A Quote by Sam Harris

To treat others ethically is to act out of concern for their happiness and suffering.

Sam Harris

Quote Topics

Act Concern Happiness Others Out Suffering Treat

Quote Author

Sam Harris
American - Author
Born: April 9, 1967

In our concern for others, we worry less about ourselves. When we worry less about ourselves an experience of our own suffering is less intense. What does this tell us? Firstly, because our every action has a universal dimension, a potential impact on others' happiness, ethics are necessary as a means to ensure that we do not harm others. Secondly, it tells us that genuine happiness consists in those spiritual qualities of love, compassion, patience, tolerance and forgiveness and so on. For it is these which provide both for our happiness and others' happiness.

Dalai Lama

You know that your happiness and suffering depend on the happiness and suffering of others. That insight helps you not to do wrong things that will bring suffering to yourself and to other people.

Thich Nhat Hanh

A person who respects others is respected by others in return. Those who treat others with compassion and concern are protected and supported by others. Our environment is essentially a reflection of ourselves

Daisaku Ikeda

Men have been taught that their first concern is to relieve the suffering of others. ... To make that the highest test of virtue is to make suffering the most important part of life. Then man must wish to see others suffer in order that he may be virtuous. Such is the nature of altruism.

Ayn Rand

If we develop concern for other people's welfare, share other people's suffering, and help them, ultimately we will benefit. If we think only of ourselves and forget about others, ultimately we will lose. The more we care for the happiness of others, the greater our own sense of well-being becomes.

Dalai Lama

Those desiring to escape from suffering hasten right toward suffering. With the very desire for happiness, out of delusion they destroy their own happiness as if it were an enemy

Shantideva

We begin from the recognition that all beings cherish happiness and do not want suffering. It then becomes both morally wrong and pragmatically unwise to pursue only one's own happiness oblivious to the feelings and aspirations of all others who surround us as members of the same human family. The wiser course is to think of others when pursuing our own happiness.

Dalai Lama

Kindnessis giving others happiness.Compassionis removing others' bitterness.Joyis freeing others from suffering.

Gautama Buddha

The rationale for loving others is the recognition of the simple fact that every living being has the same right to and the same desire for happiness, and not suffering, and the consideration that you as one individual are one life unit as compared with the mulititude of others in their ceaseless quest for happiness.

Dalai Lama

Serve others. The failing recipe for happiness and success is to want the good of others." "happiness is when I see others happy. Happiness is a shared thing. I feel very diminished happiness if it is something I enjoy myself.

Desmond Tutu

The creative act is also in a small way a suffering act - we start out with our ego, this hope of making this thing whatever it be, but so often it eludes us and it collapses and we kind of regress into this mental suffering, we can't find what we're looking for.

Michael Leunig

We are social animals. Others' suffering is ultimately your suffering; their happiness is ultimately your happiness.

Dalai Lama

Any kind of self-concern, including a self-concern that leads one to shut down and give up (as, for example, a fear to fail) is itself a kind of pride. Feeling depressed that I am worse than others is as much an act of pride as feeling myself better. Both are acts of self-concern.

James E. Ferrell

When there is hallucination, there is the truth, by recognising it as hallucination. Where there is suffering, there is peace and bliss, by letting go and experiencing it for numberless suffering sentient beings. Always think of how others are kind and precious Treat them as you would like to be treated.