Quotes by Byron Katie

“An unquestioned mind is the world of suffering.”

“I’m very clear that everyone in the world loves me. I just don’t expect them to realize it yet.”

“I am never unhappy, you can achieve that as well.”

“The minds job is to validate what it thinks.”

All I have is all I need and all I need is all I have in this moment.

A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.

The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion.

Its not your job to like me - its mine

Since the beginning of time, people have been trying to change the world so that they can be happy. This hasn’t ever worked, because it approaches the problem backward. What The Work gives us is a way to change the projector—mind—rather than the projected. It’s like when there’s a piece of lint on a projector’s lens. We think there’s a flaw on the screen, and we try to change this person and that person, whomever the flaw appears on next. But it’s futile to try to change the projected images. Once we realize where the lint is, we can clear the lens itself. This is the end of suffering, and the beginning of a little joy in paradise.

I am a lover of what is, not because Im a spiritual person, but because it hurts when I argue with reality.

The world is your perception of it. Inside and outside always match - theyre reflections of each other. The world is a mirror image of your mind.

Ive always been just me, but I was the last to know that it was all right.

As long as you think that the cause of your problem is “out there”—as long as you think that anyone or anything is responsible for your suffering—the situation is hopeless. It means that you are forever in the role of victim, that you’re suffering in paradise.

If you put your hand into a fire, does anyone have to tell you to move it? Do you have to decide? No: When your hand starts to burn, it moves. You don’t have to direct it; the hand moves itself. In the same way, once you understand, through inquiry, that an untrue thought causes suffering, you move away from it.

The reason I love rules and plans and religions is that people feel safe in them for a while. And, personally, I dont have any rules. I dont need them. Theres a sense of order that goes on all the time as things move and change, and I am that harmony, and so are you. Not knowing is the only way to understand... Meanings, rules, the whole world of right and wrong, are secondary at best. I understand how some people think they need to live by rules...Its very frightening for them to watch the world unfolding in apparent chaos and not realize that the chaos itself is God in his infinite intelligence.

I used to sleep on the floor next to the bed, because I believed that I didnt 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 didnt suffer.

“A thought is harmless unless we believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering. Attaching to a thought means believing that it’s true, without inquiring. A belief is a thought that we’ve been attaching to, often for years.”

“The only way I can be angry at you is when I have thought, said, or done something that is unkind in my own opinion.”