Chogyam Trungpa Quotes

Only as an individual can man become a philosopher.

The only knowledge which satisfies us is one which is subject to no external standards but springs from the inner life of the personality.

We [people] have a teacher! The teacher is ourselves! We already know everything we need to know - our challenge is to discover that we know it. Turning to gurus, I think, we become guru-dependent, no different from drug-dependent, alcohol-dependent - needing an outside force to control our lives.

Enlightenment, don't know what it is. It's up to you, the way you think.

...I'm no longer prepared to accept what people say and what's written in books. I must think things out for myself, and try to find my own answer.

...all people needed was time and then they could figure most things out of themselves.

Intelligent people know others. Enlightened people know themselves.

One of the first things I think young people, especially nowadays, should learn is how to see for yourself and listen for yourself and think for yourself.

What's the message in Metallica? There is no message, but if there was a message, it really should be look within yourself, don't listen to me, don't listen to James, don't listen to anybody, look within yourself for the answers.

He who knows others is wise. He who knows himself is enlightened.

Everybody is a hero in their own story if you just look.

Education is freedom.

He who knows himself is enlightened.

Freedom can occur only through education.

Do not seek to follow in the footsteps of the wise. Seek what they sought.

I myself owe everything to French books. They developed in my soul the sentiments of humanity which had been stifled by eight years of fanatical and servile education.

The highest activity a human being can attain is learning for understanding, because to understand is to be free.

The philosophy of the wisest man that ever existed, is mainly derived from the act of introspection.

Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

We don't receive wisdom; we must discover it for ourselves after a journey that no one can take for us or spare us.

Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is Enlightenment.

A vision of truth which does not call upon us to get out of our armchair - why, this is the desideratum of mankind.

The key is within each of us. No instructions come with it.

A philosophy of freedom must set out from the experience of thinking, for it is through this experience of thinking that a human being discovers his own self, finds his bearings as an independent personality.

I tell my son Corey that the greatest teacher is the teacher who says, 'Don't follow me; follow yourself. Because within you there is that kingdom, that life, that force.'