Category: Fake Buddha Quotes

“Many people will walk in and out of your life. But only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.”

This is another of the ten quotes that I recently found in a page that had the top ranking on Google for a search on Buddha quotes on friendship. All ten of the quotes in the page were fake, Hallmark-y stuff.

This one is often attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, but mysteriously she doesn’t seem to have been quoted saying this until 1999 or so, which was more than 35 years after her death. Since none of the people …

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“A friend is someone who knows everything about your life and still loves you.”

This is another of the fake quotes I found in a web page of supposed “Buddha quotes about friendship. All of the quotes on the page were fake. And the page ranked number 1 on Google for “Buddha quotes on friendship,” which is rather sad.

I’ve already dealt with the first of the quotes, “Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.”  Now it’s time for the second, “A friend is someone who knows everything about your life and still loves you.”

…

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“Friendship is the only cure for hatred, the only guarantee of peace.”

I recently happened to do a search on Google for “Buddha Quotes on Friendship” and was perturbed to find that the top result was on a quotes website page that entirely consisted of fake quotes. Not only that, but Google had pulled information from that site and listed it in their “featured snippets,” which is a little information panel at the top of the results.

This is a major Google fail, since they pride themselves on the quality …

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“If you know both your enemy and yourself, you can win every battle without jeopardy”

Paul, a contact on the discussion board at SuttaCentral.net, sent me this one. He was on the United States VA (Veterans Administration) website looking at their anger management course, and right on the first page he saw the quote that’s in the image above. He was instantly suspicious, and rightly so.

The quote is actually from Sun Tzu’s The Art of War (III, 31), which in Lionel Giles’ translation is “Hence the saying: If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, …

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“Those whom summer’s heat tortures yearn for the full moon of autumn…”

The following has appeared a number of times on the internet, and a few times in printed books, attributed to the Buddha:

Those whom summer’s heat tortures yearn for the full moon of autumn
Without even fearing the idea
That a hundred days of their life will then have passed forever.

It doesn’t seem to have made it into any of the quotation sites yet.

It originates in Mathieu Ricard’s book, “Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life’s Most Important Skill.”

Ricard is a very famous monk who is well-known for his levels of happiness, which have been measured, using various …

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“The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts.”

A kind reader of this blog alerted me to this one yesterday: “The world is a looking glass. It gives back to every man a true reflection of his own thoughts. Rule your mind or it will rule you.”

This is a composite fake quote. The final sentence, “Rule your mind or it will rule you,” is one I’ve dealt with elsewhere. It’s a paraphrase of a quote by the Roman lyric poet, Horace (65–27 BCE).

The first two sentences were correctly identified by my correspondent as being from the work of the Indian-born English novelist, William Makepeace Thackeray. …

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Translations that annihilate

In the Sutta Central discussion forum, Ayya Sudhamma (who goes by the handle “@Charlotteannun” there), posted an interesting analysis of a supposed translation of the Therigatha. The title literally means “Poems of the elder nuns,” and it’s an ancient Buddhist compilation of poems or songs composed by enlightened female disciples of the Buddha. It, and its counterpart the Theragatha (“Poems of the elder monks”), are among my favorite texts, since they directly and vividly present the voices of practitioners two and a half millennia ago, giving insight into their outer and inner lives.

I’ll quote, with Ayya Suddhamma’s permission, …

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“Rule your mind or it will rule you”

I recently found this quote, “Rule your mind or it will rule you,” in a note I’d made to myself over five years ago. (How time flies!) It was posted by a woman I used to follow on the now-defunct (and for me, much-lamented) social media site Google+.

The quote isn’t at all in the style of the Buddhist scriptures, which made me suspicious. Actually I was more than suspicious; I was certain it wasn’t from the Buddha. The style is far too polished and literary, while the Buddhist scriptures tend to be rather clunky.

It only took a few …

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“Judge nothing, you will be happy. Forgive everything, you will be happier. Love everything, you will be happiest.”

I found this quote in an article on Medium.com  with the title “6 Quotes By Buddha That Will Change How You See The World And Yourself.” The piece was written by Sinem Günel.

Amazingly, not one of the six quotes is by the Buddha, suggesting once again that some people have a positive attraction toward bogus quotes — a kind of “bullshit detector” in reverse.

Here are the six quotes Günel offers us as the supposed teachings of the Buddha.

  1. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
  2. “
…

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“Never respond to rudeness. When people are rude to you, they reveal who they are, not who you are.”

I found this quote in an article on Medium.com, written by Sinem Günel and titled “6 Quotes By Buddha That Will Change How You See The World And Yourself.”

Needless to say, not one of the quotes is by the Buddha, suggesting once again that some people have a positive attraction toward bogus quotes — a kind of “bullshit detector” in reverse.

Here’s what Günel offers us as the supposed teachings of the Buddha.

  1. “You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”
  2. “Don’t respond to rudeness. When people are
…

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