Top 453 Quotes & Sayings by Byron Katie

I haven't had a single thought for 26 years. I have only understanding. It's somewhat complicated to understand that. I've hardly ever spoken about it. You're in a state of total peace of mind. A kind of nirvana.

I suffered from severe depression for over a decade. My condition deteriorated steadily. I was suicidal.

I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed, because I believed that I didn't even deserve a bed to sleep in. And then, one morning, a cockroach crawled onto my leg. I looked at it, and suddenly I awoke from a kind of hypnotic trance in which I had been all my life.

One morning, in February 1986, out of nowhere, I experienced a realization. In an instant, I discovered that when I believed my stressful thoughts, I suffered, but when I questioned them, I didn't suffer.

When I was in my early forties, I slept with a loaded gun under my bed. I'd become severely depressed in my thirties, and for almost a decade I spiraled down into paranoia, rage, self-loathing, and thoughts of suicide.

When we believe in our thoughts, when we tell ourselves a story, we suffer. 'My husband doesn't respect me.' 'I should be thinner.' Those are stories. When there's no story, there's no suffering.

Everyone is a mirror image of yourself-your own thinking coming back to you.

Peace doesn't require two people; it requires only one. It has to be you. The problem begins and ends there.

When we question our thoughts, we see that the craziness was never in the world, but in us.

Every single human being is trying his best. We're all doing the best we can. But when we believe what we think, we have to live out those thoughts. When there's chaos in our heads, there's chaos in our lives. When there's hurt in our thinking, there's hurt in our lives. Love thy neighbor as thyself? I always have. When I hated me, I hated you. That's how it works. If I hate someone, I'm mistaking them for me, and solutions remain hidden.

Depression, pain, and fear are gifts that say, "Sweetheart, take a look at your thinking in this moment. You're living in a story that isn't true for you." Living a lie is always stressful. And investigating a lie through The Work always leads you back to who you are. Who you are is not an option. You are love. It hurts to believe you're other than who you are, to live any story less than love.

What you’re believing in the moment creates your suffering or your happiness.

I stopped waiting for the world to give me what I wanted; I started giving it to myself.

We are never really in control. We just think we are when things happen to be going our way.

I am a lover of what is, not because I'm a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality. We can know that reality is good just as it is, because when we argue with it, we experience tension and frustration. We don't feel natural or balanced. When we stop opposing reality, action becomes simple, fluid, kind, and fearless.

If you think the cause of your problem is 'out there,' you'll try to solve it from the outside. Take the shortcut: solve it from within.

Don't be careful. You could hurt yourself.

Stress is an alarm clock that lets you know you're attached to something not true for you.

If you don't like your world, question your thoughts about it.

How do I know it was meant to happen this way? Because it did.

Nothing belongs to me. Everything comes and goes. Serenity is an open door.

Spare yourself from seeking love, approval, or appreciation-from anyone. And watch what happens in reality, just for fun.

Hurt feelings or discomfort of any kind cannot be cause by another person. No one outside me can hurt me. That’s not a possibility. It’s only when I believe a stressful thought that I get hurt. And I’m the one who’s hurting me by believing what I think. This is very good news, because it means that I don’t have to get someone else to stop hurting me. I’m the one who can stop hurting me. It’s within my power.

When a thought hurts, that’s the signal that it isn’t true.

Bottom line is, if someone says something about me and it upsets me, it's true.

If I had a prayer, it would be this: "God, spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen."

It's not the problem that causes our suffering; it's our thinking about the problem.

Your suffering is never caused by the person you're blaming.

I didn't fight or shame my thoughts, I questioned them, and they stopped shaming me.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you. Everything happens at exactly the right moment, neither too soon nor too late. You don't have to like it... it's just easier if you do.

When they attack you and you notice that you love them with all your heart, your Work is done.

It's not what happens in life that bothers us. It's what we're believing about it that bothers us.

Until you can see everything in the world as your friend, your work is not done.

When you realize that every stressful moment you experience is a gift that points you to your own freedom, life becomes very kind.

My experience is that the teachers we need most are the people we're living with right now.

The Work: 1. Is it true? 2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true? 3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought? 4. Who would you be without the thought?

The world is what you believe it to be, and it changes as you change.

If you want real control, drop the illusion of control; let life have you. It does anyway. You’re just telling yourself the story of how it doesn’t.

When you say or do anything to please, get, keep, influence, or control anyone or anything, fear is the cause and pain is the result.

What is perfect health? The unraveling of all imagined states of mind

I have never experienced a stressful feeling that wasn't caused by attaching to an untrue thought. Behind every uncomfortable feeling, there's a thought that isn't true for us.

When you become a lover of what is, the war is over.

I've heard people say that they cling to their painful thoughts because they're afraid that without them they wouldn't be activists for peace. “If I feel peaceful,” they say, “why would I bother taking action at all?” My answer is “Because that's what love does.” To think that we need sadness or outrage to motivate us to do what's right is insane. As if the clearer and happier you get, the less kind you become. As if when someone finds freedom, she just sits around all day with drool running down her chin. My experience is the opposite. Love is action.

Fear has only two causes: the thought of losing what you have or the thought of not getting what you want.

Our job is unconditional love. The job of everyone else in our life is to push our buttons.

Until the mind is open, the heart stays closed. The open mind is the key to the open heart.

Just keep coming home to yourself, you are the one who you've been waiting for.

Placing the blame or judgment on someone else leaves you powerless to change your experience; taking responsibility for your beliefs and judgments gives you the power to change them

It's not your job to like me - it's mine

When you believe that your problem is caused by someone or something else, you become your own victim.

You can't have an up without a down. You can't have a left without a right. This is duality. If you have a problem, you must already have the solution. The question is, do you really want the solution, or do you want to perpetuate the problem?

Nothing comes ahead of its time, and nothing ever happened that didn't need to happen.

The whole world is simply my story, projected back to me on the screen of my own perception. All of it.

When you think that someone or something other than yourself needs to change, you're mentally out of your business.

Happiness is the natural state for someone who knows that there's nothing to know.

People try so hard to let go of their negative behaviors and thoughts, and it doesn't work, or it works only for a short time. I didn't let go of my negative thoughts; I questioned them, and then they let go of me, and so did my addictions and depression.

No one has ever been angry at another human being-we’re only angry at our story of them.

We cannot see what we don't believe.

We do not mature through age. We mature in awareness.

Life is simple. Everything happens for you, not to you.