The basic Buddhist stand on the question of equality between the genders is age-old. At the highest tantric levels, at the highest esoteric level, you must respect women: every woman.

If you can do something about a situation, why worry? And if you can't do something about a situation, why worry?

Sometimes, whether a desire is excessive or negative depends on the circumstances or society in which you live in.

Whatever the intellectual quality of the education given our children, it is vital that it include elements of love and compassion, for nothing guarantees that knowledge alone will be truly useful to human beings.

I became the Dalai Lama not on a volunteer basis.

My message is the practice of compassion, love and kindness.

In twenty years' time I'll be eighty-three, just an old man with a stick moving like a sloth bear. While I'm alive, I am fully committed to autonomy, and I am the person who can persuade the Tibetan people to accept it.