Buddha c. 563 BC – c. 483 BC
Siddhartha Gautama, known as the Buddha or Awakened One, was the founder of Buddhism, traditionally said to have lived in northern India in the fifth century BC. Born into the ruling Shakya clan, he renounced his royal life in search of a way beyond suffering, attained enlightenment under the Bodhi tree, and spent the rest of his life teaching the path he had discovered. His central teachings include the Four Noble Truths, the Eightfold Path, the doctrine of the impermanence of all conditioned things, and the absence of an enduring self. His teachings were transmitted orally for several centuries before being written down in the Pali Canon and other early scriptures. Buddhism became one of the major philosophical and religious traditions of Asia and is increasingly engaged by Western philosophy, ethics, and cognitive science.
Key facts
- Nationality
- Indian
- Era
- Ancient
- Movements
- Buddhism, Indian Philosophy
Selected quotes
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Attributed to Buddha:
“All that we are is the result of what we have thought; it is founded on our thoughts; it is made up of our thoughts.”
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Attributed to Buddha:
“Hatred does not cease through hatred at any time. Hatred ceases through love. This is an unalterable law.”
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Attributed to Buddha:
“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.”
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Attributed to Buddha:
“If a man speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows him as his shadow that never leaves him.”
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Attributed to Buddha:
“Conquer anger by love. Conquer evil by good. Conquer the stingy by giving. Conquer the liar by truth.”
Quotes that are not actually from Buddha
These lines are widely circulated as Buddha, but they do not appear in Buddha's works. Each entry below identifies the actual source.
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“Holding on to anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.”
This sentence is one of the most widely circulated Buddha quotations on the modern internet but does not appear in any canonical Buddhist scripture. The closest precedent is a passage in the Visuddhimagga IX.23, compiled by Buddhaghosa in the fifth century CE, which uses a similar coal metaphor; Buddhaghosa wrote nearly a thousand years after the Buddha. The English form circulating today appears to be a 20th-century paraphrase of uncertain origin.
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“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon, and the truth.”
This aphorism is widely circulated as a Buddha quotation but does not appear in the Pali Canon, the early Buddhist scriptures, or any other canonical Buddhist source that has been identified. Its earliest verifiable English appearances are in 20th-century quotation compilations. The actual author is unknown.