this country's foremost authority on Buddhism. When the Dalai Lama comes to America, it's my father who is his host. When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however. But Buddhism has had a major effect on who I am and how I think about the world. What I have learned is that I like all religions, but only parts of them. View quote
Uma Thurman
The followers of Derrida are pathetic, snuffling in French pockets for bits of pieces of a deconstructive method already massively and coherently presented and with a mature sense of the sacred in Buddhism and Hinduism. View quote
Camille Paglia
The secret of Buddhism is to remove all ideas, all concepts, in order for the truth to have a chance to penetrate, to reveal itself. View quote
Nhat Hanh
I think oysters are more beautiful than any religion," [Clovis] resumed presently. "They not only forgive our unkindness to them; they justify it, they incite us to go on being perfectly horrid to them. Once they arrive at the supper-table they seem to enter thoroughly into the spirit of the thing. There's nothing in Christianity or Buddhism that quite matches the sympathetic unselfishness of an oyster. View quote
Saki
Just study Buddhism. Don't follow the sentiments of the world. View quote
Dōgen
Students of the Way must not study Buddhism for the sake of themselves. They must study Buddhism only for the sake of Buddhism. The key to this is to renounce both body and mind without holding anything back and to offer them to the great sea of Buddhism. View quote
Dōgen
As I study both the exoteric and the esoteric schools of Buddhism, they maintain that human beings are endowed with Dharma-nature by birth. If this is the case, why did the Buddhas of all ages - undoubtedly in possession of enlightenment - find it necessary to seek enlightenment and engage in spiritual practice? View quote
Dōgen
Buddhism ... is not a culture but a critique of culture, an enduring nonviolent revolution or "loyal opposition” to the culture in which it is involved. (Alan Watts)
If Christianity is wine and Islam coffee, Buddhism is most certainly tea. View quote
Alan Watts
You must go to Mahometanism, to Buddhism, to the East, to the Sufis & Fakirs, to Pantheism, for the right growth of mysticism. View quote
Florence Nightingale
To have some deep feeling about Buddhism is not the point; we just do what we should do, like eating supper and going to bed. This is Buddhism. View quote
Shunryu Suzuki
I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity. View quote
C. S. Lewis
Buddhism has the characteristics of what would be expected in a cosmic religion for the future It transcends a personal God, avoids dogmas and theology it covers both the natural and the spiritual, and it is based on a religious sense aspiring from the experience of all things, natural and spiritual, as a meaningful unity. View quote
Albert Einstein
If there is any religion that could respond to the needs of modern science, it would be Buddhism. View quote
Albert Einstein
One thing that attracted me to Buddhism was the support for this larger vision of values. View quote
Herbie Hancock
I feel a lot more secure about the directions I take, than I might have, had I not practiced Buddhism. View quote
Herbie Hancock
According to Buddhism, each person is a Buddha who has forgotten their original nature. If we in the pampered West, having grown up with so many advantages, could not claim our own health and our agency, preferring to see ourselves as helpless victims, then who would do it? Who would take responsibility for the world? View quote
Daniel Pinchbeck
[T]here are no forces on this planet more dangerous to us all than the fanaticisms of fundamentalism, of all species: Protestantism, Catholicism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism, as well as countless smaller infections. (Daniel Dennett)
Buddhism talks about the possibility of transforming greed, hatred, and delusion. But sometimes need turns into greed. View quote
Jack Kornfield
Zen Buddhism is a discipline where belief isn't necessary. View quote
David Sylvian
I try to make sure that the Buddhism is more or less implicit in the music rather than explicit. View quote
Duncan Sheik
When I first was exposed to Buddhism in the mid-1960s, I said it was so practical and utterly pragmatic. That's what attracted me to Buddhism. View quote
Joan Halifax