did everything I could in my life to be immune to hatred, because hatred is a cancer.

Only one enemy is worse than despair: indifference. In every area of human creativity, indifference is the enemy; indifference of evil is worse than evil, because it is also sterile.

My teachers [ had the most impact in my life]. Of course, my father and grandfather, but after my family, my teachers.

It was like a page torn from a history book, from some historical novel about the captivity of babylon or Spanish Inquisition.

We're alone, but we are capable of communicating to one another both our loneliness and our desire to break through it. You say, 'I'm alone.' Someone answers, 'I'm alone too.' There's a shift in the scale of power. A bridge is thrown between the two abysses.

Mankind must remember that peace is not God's gift to his creatures; peace is our gift to each other.

One thing is that [Tibetans] should not give up hope. That's - even [if] it lasts a century. My discussions with the Dalai Lama always were about that.