Lobsang Tenzin Quotes

To realize that new world we must prefer the values of freedom and equality above all other values - above personal wealth, technical power and nationalism.

One's own self-worth is tied to the worth of the community to which one belongs, which is intimately connected to humanity in general. What happens in Darfur becomes an assault on my own community, and on me as an individual. That's what the human family is all about.

The only possible alternative to being either the oppressed or the oppressor is voluntary cooperation for the greatest good of all.

The libertarian position I once propended now seems to me seriously inadequate, in part because it did not fully knit the humane considerations and joint cooperative activities it left room for more closely into its fabric.

Other human beings have a right to peace and happiness that is equal to our own; therefore we have a responsibility to help those in need.

The work of community, love, reconciliation, restoration is the work we cannot leave up to politicians. This is the work we are all called to do.

It is the duty of man to raise up man.

Perhaps if we all subscribed to the African concept of Ubuntu - that we all become people through other people, and that we cannot be fully human alone, we could learn a lot. There'd be less hatred and more harmony.

Pacifism as a mass movement aims to avoid suffering; pacifists often say that no cause is worth suffering or dying for. The ethos of Solidarity is based on an opposite premise - that there are causes worth suffering and dying for.

But if I were to sum up who Barack Obama is and how he plans to meet this moment with one word, that word would be 'responsibility.' Responsibility to each other, our families, our communities, our country, and our world.

I loved September 12th. I loved the way - it's awful but, boy, did I love that day when we all came together. All the bickering stopped. All the partisan, cheap partisan warfare stopped.

There has to be a social commitment, a social consciousness that joins men together. On the basis of their coming together, they do not transgress against themselves and they do not transgress against others.

I have a profound resistance to the idea that a reader could say, 'Oh, well, that's her story.' We should all be interested, no matter where we come from, or who our parents are. It's not my province; it's ours. These questions concern us all.

There can be hope only for a society which acts as one big family, not as many separate ones.

There are values of humanity, culture, beauty, community that may require deviations from the cold logic of market theory.

I've learned that universal acceptance and appreciation is just an unrealistic goal.

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation.

Mankind's salvation lies exclusively in everyone's making everything his business, in the people of the East being anything but indifferent to what is thought in the West, and in the people of the West being anything but indifferent to what happens in the East.

Freedom is not worth fighting for if it means no more than license for everyone to get as much as he can for himself. And freedom is worth fighting for. Because it does mean more than unrestricted grabbing.

We have responsibility that when somebody hurts, government has got to move.

Our Union cannot safely stand on the cold calculation of interest alone.

I think the point of our country, our planet, the reason we're all here, one of the best things that we can do is be concerned about something even when it doesn't concern us. That's the whole point.

If we want to change this culture of hate and bigotry, every one of us must stand up and speak with one voice to condemn it, because an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us.

Even though we may focus first on the rights of our own country, that does not mean that we should disregard the rights of everyone else.

It's sad to me we can't be in a place where we can acknowledge we're all doing our best and respect the decisions other women make and even offer to help out.