100 Top Quotes From A New Earth
A New Earth is a spiritual manifesto that invites readers to transcend their egoic identities and embrace a collective awakening to a more enlightened consciousness. Drawing upon profound insights from various spiritual traditions, Eckhart Tolle argues that the root cause of human suffering is the identification with the ego, which perpetuates conflict, greed, and unhappiness. He guides readers to recognize the importance of living in the present moment and letting go of the pain of the past and the fear of the future. By shifting their focus to the power of presence and cultivating a deep sense of inner stillness, individuals can experience true liberation and unity with all life.
A New Earth is an invitation to participate in the transformation of human consciousness, fostering a greater sense of compassion, interconnectedness, and harmony with the natural world. With eloquence and wisdom, Tolle's work serves as a transformative guide, empowering readers to embrace their authentic selves and contribute to the creation of a more awakened and enlightened world. (A New Earth Summary).
A New Earth Quotes
"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance.”
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at the moment.”
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.” (Meaning)
"Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.”
"Life is the dancer and you are the dance.”
"Give up defining yourself - to yourself or to others. You won't die. You will come to life. And don't be concerned with how others define you. When they define you, they are limiting themselves, so it's their problem. Whenever you interact with people, don't be there primarily as a function or a role, but as the field of conscious Presence. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
"You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.”
"You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge. But it can only emerge if something fundamental changes in your state of consciousness.”
"Anything that you resent and strongly react to in another is also in you.”
"Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.”
"Don't let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.”
"What a liberation to realize that the “voice in my head” is not who I am. Who am I then? The one who sees that.”
"Don't Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won't find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness”
"Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?”
"Awareness is the greatest agent for change.”
"Whenever you become anxious or stressed, outer purpose has taken over, and you lost sight of your inner purpose. You have forgotten that your state of consciousness is primary, all else secondary.”
"When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought.”
"You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself. What an amazing miracle.”
"Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.”
"To recognize one's own insanity is, of course, the arising of sanity, the beginning of healing and transcendence.”
"Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.”
"Man made God in his own image...”
"Become conscious of being conscious.”
"Defining yourself through thought is limiting yourself.”
"Authentic human interactions become impossible when you lose yourself in a role.”
"You have so much to learn from your enemies.”
"You become most powerful in whatever you do if the action is performed for its own sake rather than as a means to protect, enhance, or conform to your role identity.”
"It is when we are trapped in incessant streams of compulsive thinking that the universe really disintegrates for us, and we lose the ability to sense the interconnectedness of all that exists.”
"Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.”
"You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you, and allowing that goodness to emerge.”
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation, but you thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking.”
"Even a stone, and more easily a flower or a bird, could show you the way back to God, to the Source, to yourself. When you look at it or hold it & let it be without imposing a word of mental label on it, a sense of awe, of wonder, arises within you. Its essence silently communicates itself to you and reflects your own essence back to you.”
"One thing we do know: Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”
"Life isn't as serious as my mind makes it out to be.”
"Life has no opposite. The opposite of death is birth. Life is eternal.”
"In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”
"The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.”
"In essence, you are neither inferior nor superior to anyone. True self-esteem and true humility arise out of that realization. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.”
"When faced with a radical crisis, when the old way of being in the world, of interacting with each other and with the realm of nature doesn't work anymore, when survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species - will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap.”
"There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges--the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.”
"Nothing has ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now; and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”
"With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.”
"The pas has no power to stop you from being present now. Only your grievance about the past can do that.”
"If uncertainty is unacceptable to you, it turns into fear. If it is perfectly acceptable, it turns into increased aliveness, alertness, and creativity.”
"All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness”
"And then there is the universal role of adult. When you play that role, you take yourself and life very seriously. Spontaneity, lightheartedness, and joy are not part of that role.”
"A powerful spiritual practice is consciously to allow the diminishment of ego when it happens without attempting to restore it. I recommend that you experiment with this from time to time. For example, when someone criticizes you, blames you, or calls you names, instead of immediately retaliating or defending yourself – do nothing. Allow the self-image to remain diminished and become alert to what that feels like deep inside you. For a few seconds, it may feel uncomfortable, as if you had shrunk in size. Then you may sense an inner speciousness that feels intensely alive. You haven't been diminished at all. In fact, you have expanded."
"There are two ways of being unhappy. Not getting what you want is one. Getting what you want is the other.”
"There is nothing that strengthens the ego more than being right. Being right is identification with a mental position - a perspective, an opinion, a judgement, a story. For you to be right, of course, you need someone else to be wrong, as so the ego loves to make wrong in order to be right.”
"A significant portion of the earth's population will soon recognize, if they haven't already done so, that humanity is now faced with a stark choice: Evolve or die.”
"Whatever you think the world is withholding from you, you are withholding from the world.”
"If you are content with being nobody in particular, content not to stand out, you align yourself with the power of the universe. What looks like weakness to the ego is in fact the only true strength.”
"What the future holds for you depends on your state of consciousness now.”
"The more shared past there is in a relationship, the more present you need to be.”
"You don’t have to wait for something “meaningful” to come into your life so that you can finally enjoy what you do. There is more meaning in joy than you will ever need. The “waiting to start living” syndrome is one of the most common delusions of the unconscious state.”
"Let me say it again: the present moment is all you ever have.”
"When you realize it’s not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.”
"So love is the recognition of oneness in a world of duality. This is the birth of God into the world of form. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.”
"When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you are doing, you become stressed.”
"This is most people’s reality: As soon as something is perceived, it is named, interpreted, compared with something else, liked, disliked, or called good or bad by the phantom self, the ego.”
"Nothing ever happened in the past that can prevent you from being present now, and if the past cannot prevent you from being present now, what power does it have?”
"For what you do to others, you do to yourself.”
"Ego-identification with things creates attachment to things, which in turn creates our consumer society and economic structures where the only measure of progress is always more. The unchecked striving for more, for endless growth, is a dysfunction and a disease. It is the same dysfunction the cancerous cell manifests, whose only goal is to multiply itself, unaware that it is bringing about its own destruction by destroying the organism of which it is a part."
"The joy of Being, which is the only true happiness, cannot come to you through any form, possession, achievement, person, or event—through anything that happens. That joy cannot come to you—ever. It emanates from the formless dimension within you, from consciousness itself and thus is one with who you are.”
"You can only be in a state of non-reaction if you can recognize someone's behavior as coming from the ego, as being an expression of the collective human dysfunction. When you realize it's not personal, there is no longer a compulsion to react as if it were.”
"Nonresistance, nonjudgment, and nonattachment are the three aspects of true freedom and enlightened living.”
"Demanding recognition for something you did and getting angry or upset if you don’t get it; trying to get attention by talking about your problems, the story of your illnesses, or making a scene; giving your opinion when nobody has asked for it and it makes no difference to the situation; being more concerned with how the other person sees you than with the other person, which is to say, using other people for egoic reflection or as ego enhancers; trying to make an impression on others through possessions, knowledge, good looks, status, physical strength, and so on; bringing about temporary ego inflation through angry reaction against something or someone; taking things personally, feeling offended; making yourself right and others wrong through futile mental or verbal complaining; wanting to be seen, or to appear important.”
"You are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.”
"Those who do not attempt to appear more than they are but are simply themselves, stand out as remarkable and are the only ones who truly make a difference in this world.”
"If you can be absolutely comfortable with not knowing who you are, then what's left is who you are -- the Being behind the human, a field of pure potentiality rather than something that is already defined.”
"This is my secret,” he said. “I don’t mind what happens.”
"Life will give you whatever experience is most helpful for the evolution of your consciousness. How do you know this is the experience you need? Because this is the experience you are having at this moment.”
"I want to know the mind of God,” Einstein said. “The rest are details.” What is the mind of God? Consciousness. What does it mean to know the mind of God? To be aware. What are the details? Your outer purpose, and whatever happens outwardly.”
"If you were far out in space, you would see that the sun neither rises nor sets, but that it shines continuously. And yet, even after realizing that, we can continue to speak of the sunrise or sunset, still see its beauty, paint it, write poems about it, even though we now know that it is a relative rather than an absolute truth.”
"The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it. Be aware of the thoughts you are thinking. Separate them from the situation, which is always neutral, which always is as it is.”
"The more negative emotion there is in a story, the heavier and more impenetrable it becomes.”
"Why is old considered useless? Because in old age, the emphasis shifts from doing to Being, and our civilization, which is lost in doing, knows nothing of Being. It asks: Being? What do you do with it?”
"Don’t seek the truth. Just cease to cherish opinions.”
"When you want to arrive at your goal more than you want to be doing what you're doing, you become stressed.”
"In either case, you can only go beyond it by taking responsibility for your inner state now. Even if blame seems more than justified, as long as you blame others, you keep feeding the pain-body with your thoughts and remain trapped in your ego. There is only one perpetrator of evil on the planet: human unconsciousness. That realization is true forgiveness. With forgiveness, your victim identity dissolves, and your true power emerges—the power of Presence. Instead of blaming the darkness, you bring in the light.”
"Words, no matter whether they are vocalized and made into sounds or remain unspoken as thoughts, can cast an almost hypnotic spell upon you. You easily lose yourself in them, become hypnotized into implicitly believing that when you have attached a word to something, you know what it is. The fact is: You don’t know what it is. You have only covered up the mystery with a label. Everything, a bird, a tree, even a simple stone, and certainly a human being, is ultimately unknowable. This is because it has unfathomable depth. All we can perceive, experience, think about, is the surface layer of reality, less than the tip of an iceberg.”
"Not what you do, but how you do what you do determines whether you are fulfilling your destiny. And how you do what you do is determined by your state of consciousness.”
"Only if you resist what happens are you at the mercy of what happens, and the world will determine your happiness and unhappiness.”
"Whenever tragic loss occurs, you either resist or you yield. Some people become bitter or deeply resentful; others become compassionate, wise, and loving. Yielding means inner acceptance of what is.You are open to life.”
"Stillness is the language God speaks, and everything else is a bad translation.”
"The ego could be defined simply in this way: a dysfunctional relationship with the present moment.”
"In many cases you are not buying a product but an “identity enhancer.” Designer labels are primarily collective identities that you buy into. They are expensive and therefore “exclusive.” If everybody could buy them, they would lose their psychological value and all you would be left with would be their material value, which likely amounts to a fraction of what you paid.”
"You might say, “What a dreadful day,” without realizing that the cold, the wind, and the rain or whatever condition you react to are not dreadful. They are as they are. What is dreadful is your reaction, your inner resistance to it, and the emotion that is created by that resistance. In Shakespeare’s words, “There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.”
"Resentment is the emotion that goes with complaining and the mental labeling of people and adds even more energy to the ego. Resentment means to feel bitter, indignant, aggrieved, or offended. You resent other people’s greed, their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, what they are doing, what they did in the past, what they said, what they failed to do, what they should or shouldn’t have done. The ego loves it. Instead of overlooking unconsciousness in others, you make it into their identity. Who is doing that? The unconsciousness in you, the ego. Sometimes the “fault” that you perceive in another isn’t even there. It is a total misinterpretation, a projection by a mind conditioned to see enemies and to make itself right or superior. At other times, the fault may be there, but by focusing on it, sometimes to the exclusion of everything else, you amplify it. And what you react to in another, you strengthen in yourself.”
"How to be at peace now? By making peace with the present moment"
"The present moment is the field on which the game of life happens. It cannot happen anywhere else."
"Psychological time, which is the mind’s deep-seated habit of seeking the fullness of life in the future where it cannot be found and ignoring the only point of access to it: the present moment.”
"Nonreaction is not weakness but strength. Another word for nonreaction is forgiveness. To forgive is to overlook, or rather to look through. You look through the ego to the sanity that is in every human being as his or her essence.”
"There is no substitute for finding true purpose. But the true or primary purpose of your life cannot be found on the outer level. It does not concern what you do but what you are—that is to say, your state of consciousness.”
"It is everywhere, not just in places where people don’t have enough, but even more so where they have more than enough. Is that surprising? No. The affluent world is even more deeply identified with form, more lost in content, more trapped in ego.”
"I don’t have enough yet,” by which the ego really means, “I am not enough yet.”
"What keeps the so-called consumer society going is the fact that trying to find yourself through things doesn't work. The ego satisfaction is short-lived and so you keep looking for more and keep buying and consuming.”
"When you are aware that you are thinking, that awareness is not part of thinking. It is a different dimension of consciousness. It is that awareness that says "I AM"
"What is commonly called “falling in love” is in most cases an intensification of egoic wanting and needing. You become addicted to another person, or rather to your image of that person. It has nothing to do with true love, which contains no wanting whatsoever.”
"Neither concepts nor mathematical formulae can explain the infinite.”
"Earth drama has any purpose at all, it is an indirect one: It creates more and more suffering on the planet, and suffering, although largely ego-created, is in the end also ego-destructive. It is the fire in which the ego burns itself up. In a world of role-playing”
"Making it” in whatever field is only meaningful as long as there are thousands or millions of others who don’t make it, so you need other human beings to “fail” so that your life can have meaning.”
"Complaining is one of the ego’s favorite strategies for strengthening itself. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in. Whether you complain aloud or only in thought makes no difference. Some egos that perhaps don’t have much else to identify with easily survive on complaining alone. When you are in the grip of such an ego, complaining, especially about other people, is habitual and, of course, unconscious, which means you don’t know what you are doing.”
"Forgiveness happens naturally when you see that it has no purpose other than to strengthen a false sense of self, to keep the ego in place.”
"When there is stress, it is usually a sign that the ego has returned, and you are cutting yourself off from the creative power of the universe.”
― Quotes from the book A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle
A New Earth Author
Eckhart Tolle is a renowned spiritual teacher and author whose profound teachings on mindfulness and presence have touched the lives of millions worldwide. His most acclaimed work, "The Power of Now," challenges readers to break free from the shackles of past regrets and future anxieties by fully immersing themselves in the present moment. Tolle emphasizes the importance of letting go of egoic attachments and identifying with the timeless consciousness that resides within each individual. Through his writings and lectures, he offers practical guidance on transcending the incessant stream of thoughts and finding inner peace. Tolle's transformative message resonates with people seeking to alleviate suffering and discover a deeper sense of self-awareness. By awakening individuals to the power of the present moment, Eckhart Tolle's teachings have become a guiding light for those on a spiritual journey, fostering a deeper connection to themselves, others, and the world around them.
Chief Editor
Tal Gur is an author, founder, and impact-driven entrepreneur at heart. After trading his daily grind for a life of his own daring design, he spent a decade pursuing 100 major life goals around the globe. His journey and most recent book, The Art of Fully Living, has led him to found Elevate Society.
