Thurman Quotes & Sayings

However, because of your interconnectedness with all things, other beings still have a problem, and when you realize that you have no absolute self apart from things, you realize that essentially, you are all the other beings. — Robert Thurman

Take the example of people who are being most unrealistic - people who are beating monks to death and torturing them. Why shouldn't you be angry or hate that person? Well, the person who is doing that is very unhappy. They are being ordered by a higher-up. — Robert Thurman

The worldly person is insane from the point of view of the spiritual person. — Robert Thurman

Everybody is so sensitive, you'd think Nolan Ryan was pitching. — Thurman Munson

Howard Thurman once said, Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive. Because what the world needs most is more people who have come alive. — Steven Kotler

It was brief, swift, and then it was done. It was a professional job. I needed to be kissed, and I was kissed. — Uma Thurman

The border between editing and ghostwriting is, at its extremes, a bit porous. An editor really improves and sometimes restructures a manuscript and suggests changes. — Judith Thurman

Buddhism is all about science. If science is the systematic pursuit of the accurate knowledge of reality, then science is Buddhism, Buddhism is science. — Robert A.F. Thurman

I was the lead in 'Interview With The Vampire', until Tom Cruise decided he was interested. I was in 'The Wings Of The Dove' with Uma Thurman, until that got cancelled. I was in 'Shakespeare In Love' with Julia Roberts, until that fell apart. — Rufus Sewell

Fate is the raw materials of experience. They come uninvited and often unanticipated. Destiny is what a man does with these raw materials. — Howard Thurman

The idea that somehow "no self, no problem"- I don't exist because I don't have a self- would be a mistaken understanding. However, the selflessness teaching is not that hard to understand. What it means is a type of self that people feel they have, like a fixed, unchanging identity. Either they know they have it, or for some, they feel they need to seek it, and possibly have an experience where they feel like they found something. That type of fixed, unchanging, essential self, or absolute self doesn't exist. That's what "no self" means. — Robert Thurman

It took me forty years of dealing with buddhism to finally realize that actually Buddha's discovery was happiness and bliss. — Robert Thurman

I look up to Bernard Hopkins as a fighter. I'm honored to be his co-main event and to be able to give a great performance. — Keith Thurman

Every dreamer knows that it is entirely possible to be homesick for a place you've never been to, perhaps more homesick than for familiar ground. — Judith Thurman

If you are forced to describe things for someone else, it sharpens your senses. And also your sense of how hard it is to make the translation from the vibrant, multi-faceted world to a sentence that distils it. — Judith Thurman

There are two questions that we have to ask ourselves. The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' — Howard Thurman

Maybe they made me captain because I've been here so long. But if I'm supposed to lead by example, then I'll be a terrible captain. — Thurman Munson

To finish building the free society dreamed of by Washington, Franklin, and Jefferson, we must draw upon the resources of the enlightened imagination, which can be systematically developed by the spiritual sciences of India and Tibet. We have not yet tamed our own demons of racism, nationalism, sexism, and materialism. We have not yet made peace with a land we took by force and have only partly paid for. We are a teeming conglomeration of people from different tribes who have yet to embrace fully the humanness in one another. And none of us can be really free until all of us are. — Robert Thurman

Thich Nhat Hanh is one of the greatest teachers of our time. He reaches from the heights of insight down to the deepest places of the absolutely ordinary. — Robert Thurman

They don't have to choose either/or. They can have their cake and mutilate it too. — Rob Thurman

No rage is equal to the rage of a contented right-thinking man when he is confronted in the marketplace by an idea which belongs in the pulpit. — Thurman Arnold

You have to be responsible for yourself, refer to yourself, develop yourself, help others, whatever it may be. So we shouldn't have an idea that the whole thing is to shatter ones ego. — Robert Thurman

Three tomatoes are walking down the street-a poppa tomato, a mamma tomato, and a little baby tomato. Baby tomato starts lagging behind. Poppa tomato gets angry, goes over to the baby tomato, and smooshes him and says, Catch up. — Uma Thurman

Nice guy. Salt of the earth. The stick up his ass is just a bonus." "Let us not make light of the rectally challenged." Niko disposed of the mug with disdain, wiping his hand thoroughly on a towel afterward. "The condition is no doubt congenital. Completely beyond his control. — Rob Thurman

What're you still doing up? You know all good little ninjas should be in bed, visions of homicidal sugarplums dancing in their heads. — Rob Thurman

The Chinese people absolutely need good spiritual examples. They also could use a citizen of their own, who is free and happy, and pleased with them, and represents them in a positive way to the world. Especially now that they're becoming this mega-power, and no longer known as a puppet in the game, or strictly business people. — Robert Thurman

I say that creeds, dogmas, and theologies are inventions of the mind. It is the nature of the mind to make sense out of experience, to reduce the conglomerates of experience to units of comprehension which we call principles, or ideologies, or concepts. Religious experience is dynamic, fluid, effervescent, yeasty. But the mind can't handle these so it has to imprison religious experience in some way, get it bottled up. Then, when the experience quiets down, the mind draws a bead on it and extracts concepts, notions, dogmas, so that religious experience can make sense to the mind. — Howard Thurman

I love comedy. I don't approach it any different. I'm not a comedian. I'm not a stand-up. I just do it like a part and personally, I love to watch comedies. If you don't get to do what you like to watch you get frustrated. — Uma Thurman

In the presence of an overwhelming sincerity on the part of the disinherited, the dominant themselves are caught with no defense [ ... ] They are thrown back upon themselves for their rating. — Howard Thurman

The years, the months, the days, and the hours have flown by my open window. Here and there an incident, a towering moment, a naked memory, an etched countenance, a whisper in the dark, a golden glow these and much more are the woven fabric of the time I have lived. — Howard Thurman

I raised another shot. That sound you hear is the heads of moral conservatives spontaneously exploding in the distance. — Rob Thurman

It cannot be denied that too often the weight of the Christian movement has been on the side of the strong and the powerful and against the weak and oppressed-this, despite the gospel. — Howard Thurman

You're more responsible ethically for being there with your interconnection to the world, but the you now is an always changing one, and you're responsible for how you change it. It's very important to understand that whole thing about the ego. — Robert Thurman

Mama said there was always a catastrophe coming. Someone's world was always coming to an end. It wasn't our worry to change every ending, only the endings we could — Rob Thurman

That's what I have you for," I grinned. "I'm just here to carry the heavy stuff. The union says thinking rolls me into overtime — Rob Thurman

In Buddhism, we say reincarnation is the conscious taking of rebirth by a Bodhisattva, or by a high being, whereas rebirth, is what most people do. Rebirth is an involuntary process where they seek traction by finding a new body after their subtle mind loses the old one. There are two things commonly said about this. One- there is no evidence for it and two- if there is evidence, what's the mechanism which carries the consciousness from one life to another. — Robert Thurman

People
stupid when they lived; potentially stupid when they died. — Rob Thurman

The problem has to be answered by means of art, because you can't blast them with bliss. Tat freaks them out even more. So instead, you have to have an artful way of approaching them. You do a dance for them, you get them to imagine being interconnected, and to imagine being free of their suffering, and not so self involved, through art that draws them out. Then you, and they, are all established in what's called a Buddha-verse, or Buddha-land — Robert Thurman

Insecurity, however, is a luxury on which I never economize. — Judith Thurman

Most kids don't believe in fairy tales very long. Once they hit six or seven they put away "Cinderella" and
her shoe fetish, "The Three Little Pigs" with their violation of building codes, "Miss Muffet" and her
well-shaped tuffet - all forgotten or discounted. And maybe that's the way it has to be. To survive in the
world, you have to give up the fantasies, the make-believe. The only trouble is that it's not all
make-believe. Some parts of the fairy tales are all too real, all too true. There might not be a Red Riding
Hood, but there is a Big Bad Wolf. No Snow White, but definitely an Evil Queen. No obnoxiously cute
blond tots, but a child-eating witch ... yeah. Oh yeah. — Rob Thurman

There is a certain grandeur and nobility in administering to another's need out of one's fullness and plenty. One — Howard Thurman

I am reminded again that the greatest phrase ever written is words, words, words. — Wallace Thurman

I never ever slept again after my first pregnancy. — Uma Thurman

Anyone with less intestinal fortitude, inhuman or not, would've been curled up on the floor sucking his thumb. I basked in the attention and took it as my due. I'd always known I was a star. Without me, the Auphe were nothing. I was the key, and the gate was a lock only I could open. At this moment I was, as I'd always suspected, God. Spreading my arms, I let my head fall back and closed my eyes, my streaming hair a silk touch on my shoulder blades. "Suffer the little children to come unto me." Opening my eyes, I smiled gently at the Auphe. — Rob Thurman

While the choices we make matter, it's what we make of our choices that matters the most. — Thurman P. Banks Jr.

When asked if I consider myself Buddhist, the answer is, Not really. But it's more my religion than any other because I was brought up with it in an intellectual and spiritual environment. I don't practice or preach it, however. — Uma Thurman

Zaveck is a tough guy. He has never been knocked down and I love putting people to sleep. Knowing that he has never been knocked down is a true test for me — Keith Thurman

Practice giving things away, not just things you don't care about, but things you do like. Remember, it is not the size of a gift, it is its quality and the amount of mental attachment you overcome that count. So don't bankrupt yourself on a momentary positive impulse, only to regret it later. Give thought to giving. Give small things, carefully, and observe the mental processes going along with the act of releasing the little thing you liked. (53)
(Quote is actually Robert A F Thurman but Huston Smith, who only wrote the introduction to my edition, seems to be given full credit for this text.) — Huston Smith

There's some instinctive attraction that draws you, as a writer, to your subject. And the attraction usually has to do with some primal personal thing that, of course, you have no idea about. In the end, the piece always comes down to the one or two sentences you struggle over. The sentences where you try to say explicitly what it is that the two of you, subject and writer, have in common. Those are the sentences that you just bang your head against the wall over until you get them right. It's very hard to make that distillation but that is actually what your job is. Without trying to pin the person like a butterfly to the wall, to sum it up. If I can do that, then I feel satisfied. To give the subject a reality in the form of a sentence that is like a piece of rock crystal or a prism. — Judith Thurman

True wealth is contentment, and happiness is forgetting to worry how you are and how much you have. — Robert Thurman

To become enlightened is not just to slip into some disconnected euphoria, an oceanic feeling of mystic oneness apart from ordinary reality. It is not even to come up with a solution, a sort of formula to control reality. Rather, it is an experience of release from all compulsions and sufferings, combined with a precise awareness of any relevent subject of knowledge. Having attained enlightenment one knows everything that matters, and the precise nature of all that is. — Robert A.F. Thurman

It's an unfortunate fact of life," Niko said with grimly amused resignation. "Where there are graveyards, there are flesh-eating revenants. Where there are cars, there are car salesmen. — Rob Thurman

We have one life to live - and one chance to live it in the richest way possible. — Judith Thurman

I just got Kill Bill: Vol. 2. I've watched it like eight times in the past two months. I just love the scene at the end between David Carradine and Uma Thurman. — Shawn Ashmore

Robert Thurman, professor of Buddhist studies at Columbia University, often uses an amusing and powerful image to describe what living compassionately, with lovingkindness, could look like: 'Imagine you're on the New York City subway,' he begins, 'and these extraterrestrials come and zap the subway car so that all of you in it are going to be together...forever.' What do we do? If someone is hungry, we feed them. If someone is freaking out, we try to calm them down. We might not like everybody, or approve of them - but we're going to be together forever, so we need to get along, take care of one another, and acknowledge that our lives are linked. Isn't living on planet Earth like being in that subway car? We're all together forever; our lives are linked. — Sharon Salzberg

Prayer is a form of communication between God and man and man and God ... I am always impressed by the fact that it is recorded that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to do was to pray. — Howard Thurman

The US has developed two coordinate governing classes: the one, called 'business,' building cities, manufacturing and distributing goods, and holding complete and autocratic power over the livelihood of millions; the other, called 'government,' concerned with preaching and exemplification of spiritual ideals, so caught in a mass of theory, that when it wished to move in a practical world it had to do so by means of a sub rosa political machine. — Thurman Arnold

Uma Thurman is one of the most beautiful women I've ever seen. She has those wicked eyes - it looks like there is such a brain behind those eyes. — Joshua Jackson

The basic fact is that Christianity as it was born in the mind of this Jewish thinker and teacher appears as a technique of survival for the oppressed. That it became, through the intervening years, a religion of the powerful and the dominant, used sometimes as an instrument of oppression, must not tempt us into believing that it was thus in the mind and life of Jesus. 'In him was life; and the life was the light of men.' Wherever his spirit appears, the oppressed gather fresh courage; for he announced the good news that fear, hypocrisy, and hatred, the three hounds of hell that track the trail of the disinherited, need have no dominion over them. — Howard Thurman

The most important enemy for everyone is their own illusion that makes them unrealistic or exaggerates their sense of self-importance in the world. Ironically, you're the super secret enemy. Whether lay or householder, everyone has that internal enemy. — Robert Thurman

To love is to make of one's heart a swinging door. — Howard Thurman

It's a wondrous thing, that a decision to act releases energy in the personality. For days on end a person may drift along without much energy. Having no particular sense of direction and having no will to change. Then, something happens to alter the pattern. It may be something very simple and inconsequential in itself. But it stabs awake, it alarms, it disturbs. In a flash, one gets a vivid picture of oneself, and it passes. The result is decision. Sharp, defenitive decision. In the wake of the decision, yes, even as a part of the decision itself, energy is released. The act of decision sweeps all before it, and the life of the individual maybe changed forever. — Howard Thurman

When people are dying, they call their old enemies and try to forgive them and try to be forgiven by them. They call their old friends and affirm their love for them, as well as detach themselves from them, and they try to get into as free a space as they can so they're really ready to go. They give away all their possessions and are as generous as possible. They give up old hatreds and grudges, and that's a wise intuitive thing, because it's much freer to live like that. — Robert Thurman

I put in the work to hand Keith Thurman his first loss. — Jan Zaveck

When I remembered Stefan first coming for me, it wasn't a man in a black mask or a crazy guy shoving Three Musketeers bars at me as he tried to convince me I was his brother. I remembered an ocean, dark as a universe without stars-black with guilt, despair, rage, violence, self loathing. All I could see was his hand reaching out of the water; the rest of him was buried in a liquid Hell he couldn't escape — Rob Thurman

I've always enjoyed a challenge," Niko remarked, shifting through the powder to lift something out. "I think perhaps there are other things I could enjoy instead. Bonsai trees, painting, forging my own weapons. The opportunities are endless." He opened his hand to show me the small braid of several yellowed hairs. "Voodoo." "Think it would work?" I perked up. Killing from a distance wasn't usually my thing, but in this case, I'd make an exception. — Rob Thurman

But I think it is always difficult to have high expectations of yourself or anyone else. — Uma Thurman

I'm lucky to have been raised in the most beautiful place - Amherst, Massachusetts, state of my heart. I'm more patriotic to Massachusetts than to almost any place. — Uma Thurman

It's hard sometimes if you think a character should look a certain way and you're being pushed to do it differently. I've had fights over that. That's why it's so important that you work with good people. — Uma Thurman

The Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father's business, announcing the acceptable year of the Lord. — Howard Thurman

Writing monsters is fun, and it's easy. When I want one, I just reach under the bed and pull it out, kicking and screaming. — Rob Thurman

She'd eat you alive." "She would, would she?" Niko said dryly. "Seriously, Nik, she's dangerous, a predator." This voice-of-reason shit, it had to stop. It was a strain on my resources. His lip twitched. "And what, little brother, do you think I am?" Damn. He had me there. — Rob Thurman

Several months ago there was a somewhat, in some people's eyes, relatively normal Cal
or by and large normal
the best he was able to be as half Auphe. Occasionally he did lose his shit, attacked and ate deer while on road trips through the woods, created massive holes in between dimensions to shove through malevolently murderous pucks, and once in a while ripped out an Auphe's throat with his teeth. He also opened a gate or two to save his friends, blew up an antihealer from the inside out to save the world, cleaned his guns while watching porn, and generally was a smart-ass to everyone.
Normal. — Rob Thurman

If I had a bad day, which, now that I ran my own life, was a helluva lot less than the old days, I sat on the floor with Houdini, placed a hand on his broad head, and soaked up endless doggy wonder. A full stomach, a well-chewed toy, a soft couch - through a dog's eyes, that was a true glory that couldn't be matched, the only heaven in existence. I missed the furball, missed him like crazy. — Rob Thurman

Color prejudice and religion are akin in one respect. Some folks have it and some don't, and the kernel that is responsible for it is present in us all. — Wallace Thurman

Snap judgments? I'd gotten over those about the time I was toilet trained. Swore off diapers and faith in the human experience all in one week. — Rob Thurman

I love and adore being a mother. It's the greatest gift I've ever been given. — Uma Thurman

Being a Negro writer these days is a racket and I'm going to make the most of it while it lasts. About twice a year I sell a story. It is acclaimed. I am a genius in the making. Thank God for this Negro literary renaissance. Long may it flourish — Wallace Thurman

The problem in our society is the ego psychology and conventional wisdom about "look out for #1." That conventional wisdom thinks that "love your enemy" is to some a principle no one can ever live by. — Robert Thurman

The spectacle of a judge pouring over the picture of some nude, trying to ascertain the extent to which she arouses prurient interests, and then attempting to write an opinion which explains the difference between that nude and some other nude has elements of low comedy. — Thurman Arnold

I'm very happy at home. I love to just hang out with my daughter, I love to work in my garden. I'm not a gaping hole of need. — Uma Thurman

Even, today, when people tell me I'm beautiful, I do not believe a word of it. — Uma Thurman

There are so many ebbs and flows in life, but when you're raising small children, your family means everything. — Uma Thurman

Nobody makes a movie about a woman in her mid-30s who wishes she could have met someone to have children with and still doesn't know where to find a date. — Uma Thurman

You can have the finest pen, typewriter, or computer, but without a set of eyes that truly see the world, you might as well have none of it. — Thurman P. Banks Jr.

When all is lost, when all is let go of, when all is abandoned, what you are left with is an ocean of bliss. — Robert Thurman

We are mere journeymen, planting seeds for someone else to harvest. — Wallace Thurman

At the core of life is a hard purposefulness, a determination to live. — Howard Thurman

If you see really bright lights, or hear really loud noises, go towards them, don't run away from anything. It's like giving someone instructions on how to handle a bear, don't run away from it. Stand up and try to make yourself look as big as possible. Don't give it the signal that it should chase you. And that's the case with the after death visions. Don't go for dark seductive lights, go only for bright lights. — Robert Thurman

Funny thing about faith ... it goes a lot faster than it comes. — Rob Thurman

Boredom is a great motivator. — Uma Thurman

It is better to have a relationship with someone who cheats on you than with someone who does not flush the toilet. — Uma Thurman

The person who is tormenting the Tibetans feels they have to get rid of the Tibetans in order to be happy. — Robert Thurman

Pick up your clothes. I am not your maid. How do I know this? A maid cannot kill you with a tube sock. I can. — Rob Thurman

If you're not ready to be in a relationship, going out with someone much younger than you is probably a great idea, because you both can have a decent experience and hopefully nobody will end up feeling cheated when it ends. — Uma Thurman

A lot of people, after seeking a bit, have some experience, and sometimes will believe they're enlightened. One has to be careful about that. Especially Americans, who are very external stimulus oriented. When they have some type of deep inner experience, often they think that was the ultimate experience. — Robert Thurman

People in Tibet have an expression. When you reach a certain degree of venerableness and age, and people ask, "How are you?," there is an expression that people use that means, "Just barely not dead." Some people might be frightened by it but I think it's quite funny. — Robert Thurman

But you know what they say ... Size isn't everything. Of course the people that say that are divided into two categories: dickless wonders and those not facing the troll that could've eaten New Jersey. — Rob Thurman

The place was out in Jersey ... Newark. And while that made living with yourself harder, it did make parking somewhat easier. — Rob Thurman

Most films these days are men's stories. Women are for add-on romance. That's very hard. — Uma Thurman