Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

Know, first, who you are, and then adorn yourself accordingly.

Do not say, "It is morning," and dismiss it with a name of yesterday. See it for the first time as a new-born child that has no name.

Success doesn't change you; fame does.

He is a very smart cookie, Michael. He knows what he wants, he knows what he is doing. I have nothing but admiration. Also, he is a very kind person.

Just because you read it in a magazine,
Or see it on a TV screen
Don't make it factual.

Nobody makes me do anything I don't want to do. It's my decision. So the biggest devil is me. I'm either my best friend or my worst enemy. And that's how I have to deal with it.

Let's go for a drive OK? Well I'll go for a drive, you'll go for a ride. The person who drives the car they go for a drive, the other people they go for a ride. People don't know that, tell them when they're in your car. Say "you assholes are goin' for a ride!

Life seems to me essentially passion, conflict, rage... It is only intellect that keeps me sane; perhaps this makes me overvalue intellect against feeling.

The quality of your life is the quality of your communication.

I'm out here a thousand miles from my home
Walkin' a road other men have gone down
I'm seein' your world of people and things
Your paupers and peasants and princes and kings

Put the dwarf within you to sleep.

And it doesn't seem to matter, and it doesn't seem right,
'Cause the will has brought no fortune, still I cry alone at night,
Don't you judge of my composure, 'cause I'm bothered every day,
And she didn't leave a letter, she just up and ran away.

This is approximately the way Christendom relates to the essentially Christian, the unconditioned. After seventeen, eighteen detours and running all around someone finally has his finite existence assured, and then we receive a sermon about Seek first the kingdom of God. Is this sobriety or is this intoxication? p. 112

The lion who breaks the enemy's ranks is a minor hero compared to the lion who overcomes himself.

I look at an ant and see myself: a native South African, endowed with a strength much greater than my size, so I might cope with the weight of racism that crushes my spirit.

[W]hen the President's visitors came to Guinea, we were all called on to go and entertain them. I've never seen a country that did what Sékou Touré did for artists. Even in South Africa today we are not nurtured like that.