Happiness is a state of inner fulfillment, not the gratification of inexhaustible desires for outward things.

For a few moments, be aware of your potential for change. Whatever your present situation is, evolution and transformation are always possible. At the least, you can change your way of seeing things and then, gradually, your way of being as well.

Although the optimist may be a little giddy when foreseeing the future, telling himself that it will all work out in the end when that isn't always the case, his attitude is more fruitful since, in the hope of undertaking a hundred projects, followed up by diligent action, the optimist will end up completing fifty. Conversely, in limiting himself to undertake a mere ten, the pessimist might complete five at best and often fewer, since he'll devote little energy to a task he feels to be doomed from the start.

I was born in France. My father was a renowned French philosopher and journalist, and my mother was a painter. So I grew up in Parisian intellectual circles.

Good and evil exist only in terms of the happiness or suffering they create in ourselves and others

You can't be at the same time a spiritual master and someone who is always angry. It doesn't work.

The Dalai Lama has been extremely interested in science since his childhood.