Matthieu Ricard Quotes

More than any religious figure that I can think of, Dalai Lama goes out of his way to attend interfaith conferences; religious harmony is one of his urgent priorities in life.

The Tibetan people will need to determine who the next reincarnation of the Dalai Lama is.

The Dalai Lama is just a temporal leader of Tibet.

I also saw the Dalai Lama a few times.

In 1995, the Chinese government picked a 6-year-old child to succeed the Panchen Lama, the second highest figure in Tibetan Buddhism.

As the spiritual leader of six million people, the Dalai Lama can be credited with a significant renunciation of the authority of tradition - of the conventional politics of national self-interest as well as of religion.

I think parents should be able to teach their kids what their faith says, what science says.

I've got a letter from the Dalai Lama at home.

When one questions [Dalai Lama's] political actions, it is worth remembering that he's the single most experienced politician on the planet at this moment.

If you'd asked me some years ago, I would have said [Dalai Lama] is an extraordinarily compassionate, clear-sighted, calm human being. But now, I'm more convinced than ever that his political positions as well as his spiritual positions arise out of such precise and realistic thinking that they're extremely sound.

I would say that by virtue of transforming politics, [Dalai Lama] is in fact easily underestimated.

No evidence or proof of the existence of a God has been found in the phenomena of nature, based on experience.

Dalai Lama is taking a subtle and nuanced view of politics and he is thinking in terms of events well beyond our lifetime.

Scientists seek the lawfulness of events. It is the task of Religion to fit man into this lawfulness.

There are two questions that get to us all: Are we alone in the Universe? And, where did we come from? For me, science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion I've come across. With that said, the universe is mysterious and wonderful. It fills me with reverence for nature and our place among the stars; our place in space.

I have always thought it curious that, while most scientists claim to eschew religion, it actually dominates their thoughts more than it does the clergy.

So far from science being irreligious, as many think, it is the neglect of science that is irreligious-it is the refusal to study the surrounding creation that is irreligious.

If Jesus were playing the game, I don't know what he'd do.

I believe that Willy Nelson is the hillbilly Dalai Lama.

I don't see why religion and science can't cooperate. What's wrong with using a computer to count our blessings?

I can only regard with bewilderment an educated man who is also religious

I think Dalai Lama efforts have been heroic.

I'd spent thirty years visiting the Dalai Lama, and twenty years as a journalist going to difficult places, war zones and revolutions from North Korea to Haiti and Beirut to Sri Lanka, and the question came up: What does this man have to offer to this world which seems so torn up and so attached to conflict?

If I were a physics teacher or a science teacher, it'd be on my mind all the time as how the hell we really got this way. It's a perfectly natural human thought and, okay, if you go into the science class you can't think this. Well, alright, as soon as you leave you can start thinking about it again without giving aid and comfort to the lunatic fringe of the Christian religion.

Great scientific minds, from Claudius Ptolemy of the second century to Isaac Newton of the seventeenth, invested their formidable intellects in attempts to deduce the nature of the universe from the statements and philosophies contained in religious writings.... Had any of these efforts worked, science and religion today might be one and the same. But they are not.