Suffering Quotes
All suffering is caused by ignorance. People inflict pain on others in the selfish pursuit of their happiness or satisfaction.
Dalai Lama
One man watches a river flow by. If he does not wish it to flow, to change ceaselessly in accord with its nature, he will suffer great pain. Another man understands that nature of the river is to change constantly, regardless of his likes and dislikes, and therefore he does not suffer. To know existence as this flow, empty of lasting pleasure, void of self, is to find that which is stable and free of suffering, to find true peace in the world.
Ajahn Chah
The Way It Is There’s a thread you follow. It goes among things that change. But it doesn’t change. People wonder about what you are pursuing. You have to explain about the thread. But it is hard for others to see. While you hold it you can’t get lost. Tragedies happen; people get hurt or die; and you suffer and get old. Nothing you do can stop time’s unfolding. You don’t ever let go of the thread.
William Stafford
Dostoevky's lack of taste, his monotonous dealings with persons suffering with pre-Freudian complexes, the way he has of wallowing in the tragic misadventures of human dignity - all this is difficult to admire.
Vladimir Nabokov
Suffering naturally gives rise to doubt. How can one believe in God in the face of such horrendous suffering as slavery, segregation, and the lynching tree? Under these circumstances, doubt is not a denial but an integral part of faith. It keeps faith from being sure of itself. But doubt does not have the final word. The final word is faith giving rise to hope.
James Hal Cone
Scars are proof of survival, they shouldn’t be hidden—it’s a story someone may need to see in order to believe that beyond their pain and suffering, there is healing.
Bernice L. McFadden
By construction, the world of big data is siloed and segmented and segregated so that successful people, like myself - technologists, well-educated white people, for the most part - benefit from big data, and it's the people on the other side of the economic spectrum, especially people of color, who suffer from it. They suffer from it individually, at different times, at different moments. They never get a clear explanation of what actually happened to them because all these scores are secret and sometimes they don't even know they're being scored.
Cathy O'Neil
Nuclear terrorism is one of the most serious threats of our time. Even one such attack could inflict mass casualties and create immense suffering and unwanted change in the world forever. This prospect should compel all of us to act to prevent such a catastrophe.
Ban Ki-moon
The more we are using clean energy, renewable energy sources, the less environmentally problematic facilities end up being a problem for everybody, but particularly for folks who have to suffer the consequences of some of these facilities.
Barack Obama
What is it that endowed things with meaning, value, significance? The creating heart, which desired, and, out of its desire, created. It created joy and woe. It wanted to satiate itself with woe. We must take all the suffering that has been endured by men and animals upon ourselves and affirm it, and possess a goal in which it acquires reason.
Friedrich Nietzsche
Patients rarely die of the disease from which they suffer. Secondary or terminal infections are the real cause of death.
William Osler
The saddest fact of climate change - and the chief reason we should be concerned about finding a proper response - is that the countries it will hit hardest are already among the poorest and most long-suffering.
Bjorn Lomborg
You can't use your camera as a shield against human suffering.
Zana Briski
Animals, like us, are living souls. They are not things. They are not objects. Neither are they human. Yet they mourn. They love. They dance. They suffer. They know the peaks and chasms of being.
Gary A. Kowalski
All suffering is caused by the illusion of separateness, which generates fear and self-hatred, which eventually causes illness. You are the master of your life. You can do much more than you thought you could, including cure yourself of a "terminal illness".
Barbara Brennan
I thought about all those people whose suffering had been erased, and I thought, 'Why can't they speak? Why can't I undo some of that erasure?'
Jesmyn Ward
While science has nothing of value to say on the great and aching questions of life, death, love, and meaning, what the religious traditions of mankind have said forms a coherent body of thought... There is recompense for suffering. A principle beyond selfishness is at work in the cosmos. All will be well. I do not know whether any of this is true. I am certain that the scientific community does not know that it is false.
David Berlinski
All human beings have an innate desire to overcome suffering, to find happiness. Training the mind to think differently, through meditation, is one important way to avoid suffering and be happy.
Dalai Lama
