If you can, help others; if you cannot do that, at least do not harm them.

I'm sure all of us agree that we need to overcome violence, but we first need to examine whether it has any value. From a strictly practical perspective, on certain occasions violence appears to be useful. We can solve a problem quickly by force. But this success is often at the expense of the rights and welfare of others. Although one problem has been solved, the seed of another has been planted.

There are five billion human beings and in a certain way I think we need five billion different religions.

The more we think of others, the happier we are. The more we think of ourselves, the more suffering we feel.

I believe compassion to be one of the few things we can practice that will bring immediate and long-term happiness to our lives. I'm not talking about the short-term gratification of pleasures like sex, drugs or gambling (though I'm not knocking them), but something that will bring true and lasting happiness. The kind that sticks.

There must be a way of promoting human values without involving religion, based on common sense, experience and recent scientific findings.

Religious belief is not a precondition either of ethical conduct or of happiness.