Deepak Chopra

To think is to practice brain chemistry.

Silence is the great teacher, and to learn its lessons you must pay attention to it. There is no substitute for the creative inspiration, knowledge, and stability that come from knowing how to contact your core of inner silence. The great Sufi poet Rumi wrote, Only let the moving waters calm down, and the sun and moon will be reflected on the surface of your being.

The way you think, the way you behave, the way you eat, can influence your life by 30 to 50 years.

According to this law [the law of Dharma], you have a unique talent and a unique way of expressing it. There is something that you can do better than anyone else in the whole world–and for every unique talent and unique expression of that talent, there are also unique needs. When these needs are matched with the creative expression of your talent, that is the spark that creates affluence. Expressing your talents to fulfill needs creates unlimited wealth and abundance.

A verse from the Veda says, ‘What you see, you become.’ In other words, just the experience of perceiving the world makes you what you are. This is a quite literal statement.

If you and I are having a single thought of violence or hatred against anyone in the world at this moment, we are contributing to the wounding of the world.

Broken, like a mosaic, I am pieced together. I am still a piece of art, though I may not be fully appreciated by all, the ones that see the beauty, are the ones who have the understanding; gained through experience, that to break, doesn’t mean to give up.

Be a little careful about your library. Do you foresee what you will do with it? Very little to be sure. But the real question is, What it will do with you?

Most people want to avoid pain, and discipline is usually painful.

It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.

One cause, which is not always observed, of the insufficiency of riches, is that they very seldom make their owner rich.

You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.

The strongest principle of growth lies in human choice.

They are not only idle who do nothing, but they are idle also who might be better employed.

You should always own a black dress because no one ever remembers a black dress.

Be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful.

If we win, nobody will care. If we lose, there will be nobody to care.

No one has a prosperity so high and firm that two or three words can’t dishearten it.

For character too is a process and an unfolding… among our valued friends is there not someone or other who is a little too self confident and disdainful; whose distinguished mind is a little spotted with commonness; who is a little pinched here and protuberant there with native prejudices; or whose better energies are liable to lapse down the wrong channel under the influence of transient solicitations?

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

It is better that some should be unhappy rather than that none should be happy, which would be the case in a general state of equality.