I was already singing by the time I was six years old. My neighbors would ask me to sing at festivities—marriages, baptisms, etc.—and they would give me presents. In 1973 [when I was 15], I went to the Institute for the Young Blind in Mali to learn Braille. When I was there I taught other people how to sing and dance.

Europe taught that all great men are humanity's teachers.[...] America teaches that whoever succeeds in life should be your leader. Japan teaches that a man who has many friends is a man who has mastered life and such a man is a good man.

My parents and grandparents taught us a lot — not Chinese or maths but a sense of values, of how you should be and how you should treat others.

I consider that goodness of being and doing constitute the rock-bottom of one’s life. By goodness I mean the capacity to feel with others and to live and feel as others do, and be in a position to act so that no one is hurt by the act. (What Life Has Taught Me)

As a child, I was taught that it was bad manners to bring attention to yourself, and to never, ever make a spectacle of yourself … All of which I've earned a living doing.

Padmasambhava defined the future of Tibet, planting the seeds of the Tibetan Buddhist tradition, which would come to flourish over the next millennium. Padmasambhava taught that past and present are interrelated, connected to each other in one’s present experience.

It's important for communities to be put together on a different basis. It's really shitty that we're taught to be really patriotic when 99 percent of the shit that we wear and we use and eat and everything comes from everywhere all the time, and musically, it's the same.

I marvel at how one role model can alter for the better the future of a young student. This experience taught me that valuable advice can sometimes come from an unexpected source, and chance events can sometimes open new doors.

It is a lovely night, and they are much to be pitied who have not been taught to feel, in some degree, as you do; who have not, at least, been given a taste for Nature in early life. They lose a great deal.