Ram Dass Quotes

I speak to people who have been through so much more.

Cancer has given me a dose of humility. I'm much more empathetic. It's a club I would rather not have joined, but it is a club.

A surgeon is surrounded by people who are sick, discouraged, afraid, embittered, dying - but also courageous, loving, wise, compassionate and alive.

The glimpses of human strength and frailty that a physician sees are with me still.

If there is a meaning in life at all, then there must be a meaning in suffering. Suffering is an ineradicable part of life, even as fate and death. Without suffering and death, human life cannot be complete.

Genuine transcendence doesn't just look away from human suffering and say, "I am at peace, so I'm at the mountaintop." Genuine transcendence looks human suffering in the eye and attains peace because of a faith in things unseen.

If people can live through genocide and retain compassion, if they can take strength in pain, if they are able, still, to laugh, then certainly we can learn something from them.

If you will receive yourself in the fires of sorrow, God will make you nourishment for other people.

If you want to live your whole life free from pain you must become either a god or else a corpse. Consider other men's troubles and that will comfort you.

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.

Suffering! We owe to it all that is good in us, all that gives value to life; we owe to it pity, we owe to it courage, we owe to it all the virtues.

It's inspirational to see someone who is dying smile.

Please remember, no matter what you go through in life, somebody else might have it harder.

We're all human beings, and we all have the same problems. I do remember how blessed I am, and no matter how bad things are, they can always get worse.

Animals have a much better attitude to life and death than we do. They know when their time has come. We are the ones that suffer when they pass, but it's a healing kind of grief that enables us to deal with other griefs that are not so easy to grab hold of.

Those who learned to know death, rather than to fear and fight it, become our teachers about life.

Cancer opens many doors. One of the most important is your heart.

People who are sick, or who have been sick, or have come close to death have a lot to say - and they want you to hear it.

Did I offer peace today? Did I bring a smile to someone's face? Did I say words of healing? Did I let go of my anger and resentment? Did I forgive? Did I love? These are the real questions. I must trust that the little bit of love that I sow now will bear many fruits, here in this world and the life to come.

When I was growing up, my mother, who had been through a lot of terrible things in life, taught me that when life is tough your instinct is to close your heart. But if you can accept what happened and reach out to someone, there will always be someone less fortunate, or someone that can bring a solution and help your life.

In spite of everything I still believe that people are really good at heart. I simply can't build up my hopes on a foundation consisting of confusion, misery and death.

The countries with the greatest problems have the kindest people.

Over the years, people have often said to us that they were going through some horrible thing in their life - maybe the worst thing that had ever happened, or that they could think would ever happen - and that, somehow, in that state, we made them laugh. And I was like, 'That's a wonderful calling.'

A person, who no matter how desperate the situation, gives others hope, is a true leader.

It is not easy to talk about peace to people who are mourning every day.