Buddha Quotes
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. The quotes below are attributed to Buddha, organized by topic.
Buddha on Knowledge
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Attributed to Buddha:
“Long is the night to the watcher, long is the road to the weary traveller, long is the round of birth and death to the foolish who do not know the true law.”
Buddha on Love
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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.”
Buddha on Mind
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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:
“If a man speaks or acts with a pure mind, joy follows him as his shadow that never leaves him.”
Buddha on Nature
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Attributed to Buddha:
“All conditioned things are impermanent. Strive on with diligence.”
Buddha on Truth
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Attributed to Buddha:
“Better than a thousand hollow words is one word that brings peace.”
Buddha on Virtue
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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.”
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Attributed to Buddha:
“There is no fire like passion, no shark like hatred, no snare like folly, no torrent like greed.”
Things actually not said by Buddha
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Buddha but are in fact from someone else. Did Buddha say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Buddha say this? No.
“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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Did Buddha say this? No.
“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.