Top 120 Matthieu Ricard Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “Loving-kindness and compassion are the two faces of altruism. It is their object that distinguishes them: loving-kindness wants all beings to experience happiness, while compassion focuses on eradicating their suffering.”

— Matthieu Ricard

52. “Tibetan poet Shabkar said: “One with compassion is kind even when angry; one without compassion will kill even as he smiles.”

— Matthieu Ricard

53. “Confidence is closely linked to how well our perceptions match reality.”

— Matthieu Ricard

54. “Negative emotions like hatred destroy our peace of mind.”

— Matthieu Ricard

55. “Transform our way of perceiving things, we transform the quality of our lives.”

— Matthieu Ricard

56. “The most striking quality that humans and animals have in common is the capacity to experience suffering.”

— Matthieu Ricard

57. “As long as a sense of self-importance rules your being, you will never know lasting peace.”

— Matthieu Ricard

58. “We must distinguish between spirituality in general terms, which aims to make us better people, and religion. Adopting a religion remains optional, but becoming a better human being is essential.”

— Matthieu Ricard

59. “Mind training is based on the idea that two opposite mental factors cannot happen at the same time. You could go from love to hate. But you cannot, at the same time – toward the same object, the same person – want to harm and want to do good.”

— Matthieu Ricard

60. “The now that passes produces time, the now that remains produces eternity.”

— Matthieu Ricard

61. “Paraphrasing Spinoza, Alexandre adds, “In pity, sadness comes first. I am sad that the other is suffering, but I don’t really love him. In compassion, love comes first.”23 The.”

— Matthieu Ricard

62. “Happiness can’t be reduced to a few agreeable sensations. Rather, it is a way of being and of experiencing the world – a profound fulfillment that suffuses every moment and endures despite inevitable setbacks.”

— Matthieu Ricard

63. “Another form of laziness is thinking: ‘That’s not for me; it’s beyond my abilities. I’d rather not get involved with it.’ In other words, you give up the race before you reach the starting line.”

— Matthieu Ricard

64. “By happiness I mean here a deep sense of flourishing that arises from an exceptionally healthy mind. This is not a mere pleasurable feeling, a fleeting emotion, or a mood, but an optimal state of being. Happiness is also a way of interpreting the world, since while it may be difficult to change the world, it is always possible to change the way we look at it.”

— Matthieu Ricard

65. “We define empathy here as the ability to enter into affective resonance with the other’s feelings and to become cognitively aware of his situation. Empathy alerts us in particular to the nature and intensity of the sufferings experienced by the other. One could say that it catalyzes the transformation of altruistic love into compassion.”

— Matthieu Ricard

66. “He understands that all beings have the power to free themselves from ignorance and unhappiness, but that they don’t know it. How.”

— Matthieu Ricard

67. “The happiest man is he who has no trace of malice in his soul. PLATO.”

— Matthieu Ricard

68. “Nor is happiness a state of exaltation to be perpetuated at all costs; it is the purging of mental toxins, such as hatred and obsession, that literally poison the mind. It is also about learning how to put things in perspective and reduce the gap between appearances and reality.”

— Matthieu Ricard

69. “It may be true that “expressing ourselves,” giving free rein to our “natural” impulses, gives us momentary relief from our inner tensions, but we remain trapped in the endless circle of our usual habits. Such a lax attitude doesn’t solve any serious problems, since in being ordinarily oneself, one remains ordinary. As the French philosopher Alain has written, “You don’t need to be a sorcerer to cast a spell over yourself by saying ‘This is how I am. I can do nothing about it.”

— Matthieu Ricard

70. “There is a dilemma, to reconcile three time scales: in the short term, the economy; in the middle range, global well – being generally; and, in the long range, the environment.”

— Matthieu Ricard

71. “We do all kinds of things to remain beautiful yet we spend surprisingly little time taking care of what matters most: the way our mind functions.”

— Matthieu Ricard

72. “Simplifying our lives does not mean sinking into idleness, but on the contrary, getting rid of the most subtle aspect of laziness: the one which makes us take on thousands of less important activities.”

— Matthieu Ricard

73. “When I engaged in meditation on altruistic love and compassion, Tania noted that the cerebral networks activated were very different. In particular, the network linked to negative emotions and distress was not activated during meditation on compassion, while certain cerebral areas traditionally associated with positive emotions, with the feeling of affiliation and maternal love, for instance, were.”

— Matthieu Ricard

74. “We are very much like birds that have lived too long in a cage to which we return even when we get the chance to fly away. We have grown so accustomed to our faults that we can barely imagine what life would be like without them. The prospect of change makes us dizzy.”

— Matthieu Ricard

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

— Matthieu Ricard

76. “I have also come to understand that although some people are naturally happier than others, their happiness is still vulnerable and incomplete, and that achieving durable happiness as a way of being is a skill. It requires sustained effort in training the mind and developing a set of human qualities, such as inner peace, mindfulness, and altruistic love.”

— Matthieu Ricard

77. “Isn’t it the mind that translates the outer condition into happiness and suffering?”

— Matthieu Ricard

78. “Anyone can be happy by simply training their brain.”

— Matthieu Ricard

79. “Recognize suffering, Eliminate its source, End it By practicing the path.”

— Matthieu Ricard

80. “Voluntary simplicity is at once joyous and altruistic. Joyous because it is not permanently plagued by the hunger for “more”; altruistic because it does not encourage the disproportionate concentration of resources in the hands of a few, resources which – were they to be spread evenly – would significantly improve the lives of those deprived of basic needs.”

— Matthieu Ricard

81. “As for Barbara Fredrickson, she defines love as a positive resonance that manifests when three events occur simultaneously: the sharing of one or several positive emotions, a synchrony between the behavior and physiological reactions of two people, and the intention to contribute to the other’s well-being, an intention that engenders mutual care.”

— Matthieu Ricard

82. “One is not born wise; one becomes it.”

— Matthieu Ricard

83. “Demanding immediate results is an aspect of unsteadiness of mind or laziness.”

— Matthieu Ricard

84. “The ultimate reason for meditating is to transform ourselves in order to be better able to transform the world.”

— Matthieu Ricard

85. “According to the philosopher Andre Comte-Sponville: The wise man has nothing left to expect or to hope for. Because he is entirely happy, he needs nothing. Because he needs nothing, he is entirely happy.”

— Matthieu Ricard

86. “Being altruistic not only helps us to benefit others, but it is also the most satisfying way to live.”

— Matthieu Ricard

87. “I got really involved in science research and the science of meditation.”

— Matthieu Ricard

88. “Sober, a philosopher of science, has shown through convincing models that isolated, selfless individuals who come into contact with only selfish and violent individuals will be taken advantage of and tend to disappear quickly.4 Conversely, when such altruists group together and cooperate with one another, they have a definite evolutionary advantage over the selfish people, who also fight among themselves and therefore may slowly disappear from the population.”

— Matthieu Ricard

89. “When hearing a door creak, the optimist thinks it’s opening and the pessimist thinks it’s closing.”

— Matthieu Ricard

90. “Thus, little by little, through training the mind, you can change your habitual way of being.”

— Matthieu Ricard

91. “We can move gradually from total confusion, dominated by hatred and other mental poisons, to an intermediate stage of serenity, altruistic joy, and self-mastery before finally arriving at enlightenment, which will give us a true vision of phenomena’s ultimate nature. At that point, knowledge functions with an immediate certitude that transcends discursive thought.”

— Matthieu Ricard

92. “That’s what Buddhism has been trying to unravel – the mechanism of happiness and suffering. It is a science of the mind.”

— Matthieu Ricard

93. “The only ‘failure’ of quantum theory is its inability to provide a natural framework for our prejudices.”1.”

— Matthieu Ricard

94. “Few of us would regret the years it takes to complete an education or master a crucial skill. So why complain about the perseverance needed to become a well-balanaced and truly compassionate human being?”

— Matthieu Ricard

95. “It’s said that the Buddha’s enlightenment is great than that of a traveler setting out, in the same proportion as the heavens are bigger than what can be seen of them through the eye of a needle. But in both cases, what you see is the sky.”

— Matthieu Ricard

96. “I think what everyone should be doing, before it’s too late, is committing themselves to what they really want to do with their lives.”

— Matthieu Ricard

97. “The truth is that even if resentment is triggered by an external object, it is not located anywhere else but in our mind.”

— Matthieu Ricard

98. “Seeking happiness outside ourselves is like waiting for sunshine in a cave facing north.”

— Matthieu Ricard

99. “Some people might think that the smartest way to guarantee their own well-being is to isolate themselves from others and to work hard at their own happiness, without consideration for what other people are experiencing. They probably assume that if everybody did that, we’d all be happy. But the result would be exactly the opposite: instead of being happy, they would be torn between hope and fear, make their own lives miserable, and ruin the lives of the people around them too.”

— Matthieu Ricard

100. “Nature has evolved to be the inventor of complexity. Just as a jazz musician embroiders around a theme, thus improvising new melodic phrases according to his inspiration and the public’s reactions, nature plays spontaneously with the physical laws that were fixed at the start of the universe. It uses them to create novelty9.”

— Matthieu Ricard