Dalai Lama

born 6 July 1935 · Tenzin Gyatso, 14th Dalai Lama; Tibetan Buddhist leader and 1989 Nobel Peace laureate

His Holiness Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, was born to a farming family in Amdo in 1935 and recognised as the Dalai Lama as a small child. He has lived in exile in India since 1959, and spent the following decades arguing a consistent case: that compassion is not a religious ornament but a practical requirement for human societies, and that it can be cultivated with or without religion. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

Traced to source

2 quotes we’ve traced to Dalai Lama

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion”

Attributed

“Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive”

Attributed

Not actually Dalai Lama

Often misattributed to Dalai Lama

Famous lines widely pinned on Dalai Lama that we’ve traced to someone else.

“If you think you are too small to make a difference, try sleeping with a mosquito”

actually Anita Roddick

“Man. Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived”

actually James J. Lachard (pen name of Jim Brown)

“The planet does not need more successful people. The planet desperately needs more peacemakers, healers, restorers, storytellers, and lovers of all kinds”

actually David W. Orr

Did they really say it?

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