Dalai Lama Quotes

Real leadership means tackling tough problems ourselves and not leaving them to our children.

Never forget posterity when devising a policy. Never think of posterity when making a speech.

It is seldom that public men see more beyond direct consequences.

One way or another, the choice will be made by our generation, but it will affect life on earth for all generations to come

Every action or inaction has an impact-good or bad-upon our surroundings, and anything we do today will have an impact on the lives of our grandchildren.

I came to this office to solve problems, and not pass them on to future Presidents and future generations.

If we don't make tough decisions today our children are going to have to make much, much tougher decisions tomorrow.

It must take account of what it decrees for today in order that today may not paralyze tomorrow.

It's very easy to make certain decisions that affect your life that you have no perspective on.

If we do not make tough decisions now, future Americans will have to make even tougher ones.

We can do things the cheap way, the simple way, for the short-term and without regard for the future. Or, we can make the extra effort, do the hard work, absorb the criticism and make decisions that will cause a better future.

We are at the very beginning of time for the human race. It is not unreasonable that we grapple with problems. But there are tens of thousands of years in the future. Our responsibility is to do what we can, learn what we can, improve the solutions, and pass them on.

We should not be making near-term decisions with long-term consequences without robustly debating these questions and fully considering the substantial and unpredictable risks of these actions.

President Obama came to office proclaiming that he aims to solve problems, not hand them on to our children. Most presidents say that sort of thing.

The need to incorporate longer term time scales into our societal choices is very real—and right in the lap of our generation.

I try to look at problems very clearly and think, 'How do we get out of this? What will work? What will be the consequences for the people involved?'

We must shift our thinking away from short-term gain toward long-term investment and sustainability, and always have the next generations in mind with every decision we make.

The basic ability to not wipe oneself out, to endure, to use your technological interaction with the world in such a way that has the possibility of the likelihood of lasting and not being temporary - that seems like a pretty good definition of intelligence.

Meeting the challenges of the future requires a state that can think and act strategically.

When we look as a society, we've really lost the connection between our actions and the future.

We must ensure that decisions we make today do not come back to haunt us tomorrow.

If people insist on living as if there's no tomorrow, there really won't be one.

Going from PayPal, I thought: 'Well, what are some of the other problems that are likely to most affect the future of humanity?' Not from the perspective, 'What's the best way to make money?'

You want to make your own decisions, but you ought to make those decisions with an eternal perspective.

We seem to have lost the wisdom of the indigenous people, which dictated that in any major decision, the first consideration was 'How will this decision we're making today affect our people in the future? These days, decisions are made based on the bottom line.