67 Of The Most Life-Changing Eckhart Tolle Quotes

Eckhart Tolle is a spiritual teacher who experienced a profound inner transformation at the age of 29 that altered the course of his life.

After years of crippling depression and anxiety, he awakened one morning with a sense of “uninterrupted deep peace and bliss” that has never left him since.

He then spent several years wandering in this blissful state before becoming a spiritual teacher.

He moved to Vancouver, British Columbia in 1995 and now divides his time between Canada and California.

He has devoted his life to continuing his intense inward journey and has written numerous bestselling books.

Eckhart Tolle is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, The Power of Now, which has been translated into 33 languages. He’s also the author of the highly acclaimed follow-up book, A New Earth, which was featured in a series of ten weekly webinars with Oprah Winfrey.

Both books are widely regarded as two of the most influential spiritual books of our time. 

In 2008, The New York Times called Tolle “the most popular spiritual author in the United States”

Eckhart Tolle shares his teachings all over the world through personal talks, videos, articles, and webinars to help people find inner peace and a deeper sense of fulfillment in their lives.

Here are some of Eckhart Tolle’s thoughts and insights that may provide you with a profound “aha” moment.

67 Of The Best Eckhart Tolle Quotes For Life Inspiration

Eckhart Tolle Quotes, Power of Now

Read and enjoy 23 Eckhart Tolle quotes from the Power of Now book:

1. Realize deeply that the present moment is all you have. Make the NOW the primary focus of your life.

2. Time isn’t precious at all, because it is an illusion. What you perceive as precious is not time but the one point that is out of time: the Now. That is precious indeed. The more you are focused on time—past and future—the more you miss the Now, the most precious thing there is.

3. 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.

4. All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry – all forms of fear – are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.

5. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place. Primary reality is within; secondary reality without.

6. As soon as you honor the present moment, all unhappiness and struggle dissolve, and life begins to flow with joy and ease. When you act out the present-moment awareness, whatever you do becomes imbued with a sense of quality, care, and love – even the most simple action.

7. Nothing has happened in the past; it happened in the Now. Nothing will ever happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.

Eckhart Tolle Quotes

8. Once you have identified with some form of negativity, you do not want to let it go, and on a deeply unconscious level, you do not want positive change. It would threaten your identity as a depressed, angry or hard-done by person. You will then ignore, deny or sabotage the positive in your life. This is a common phenomenon. It is also insane.

9. Being an outsider to some extent, someone who does not “fit in” with others or is rejected by them for whatever reason, makes life difficult, but it also places you at an advantage as far as enlightenment is concerned. It takes you out of unconsciousness almost by force.

10. Space and silence are two aspects of the same thing. The same no-thing. They are externalization of inner space and inner silence, which is stillness: the infinitely creative womb of all existence.

11. The moment you realize you are not present, you are present. Whenever you are able to observe your mind, you are no longer trapped in it. Another factor has come in, something that is not of the mind: the witnessing presence.

Eckhart Tolle quotes
12. The mind unconsciously loves problems because they give you an identity of sorts.

13. To complain is always nonacceptance of what is. It invariably carries an unconscious negative charge. When you complain, you make yourself into a victim. When you speak out, you are in your power. So change the situation by taking action or by speaking out if necessary or possible; leave the situation or accept it. All else is madness.

14. If you get the inside right, the outside will fall into place.

15. If you really want to know your mind, the body will always give you a truthful reflection, so look at the emotion, or rather feel it in your body. If there is an apparent conflict between them, the thought will be the lie, the emotion will be the truth.

16. Those who have not found their true wealth, which is the radiant joy of Being and the deep, unshakable peace that comes with it, are beggars, even if they have great material wealth. They are looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love, while they have a treasure within that not only includes all those things but is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.

17. Resistance is weakness and fear masquerading as strength. What the ego sees as weakness is your Being in its purity, innocence, and power. What it sees as strength is weakness.

18. Thinking is only a small aspect of consciousness. Thought cannot exist without consciousness, but consciousness does not need thought.

19. Accept — then act. Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Always work with it, not against it. Make it your friend and ally, not your enemy. This will miraculously transform your whole life.

20. Die to the past every moment. You don’t need it. Only refer to it when it is absolutely relevant to the present. Feel the power of this moment and the fullness of Being. Feel your presence.

21. Your outer journey may contain a million steps; your inner journey only has one: the step you are taking right now.

22. If your mind carries a heavy burden of past, you will experience more of the same. The past perpetuates itself through lack of presence. The quality of your consciousness at this moment is what shapes the future.

23. It is not uncommon for people to spend their whole life waiting to start living.

Eckhart Tolle Quotes, A New Earth

Read and enjoy 23 Eckhart Tolle quotes from the book A New Earth:

24. The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

25. 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.

Eckhart Tolle quotes
26. You can only lose something that you have, but you cannot lose something that you are.

27. 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.

28. Don’t let a mad world tell you that success is anything other than a successful present moment.

29. Can you look without the voice in your head commenting, drawing conclusions, comparing, or trying to figure something out?

30. 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.

31. Every complaint is a little story the mind makes up that you completely believe in.

32. 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.

33. Rather than being your thoughts and emotions, be the awareness behind them.

34. With stillness comes the benediction of Peace.

35. 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.

36. The brain does not create consciousness, but consciousness created the brain, the most complex physical form on earth, for its expression.

37. In the eyes of the ego, self-esteem and humility are contradictory. In truth, they are one and the same.


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38. 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.

39. 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.

40. Words reduce reality to something the human mind can grasp, which isn’t very much.

41. Awareness is the greatest agent for change.

42. Don’t Seek Happiness. If you seek it, you won’t find it, because seeking is the antithesis of happiness.

43. Living up to an image that you have of yourself or that other people have of you is inauthentic living.

44. 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.

Eckhart Tolle quotes
45. Sometimes letting things go is an act of far greater power than defending or hanging on.

46. 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.

Eckhart Tolle Quotes on Love

Check out these 21 Eckhart Tolle quotes on love:

47. To love is to recognize yourself in another.

48. 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.

49. Love is not selective, just as the light of the sun is not selective. It does not make one person special. It is not exclusive. Exclusivity is not the love of God but the “love” of ego.

50. All the things that truly matter — beauty, love, creativity, joy, inner peace — arise from beyond the mind.

51. When you look upon another human being and feel great love toward them, or when you contemplate beauty in nature and something within you responds deeply to it, close your eyes for a moment and feel the essence of that love or that beauty within you, inseparable from who you are, your true nature. The outer form is a temporary reflection of what you are within, in your essence. That is why love and beauty can never leave you, although all outer forms will.

52. As far as inner transformation is concerned, there is nothing you can do about it. You cannot transform yourself, and you certainly cannot transform your partner or anybody else. All you can do is create a space for transformation to happen, for grace and love to enter.

Eckhart Tolle quotes
53. True communication is communion — the realization of oneness, which is love.

54. Internal and external are ultimately one. When you no longer perceive the world as hostile, there is no more fear, and when there is no more fear, you think, speak and act differently. Love and compassion arise, and they affect the world.

55. Once there is a certain degree of Presence, of still and alert attention in human beings’ perceptions, they can sense the divine life essence, the one indwelling consciousness or spirit in every creature, every life-form, recognize it as one with their own essence and so love it as themselves. Until this happens, however, most humans see only the outer forms, unaware of the inner essence, just as they are unaware of their own essence and identify only with their own physical and psychological form.

56. Realize deeply that the present moment is all you ever have.

57. If you both agree that the relationship will be your spiritual practice, so much the better. You can then express your thoughts and feelings to each other as soon as they occur, or as soon as a reaction comes up, so that you do not create a time gap in which an unexpressed or unacknowledged emotion or grievance can fester and grow.

58. When you have removed the two factors that are destructive to relationships — when the pain-body has been transmuted and you are no longer identified with mind and mental positions — and if your partner has done the same, you will experience the bliss of the flowering of relationship. Instead of mirroring to each other your pain and your unconsciousness, instead of satisfying your mutual addictive ego needs, you will reflect back to each other the love that you feel deep within, the love that comes with the realization of your oneness with all that is. This is the love that has no opposite.

59. Love makes the world less worldly, less dense, more transparent to the divine dimension, the light of consciousness itself.

60. 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.

61. Learn to give expression to what you feel without blaming. Learn to listen to your partner in an open, non-defensive way. Give your partner space for expressing himself or herself. Be present. Accusing, defending, attacking — all those patterns that are designed to strengthen or protect the ego or to get its needs met will then become redundant. Giving space to others — and to yourself — is vital. Love cannot flourish without it.

62. There may be one person who reflects your love back to you more clearly and more intensely than others, and if that person feels the same toward you, it can be said that you are in a love relationship with him or her. The bond that connects you with that person is the same bond that connects you with the person sitting next to you on a bus, or with a bird, a tree, a flower. Only the degree of intensity with which it is felt differs.

63. Most people don’t know how to listen because the major part of their attention is taken up by thinking. They pay more attention to that than to what the other person is saying, and none at all to what really matters: the Being of the other person underneath the words and the mind. Of course, you cannot feel someone else’s Being except through your own. This is the beginning of the realization of oneness, which is love. At the deepest level of Being, you are one with all that is.

64. Love, joy, and peace cannot flourish until you have freed yourself from mind dominance.

65. A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.

66. For what you do to others, you do to yourself.

67. Stop looking outside for scraps of pleasure or fulfillment, for validation, security, or love – you have a treasure within that is infinitely greater than anything the world can offer.

Did you enjoy these quotes? Please share the love.

I hope you have gained some insight from these Eckhart Tolle quotes. People around the world turn to this spiritual leader when they need guidance or are seeking more self-awareness and inner awakening.

Tolle’s message of living in the now can help you achieve a greater sense of happiness and fulfillment in your life.

Please take a moment to pass along these quotes to your friends and family by sharing them on your preferred social media platform.

67 of the best Eckhart Tolle quotes for daily inspiration. Use these wise and profound insights for personal transformation.

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