Take the first step toward changing your life for the better through this list of the best Osho quotes.
Osho was an Indian spiritual leader who went by many names. He was known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, Acharya Rajneesh, and Chandra Mohan Jain.
His names might be plenty, but he had one core belief: life is in living. It is not a state of being. It is a process and an experience everyone must go through and cultivate.
Unlike other spiritual leaders who preach about just one faith, Osho believed that one’s spirituality could not be boxed into just one ideology or religion.
He was all about individual devotion and having the freedom to cultivate one’s own philosophies and beliefs.
Indeed, Osho’s teachings were radical and might have even been considered controversial during his time.
But, there’s no contesting how much truth and honesty each of his words contains.
Read on to find out more about Osho and his teachings.
And don’t forget to check out these Buddha quotes and Eckhart Tolle quotes.
Best Osho Quotes
1. “A certain darkness is needed to see the stars.”
2. “Tomorrow never comes, it is always today.”
3. “Get out of your head and get into your heart. Think less, feel more.”
4. “A single moment of love is equal to the whole eternity of love.”
5. “Love is the goal, life is the journey.”
6. “Courage is a love affair with the unknown.”
7. “Whatever you feel, you become. It is your responsibility.”
8. “Nobody has the power to take two steps together; you can take only one step at a time.”
9. “Be. Don’t try to become. Within these two words, be and becoming, your whole life is contained. Being is enlightenment, becoming is ignorance.”
10. “Truth is not something outside to be discovered, it is something inside to be realized.”
Famous Osho Quotes
11. “Darkness is an absence of light. Ego is an absence of awareness.”
12. “Don’t say this is good and that is bad. Drop all discrimination. Accept everything as it is.”
13. “Find ecstasy within yourself. It is not out there. It is in your innermost flowering. The one you are looking for is you.”
14. “If you really want peace on earth, create peace in your heart, in your being. That is the right place, to begin with, and then spread.”
15. “I love this world because it is imperfect. It is imperfect, and that’s why it is growing; if it was perfect it would have been dead.”
16. “When I say be creative I don’t mean that you should all go and become great painters and great poets. I simply mean let your life be a painting, let your life be a poem.”
17. “What is discipline? Discipline means creating an order within you. As you are, you are a chaos.”
18. “You should live in the world but remain untouched by it. You should remain in the world, but the world should not remain in you.”
19. “Sadness comes, joy comes, and everything passes by. What remains always is the witness. The witness is beyond all polarities.”
20. “Intelligence is dangerous. Intelligence means you will start thinking on your own; you will start looking around on your own. You will not believe in the scriptures; you will believe only in your own experience.”
21. “The past is no more and the future is not yet: both are unnecessarily moving in directions which don’t exist. One used to exist, but no longer exists, and one has not even started to exist. The only right person is one who lives moment to moment.”
Also read: Famous Quotes, Positive Quotes
Meaningful Osho Quotes on Life
22. “Respect life, revere life. There is nothing more holy than life, nothing more divine than life.”
23. “Life repeats itself mindlessly—unless you become mindful, it will go on repeating like a wheel.”
24. “Life in itself has no meaning. Life is an opportunity to create meaning.”
25. “Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.”
26. “A comfortable, convenient life is not a real life— the more comfortable, the less alive. The most comfortable life is in the grave.”
27. “I live my life based on two principles. One, I live as if today was my last day on earth. Two, I live today as if I am going to live forever.”
28. “One just needs a little alertness to see and find out: life is really a great cosmic laughter.”
29. “Experience life in all possible ways—good-bad, bitter-sweet, dark-light, summer-winter. Experience all the dualities. Don’t be afraid of experience, because the more experience you have, the more mature you become.”
30. “Take hold of your own life. See that the whole existence is celebrating. These trees are not serious, these birds are not serious. The rivers and the oceans are wild, and everywhere there is fun, everywhere there is joy and delight. Watch existence, listen to existence, and become part of it.”
Osho Quotes on Love
31. “When you love, you simply love.”
32. “People say love is blind because they do not know what love is. I say unto you, only love has eyes; other than love, everything is blind.”
33. “The way of love is the way of no expectation. Love exists only when there is total acceptance and no desire to change anything.”
34. “If you love a flower, don’t pick it up. Because if you pick it up, it dies and it ceases to be what you love. So if you love a flower, let it be. Love is not about possession. Love is about appreciation.”
35. “Love, in its purest form, is a sharing of joy. It asks nothing in return, it expects nothing. Love is a spiritual phenomenon; lust is physical. Ego is psychological; love is spiritual.”
36. “Love and respect yourself and never compromise for anything. And then you will be surprised how much growth starts happening of its own accord—as if rocks have been removed and the river has started flowing.”
37. “Millions of people are suffering: they want to be loved but they don’t know how to love. And love cannot exist as a monologue; it is a dialogue, a very harmonious dialogue.”
38. “Yes, I would like you to love yourself because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don’t know what love is if you have not loved yourself.”
39. “Love first has to happen in the deepest core of your being. It is the quality of being alone, happily alone, joyously alone. It is the quality of being a no-mind, of being silent. Contentless consciousness is the space, the context, in which love arises in you.”
40. “I also teach you to love yourself first. It has nothing to do with ego. In fact, love is such a light that the darkness of the ego cannot exist in it at all. If you love others, if your love is focused on others, you will live in darkness. Turn your light toward yourself first, become a light unto yourself first. Let the light dispel your inner darkness, your inner weakness. Let love make you a tremendous power, a spiritual force.”
Also read: True Love Quotes
Insightful Osho Quotes on Happiness
41. “Only laughter makes a man rich, but the laughter has to be blissful.”
42. “To be a happy person, one has to drop all comparisons. Drop all these stupid ideas of being superior and inferior. You are neither superior nor inferior. You are simply yourself! There exists no one like you, no one with whom you can be compared. Then, suddenly, you are at home.”
43. “Always remember to judge everything by your inner feeling of bliss.”
44. “If you suffer, it is because of you. If you feel blissful, it is because of you. Nobody else is responsible—only you and you alone. You are your hell and your heaven too.”
45. “You feel good, you feel bad, and these feelings are bubbling from your own unconsciousness, from your own past. Nobody is responsible except you. Nobody can make you angry, and nobody can make you happy.”
46. “Sadness gives depth. Happiness gives height. Sadness gives roots. Happiness gives branches. Happiness is like a tree going into the sky, and sadness is like the roots going down into the womb of the earth. Both are needed, and the higher a tree goes, the deeper it goes, simultaneously. The bigger the tree, the bigger will be its roots. In fact, it is always in proportion. That’s its balance.”
47. “That is the simple secret of happiness. Whatever you are doing, don’t let the past move your mind; don’t let the future disturb you. Because the past is no more, and the future is not yet. To live in the memories, to live in the imagination is to live in the non-existential. And when you are living in the non-existential, you are missing that which is existential. Naturally, you will be miserable, because you will miss your whole life.”
Also read: Happiness Quotes
Osho Quotes on Relationships
48. “It is beautiful to be alone, it is also beautiful to be in love, to be with people. And they are complementary, not contradictory.”
49. “A woman is to be loved, not understood. That is the first understanding.”
50. “Love the person, but give the person total freedom. Love the person, but from the very beginning, make it clear that you are not selling your freedom.”
51. “Friendship is the purest love. It is the highest form of love where nothing is asked for—no condition, where one simply enjoys giving.”
52. “If you love a person, you accept the total person—with all the defects. Because those defects are a part of the person. Never try to change a person you love, because the very effort to change says that you love half, and the other half of the person is not accepted.”
53. “When you love, love as if the person is a god, not less than that. Never love a woman as a woman and never love a man as a man.”
54. “Falling in love you remain a child; rising in love you mature. By and by love becomes not a relationship, it becomes a state of your being. Not that you are in love—now you are love.”
55. “No relationship can truly grow if you go on holding back. If you remain clever and go on safeguarding and protecting yourself, only personalities meet, and the essential centers remain alone. Then only your mask is related, not you. Whenever such a thing happens, there are four persons in the relationship, not two. Two false persons go on meeting, and the two real persons remain worlds apart.”
Short Osho Quotes
56. “Mind—a beautiful servant, a dangerous master.”
57. “Awareness functions almost like magic.”
58. “To avoid pain, they avoid pleasure. To avoid death, they avoid life.”
59. “Creativity is the greatest rebellion in existence.”
60. “Be realistic; plan for a miracle.”
Osho Quotes to Live By
61. “Don’t try to understand life. Live it! Don’t try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know and that knowing will come out of your experiencing.”
62. “Discover yourself, otherwise, you have to depend on other people’s opinions who don’t know themselves.”
63. “Drop the idea of becoming someone, because you are already a masterpiece. You cannot be improved. You have only to come to it, to know it, to realize it.”
64. “Remain in the world, act in the world, do whatsoever is needful, and yet remain transcendental, aloof, detached—a lotus flower in the pond.”
65. “Never belong to a crowd. Never belong to a nation. Never belong to a religion. Never belong to a race. Belong to the whole existence. Why limit yourself to small things? When the whole is available.”
66. “Commit as many mistakes as possible, remembering only one thing: don’t commit the same mistake again. And you will be growing.”
67. “Help the world to become better. Don’t leave the world just the same as you have found it—make it a little better, make it a little more beautiful.”
68. “Don’t seek, don’t search, don’t ask, don’t knock, don’t demand—relax. If you relax, it comes. If you relax, it is there. If you relax, you start vibrating with it.”
69. “Be less of a judge and you will be surprised that when you become a witness and you don’t judge yourself, you stop judging others too. And that makes you more human, more compassionate, more understanding.”
Also read: Quotes to Live By
Osho Quotes on God and Religion
70. “Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring God to your ordinary life. Introduce God into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don’t think that you are making or doing something special—and then you will be special.”
71. “Love is the true God—not the God of theologians, but the God of Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, the God of the Sufis.”
72. “Buddha is a Buddha, a Krishna is a Krishna, and you are you. And you are not in any way less than anybody else. Respect yourself, respect your own inner voice and follow it.”
73. “Any religion, any ideology, that is based only on belief, faith, is bound to cripple your intelligence.”
Also read: God Quotes
Osho Quotes on Spirituality and Existence
74. “Existence cannot go wrong. If it does not fulfill our desires, that simply means our desires were wrong.”
75. “Listen to your being. It is continuously giving you hints; it is a still, small voice. It does not shout at you, that is true. And if you are a little silent you will start feeling your way. Be the person you are. Never try to be another, and you will become mature. Maturity is accepting the responsibility of being oneself, whatsoever the cost. Risking all to be oneself, that’s what maturity is all about.”
76. “Each person comes into this world with a specific destiny—he has something to fulfill, some message has to be delivered, some work has to be completed. You are not here accidentally—you are here meaningfully. There is a purpose behind you. The whole intends to do something through you.”
Deep Osho Quotes About Death
77. “Wherever you feel death, feel it. Don’t escape. Death is beautiful; death is the greatest mystery, more mysterious than life.”
78. “It is a strange thing, that every child is born with a closed hand, and everybody dies with an open hand.”
79. “Wherever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death. Death is the only fear source.”
Osho Quotes on Silence and Emptying Your Mind
80. “No thought, no mind, no choice—just being silent, rooted in yourself.”
81. “When you really laugh for those few moments you are in a deep meditative state. thinking stops. It is impossible to laugh and think together.”
82. “Meditation is the only magic in the world and the only miracle.”
83. “My meditation is simple. It does not require any complex practices. It is simple. It is singing. It is dancing. It is sitting silently.”
84. “Meditation will give you a little glimpse, a little taste, that the truth is inside you.”
Thought-Provoking Osho Quotes About Fear
85. “Whenever a situation arises that creates fear, there are two alternatives—either you fight or you take flight.”
86. “The greatest fear in the world is the opinion of others, and the moment you are unafraid of the crowd, you are no longer a sheep, you become a lion. A great roar arises in your heart, the roar of freedom.”
87. “Don’t move the way fear makes you move. Move the way love makes you move. Move the way joy makes you move.”
88. “Life begins where fear ends.”
Osho Quotes Everyone Can Learn From
89. “Ambition is insanity. Ambition shows that you are not at ease with yourself, that you are not at home.”
90. “You need either to create something or to discover something. Either bring your potential to actuality or go inwards to find yourself, but do something with your freedom.”
91. “They say: think twice before you jump. I say: jump first and then think as much as you want!”
92. “The tongue never slips—remember this always. What goes on within the mind comes invariably on the tongue.”
93. “If you want to learn anything, learn trust—nothing else is needed. If you are miserable, nothing else will help—learn trust. If you don’t feel any meaning in life and you feel meaningless, nothing will help—learn trust. Trust gives meaning because trust makes you capable of allowing the whole descend upon you.”
More Osho Quotes You Need to Read Today
94. “Fame is foolish, it is pointless, meaningless. Even if the whole world knows you, how does it make you richer? How does it make your life more blissful? How does it help you to be more understanding, to be more aware? To be more alert, to be more alive?”
95. “Whenever you act according to your own light, there is immense fulfillment—a deep rejoicing.”
96. “You are being taught everything, but you are not being taught to be yourself. This is the ugliest form of society possible because it makes everybody miserable.”
97. “I say to you: light the lamp of independent thinking. Don’t become a slave to anyone by accepting his thoughts. Truth belongs to those who are their own master.”
98. “Nobody can say anything about you. Whatsoever people say is about themselves. But you become very shaky because you are still clinging to a false center. That false center depends on others, so you are always looking to what people are saying about you.”
99. “So the second thing to remember is never to demand perfection. You have no right to demand anything from anybody. If somebody loves you, be thankful, but don’t demand anything—because the other has no obligation to love you.”
100. “It is not a question of money, power, and prestige; it is a question of what intrinsically you want to do. Do it, irrespective of the results, and your boredom will disappear.”
Did These Osho Quotes Open Your Eyes to the Possibilities and Power You Hold as an Individual?
Few people can make an indelible mark on society that no amount of time can erase. Osho will forever be one of those men people will look up to for centuries. From the simplest to the most profound, his words continue to touch the hearts and minds of people worldwide—no matter what culture or country they’re from.
Osho preached about the value of meditation, the control we have over our emotions, the concept of fear, and the wonders that life and love bring. His teachings, albeit controversial during his time, earned him millions of followers because of how relatable and open-minded they were.
Even years after his passing, we’re still inspired by his words on life and purpose. And, through Osho, we’re given the motivation to live our life’s entire purpose. We’re reminded that life is happening right here, right now, and right before us.
So, whenever you feel lost or unmotivated, revisit this list of Osho quotes that will shine a light upon your purpose once again. Move forward in life knowing you have complete control of your happiness and self.
Which of the quotes in the list is your favorite? What other lessons did you learn from Osho? Please, share your thoughts in the comments section below.
