Eckhart Tolle, critically acclaimed for his transformative books The Power of Now and A New Earth, is a modern spiritual teacher whose work focuses on the transformation of human consciousness. His books have captured the imaginations of people from all different kinds of backgrounds and ages. Often described as a genuine teacher with special qualities, Eckhart Tolle’s message motivates us to transcend the (primarily) ego-based state of consciousness we’re living in. Reading through Eckhart Tolle’s inspiring quotes can help you to re-center yourself in the present moment. Above all, among his insights about life are many powerful quotes that will make you think. In the following, you can find a selection of insightful, inspiring, and life-changing Eckhart Tolle quotes.
Many people are familiar with Eckhart Tolle’s books. However, not many are familiar with the author behind these transformative works. Let’s have a quick look at who Eckhart Tolle is before we get started with this list of insightful Eckhart Tolle quotes.
“The past has no power over the present moment.”
Eckhart Tolle
Eckhart Tolle is a German-born author who decided at a very young age to refuse formal education and pursued his philosophical interests instead. Later in life, his attitude changed, which is why he began studying at the University of London, where he graduated at the age of 29.
Enjoy this collection of insightful Eckhart Tolle quotes!
After graduating, Tolle was heavily struggling with extreme levels of anxiety and depression. During this time, he sought to find an answer to the dilemmas and challenges of life, without really making any progress. His inability to satisfy his desire to uncover the truth became a great burden on the young man.
To make things worse, neither intellectual rationalization nor philosophical or religious concepts helped him to find an answer to the dilemma of life. Sometimes, he felt that the more intense he was investigating these areas, the more dissatisfied and unhappy he became.
During this particularly challenging time, he had a sudden revelation. He describes this revelation as an epiphany that instantly made him realize who he truly is. After this great realization, he spend more than two years doing nothing but sitting on park benches and enjoying the intense joy he was overflowing with. Eventually, however, he decided to bring his great insights about life to paper, which led him to start working on his first book, entitled The Power of Now. As we all know, the rest is history.
60 Powerful Eckhart Tolle quotes
The central idea Eckhart Tolle tries to convey with his work is that we identify too much with our minds. Therefore, he highlights that our obsession with the past and/or the future create a great deal of suffering. Consequently, his work comes to the major conclusion that the only thing that really matters is to be truly living in the present moment.
Reading through Eckhart Tolle’s insightful statements will help you to center yourself in the present moment. Here are some of his most powerful and transformative quotes.
1. The primary focus of life
“Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have. Make the Now the primary focus of your life.”
Eckhart Tolle
2. Taking responsibility for your life
“Wherever you are, be there totally. If you find your here and now intolerable and it makes you unhappy, you have three options: remove yourself from the situation, change it, or accept it totally. If you want to take responsibility for your life, you must choose one of those three options, and you must choose now. Then accept the consequences.”
Eckhart Tolle
3. Knowing yourself
“To know yourself as the Being underneath the thinker, the stillness underneath the mental noise, the love and joy underneath the pain, is freedom, salvation, enlightenment.”
Eckhart Tolle
4. Being fully present
“Most humans are never fully present in the now, because unconsciously they believe that the next moment must be more important than this one. But then you miss your whole life, which is never not now.”
Eckhart Tolle
5. Self-liberation
“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.”
Eckhart Tolle
6. Living in the moment
“If you are not living this moment, you are not really living.”
Eckhart Tolle
7. Having prejudices
“Prejudice of any kind implies that you are identified with the thinking mind. It means you don’t see the other human being anymore, but only your own concept of that human being. To reduce the aliveness of another human being to a concept is already a form of violence.”
Eckhart Tolle
8. The real spiritual awakening
“That is the real spiritual awakening, when something emerges from within you that is deeper than who you thought you were. So, the person is still there, but one could almost say that something more powerful shines through the person.”
Eckhart Tolle
9. Learning to accept
“Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.”
Eckhart Tolle
10. Being conditioned by your culture
“If you live only in one culture for the first 20 years of your life, you become conditioned without knowing it.”
Eckhart Tolle
11. Disguised weakness
“Power over others is weakness disguised as strength.”
Eckhart Tolle
12. Losing yourself in the past
“There is a fine balance between honoring the past and losing yourself in it. For example, you can acknowledge and learn from mistakes you made, and then move on and refocus on the now. It is called forgiving yourself.”
Eckhart Tolle
13. Negative conditions of the human mind
“Boredom, anger, sadness, or fear are not ‘yours,’ not personal. They are conditions of the human mind. They come and go. Nothing that comes and goes is you.”
Eckhart Tolle
14. The importance of the present moment
“People don’t realize that now is all there ever is; there is no past or future except as memory or anticipation in your mind.”
Eckhart Tolle
15. Living in the now
“Always say ‘yes’ to the present moment… Surrender to what is. Say ‘yes’ to life – and see how life starts suddenly to start working for you rather than against you.”
Eckhart Tolle
16. Focusing too much on the future
“Most people treat the present moment as if it were an obstacle that they need to overcome. Since the present moment is life itself, it is an insane way to live.”
Eckhart Tolle
17. An instable foundation for a better future
“Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make.”
Eckhart Tolle
18. Finding true happiness
“People look to time in expectation that it will eventually make them happy, but you cannot find true happiness by looking toward the future.”
Eckhart Tolle
19. Being grateful for the present moment
“I’m grateful for always this moment, the now, no matter what form it takes.”
Eckhart Tolle
20. Being one with God
“I believe that Jesus realized his oneness with God and he showed, what he attempted to do was show the way to all of us, how to realize our own onenes with God also, so he’s a precursor.”
Eckhart Tolle
21. The little things in life
“If small things have the power to disturb you, then who you think you are is exactly that: small.”
Eckhart Tolle
22. Being dominated by thinking
“Thinking is a wonderful tool if it’s applied. Thinking, however, can not become the master. Thinking is a very bad master. If you’re dominated by thinking then your life becomes very restricted.”
Eckhart Tolle
23. Prisons for the human mind
“Dogmas are collective conceptual prisons. And the strange thing is that people love their prison cells because they give them a sense of security and a false sense of ‘I know.’ Nothing has inflicted more suffering on humanity than its dogmas.”
Eckhart Tolle
24. Creating a better future
“The power for creating a better future is contained in the present moment: You create a good future by creating a good present.”
Eckhart Tolle
25. Being grateful for the present moment
“It is through gratitude for the present moment that the spiritual dimension of life opens up.”
Eckhart Tolle
26. Being a part of the universe
“You are the universe, you aren’t in the universe.”
Eckhart Tolle
27. Entering stillness
“Religion and ritual can be vehicles for entering stillness. It says in Psalm 46:10, ‘Be still, and know that I am God.’ But they are still just vehicles. The Buddha called his teaching a raft: You don’t need to carry it around with you after you’ve crossed the river.”
Eckhart Tolle
28. Taking action
“Any action is often better than no action, especially if you have been stuck in an unhappy situation for a long time. If it is a mistake, at least you learn something, in which case it’s no longer a mistake. If you remain stuck, you learn nothing.”
Eckhart Tolle
29. Identifying with your problems
“Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.”
Eckhart Tolle
30. Waiting to become successful in the future
“Don’t wait to be successful at some future point. Have a successful relationship with the present moment and be fully present in whatever you are doing. That is success.”
Eckhart Tolle
31. Being present and fully aware
“When you get into your car, shut the door and be there for just half a minute. Breathe, feel the energy inside your body, look around at the sky, the trees. The mind might tell you, ‘I don’t have time.’ But that’s the mind talking to you. Even the busiest person has time for 30 seconds of space.”
Eckhart Tolle
32. Spontaneous spiritual awakenings
“Some people awaken spiritually without ever coming into contact with any meditation technique or any spiritual teaching. They may awaken simply because they can’t stand the suffering anymore.”
Eckhart Tolle
33. The causes of fear
“Fear seems to have many causes. Fear of loss, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, and so on, but ultimately all fear is the ego’s fear of death, of annihilation. To the ego, death is always just around the corner. In this mind-identified state, fear of death affects every aspect of your life.”
Eckhart Tolle
34. Dwelling on the negative things
“People tend to dwell more on negative things than on good things. So the mind then becomes obsessed with negative things, with judgments, guilt and anxiety produced by thoughts about the future and so on.”
Eckhart Tolle
35. Being the son of God
“Was Jesus the son of God? Yes. But so are you. You just haven’t realized it yet.”
Eckhart Tolle
36. Defining yourself
“The answer is, who you are cannot be defined through thinking or mental labels or definitions, because it’s beyond that. It is the very sense of being, or presence, that is there when you become conscious of the present moment. In essence, you and what we call the present moment are, at the deepest level, one.”
Eckhart Tolle
37. Identifying problems in the present moment
“Narrow your life down to this moment. Your life situation may be full of problems – most life situations are – but find out if you have a problem at this moment. Do you have a problem now?
Eckhart Tolle
38. Letting go
“If there are people you haven’t forgiven, you’re not going to really awaken. You have to let go.”
Eckhart Tolle
39. Being aware
“Many people in this world are still so identified with every thought that arises in their head. There is not the slightest space of awareness there.”
Eckhart Tolle
40. The human ego
“To me the ego is the habitual and compulsive thought processes that go through everybody’s mind continuously. External things like possessions or memories or failures or successes or achievements. Your personal history.”
Eckhart Tolle
41. Being vulnerable and insecure
“Because of its phantom nature, and despite elaborate defense mechanisms, the ego is very vulnerable and insecure, and it sees itself as constantly under threat. This, by the way, is the case even if the ego is outwardly very confident.”
Eckhart Tolle
42. The adventure of life
“Life is an adventure, it’s not a package tour.”
Eckhart Tolle
43. Purification
“We should purify our innate well of contentment – what a wonderful expression – and then external things will be in harmony with us.”
Eckhart Tolle
44. Being aware of your presence
“I sometimes ask people, ‘Can you be aware of your own presence? Not the thoughts that you’re having, not the emotions that you’re having, but the very presence of your very being?’ You become aware of your own presence by sensing the entire energy field in your body that is alive. And that is the totality of your presence.”
Eckhart Tolle
45. The now is all there is
“The only thing you ever have is now.”
Eckhart Tolle
46. Answers will come
“Being at ease with not knowing is crucial for answers to come to you.”
Eckhart Tolle
47. Religion and spirituality
“You can have religion with spirituality. You can also have religion without spirituality.”
Eckhart Tolle
48. Changing the human mind
“If the structures of the human mind remain unchanged, we will always end up re-creating the same world, the same evils, the same dysfunction.”
Eckhart Tolle
49. Love
“Love is a state of Being. Your love is not outside; it is deep within you. You can never lose it, and it cannot leave you. It is not dependent on some other body, some external form.”
Eckhart Tolle
50. Being fully in the present moment
“When you take your attention into the present moment, a certain alertness arises. You become more conscious of what’s around you, but also, strangely, a sense of presence that is both within and without.”
Eckhart Tolle
51. The human mind
“The mind is a superb instrument if used rightly. Used wrongly, however, it becomes very destructive. To put it more accurately… you usually don’t use it at all. It uses you.”
Eckhart Tolle
52. The ongoing process of creation
“I don’t believe in an outside agent that creates the world, then walks away. But I feel very strongly there is an intelligence at work in every flower, in every blade of grass, in every cell of my body. And it is that intelligence that, I wouldn’t say created the universe. It is creating the universe. It’s an ongoing process.”
Eckhart Tolle
53. Living in the present
“The more you live in the present moment, the more the fear of death disappears.”
Eckhart Tolle
54. Giving power to your memories
“Memories are thoughts that arise. They’re not realities. Only when you believe that they are real, then they have the power over you. But when you realize it’s just another thought arising about the past, then you can have a spacious relationship with that thought. The thought no longer has you in its grip.”
Eckhart Tolle
55. The kingdom of heaven
“Jesus said, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven is within you.’ I think if he lived nowadays, instead of ‘kingdom,’ he would have said, ‘dimension.’ And ‘heaven’ refers to a sense of vastness or spaciousness.”
Eckhart Tolle
56. Problems that need to be solved
“You are not a problem that needs solving.”
Eckhart Tolle
57. The truths of life
“The real truths of life are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear, and then recognize them. I say ‘recognize’ because you’re not… it’s not new.”
Eckhart Tolle
58. Coping with the present moment
“You can always cope with the present moment, but you cannot cope with something that is only a mind projection – you cannot cope with the future.”
Eckhart Tolle
59. The existence of problems
“If danger arises in the present moment, there may be an emotion. There may even be pain. But that’s a challenge, not a problem. For a problem to exist, you need time and repetitive mind activity.”
Eckhart Tolle
60. Describing the soul
“The ‘soul’ is one of the words you can use to talk about your innermost being, the essence of who you are.”
Eckhart Tolle
61. Becoming still
“When you wash your hands, when you make a cup of coffee, when you’re waiting for the elevator – instead of indulging in thinking, these are all opportunities for being there as a still, alert presence.”
Eckhart Tolle
I hope you enjoyed reading through these insightful Eckhart Tolle quotes.
Stay victorious!
