Dalai Lama Foundation Study Circle Montreal

Dalai Lama Quote of the Week

We must distinguish between pride and self-confidence. Self-confidence is necessary. It is what enables us, in certain situations, not to lose courage and to think with some justification, ‘I am capable of succeeding.’ Self-confidence is quite different from excessive self-assurance based on a false appreciation of our capacities or circumstances.

If you feel able to accomplish a task that other people cannot manage, then you cannot be called proud as long as your assessment is well founded. It is as if someone tall came across a group of short people who wanted to get something too high for them to reach, and said to them, ‘Don’t exert yourselves, I can do it.’ This would simply mean that he was more qualified than the others to carry out a particular task, but not that he is superior to them or that he wants to crush them.(p.259)

–from 365 Dalai Lama: Daily Advice from the Heart by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, edited by Matthieu Ricard, translated by Christian Bruyat, published by Snow Lion Publications

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