Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes

No one has a monopoly on wisdom, and even for people who aren't religious, you can learn things from religious people.

Understanding means throwing away your knowledge.

The greatest and noblest pleasure which we have in this world is to discover new truths, and the next is to shake off old prejudices.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.

The doors of wisdom are never shut.

His priority did not seem to be to teach them what he knew, but rather to impress upon them that nothing, not even... knowledge, was foolproof.

Indeed he knows not how to know who knows not also how to un-know.

The only thing we have learnt from experience is that we learn nothing from experience.

Our opinions are less important than the spirit and temper with which they possess us, and even good opinions are worth very little unless we hold them in a broad, intelligent, and spacious way.

I think you can learn from pretty much everybody if you just open your eyes.

If you talk, you only repeat something that you already know. But if you listen, you may learn something that you don't know.

The ignorant are to be found as much among the educated as among the uneducated.

Who does not understand should either learn, or be silent.

In a hollow head there is much room for knowledge.

In Japan we have the phrase, "Shoshin," which means "beginner's mind." Our "original mind" includes everything within itself. It is always rich and sufficient within itself. This does not mean a closed mind, but actually an empty mind and a ready mind. If your mind is empty, it is always ready for anything. It is open to everything. In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few.

Wisdom begins when you discover the difference between "That doesn't make sense" and "I don't understand.

Teachers who offer you the ultimate answers do not possess the ultimate answers, for if they did, they would know that the ultimate answers cannot be given, they can only be received.

Half of wisdom is learning what to unlearn.

There is not human being from whom we cannot learn something if we are interested enough to dig deep.

Find out what it means to die - not physically, that's inevitable - but to die to everything that is known, to die to your family, to your attachments, to all the things that you have accumulated, the known, the known pleasures, the known fears. Die to that every minute and you will see what it means to die so that the mind is made fresh, young, and therefore innocent, so that there is incarnation not in a next life, but the next day.

No one ever died from an open mind.

I always believed you could learn something from nearly everybody you meet, if you're open to it.

Stillness, insight, and wisdom arise only when we can settle into being complete in this moment, without having to seek or hold on to or reject anything.

Tolerance can lead to learning something.

The best man of all is he who knows everything himself. Good also the man who accepts another's sound advice; but the man who neither knows himself nor takes to hear what another says, he is no good at all.