These are some of my favorites:
“Enlightenment” and “Nirvana”? They are dead trees to fasten a donkey to. The scriptures? They are bits of paper to wipe the mud from your face. The four merits and ten steps? They are ghosts in their graves. What can these things have to do with you becoming free?
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
Never settle for the best. Great just isn’t good enough.
All courses of action are risky, so prudence is not in avoiding danger, but calculating risk and acting decisively. Make mistakes of ambition and not mistakes of sloth. Develop the strength to do bold things, not the strength to suffer.
Be who you are and say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.
Many a false step was made by standing still.
Do not train a child to learn by force or harshness; but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.
The world ends with you.
This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the philosophy is kindness.
Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself.
People think it must be fun to be a super genius, but they don’t realize how hard it is to put up with all the idiots in the world.
To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.
If man has no tea in him, he is incapable of understanding truth and beauty.
