Thich Nhat Hanh Quotes (on Anger)

Having grown up amid chaos, I love Thich Nhat Hanh’s quotes on anger. Intellectually, we know it’s normal for all to experience a range of emotions, but so many of us are not taught that we can mindfully practice anger. If we’re not in danger when anger emerges, I love it when one remains calm and quietly removes oneself from the situation to process anger privately. I love it when anger is safely moved to a private space, to be safely felt, understood, and processed. Because feelings are real. Feelings pass through us. But angry behavior can scar forever.

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“When you feel hurt but do not hurt the other, you are truly victorious. Your practice and your victory benefit both of you. When you understand the roots of anger in yourself and in the other, your mind will enjoy true peace, joy, and lightness. You become the doctor who heals himself and heals the other.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“People, it seemed, were always allowing jealousy, sadness, anger, and pride to determine their behavior. So much suffering was caused by misunderstandings and erroneous perceptions about one another.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“I would not look upon anger as something foreign to me that I have to fight ... I have to deal with my anger with care, with love, with tenderness, with nonviolence.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When you say something really unkind, when you do something in retaliation, your anger increases. You make the other person suffer, and he will try hard to say or to do something back to get relief from his suffering. That is how conflict escalates.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Shouting at someone is not the way to help. If you’ve already shouted, then realize that this is one of your unskillful behaviors. Go back to your in-breath and out-breath and say, I have to repair this. Then go to the other person and apologize, and tell yourself that next time you’ll try your best to remember beforehand and act differently.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“We are primarily responsible for our anger, but we believe very naively that if we can say something or do something to punish the other person, we will suffer less. This kind of belief should be uprooted. Because whatever you do or say in a state of anger will only cause more damage in the relationship. Instead, we should try not to do anything or say anything when we are angry.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When a person’s speech is full of anger, it is because he or she suffers deeply. Because he has so much suffering, he becomes full of bitterness. He is always ready to complain and blame others for his problems. This is why you find it very unpleasant to listen to him and try to avoid him.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“If you get angry every day, your seed of anger will grow bigger and bigger, and it will be much more difficult for compassion to grow. Without compassion, it will be difficult to use loving speech.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Thinking can push you to do or say things that are destructive, or it can create a lot of love … When you produce a thought of hate, anger, or despair, that thought is a poison which will affect your body and your mind.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“If we divide reality into two camps—the violent and the nonviolent—and stand in one camp while attacking the other, the world will never have peace. We will always blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing the degree of violence in ourselves. We must work on ourselves and also with those we condemn if we want to have a real impact.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“You see clearly that he has a lot of pain inside and doesn’t know how to handle it. That is why he suffers so much and makes the people around him suffer. What he needs is help, not punishment. If you stay with this practice … anger or jealousy in you will dissipate and the flower of compassion will be born.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When someone insults you or behaves violently towards you, you have to be intelligent enough to see that the person suffers from his own violence and anger. But we tend to forget. We think that we are the only one that suffers, and the other person is our oppressor. This is enough to make anger arise, and to strengthen our desire to punish. We want to punish the other person because we suffer. Then, we have anger in us; we have violence in us, just as they do. When we see that our suffering and anger are no different from their suffering and anger, we will behave more compassionately. So understanding the other is understanding yourself, and understanding yourself is understanding the other person. Everything must begin with you.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When our mind is entangled with anger, jealousy, or sadness, we can be in that state hour after hour, day after day. It’s a pity, because meanwhile, life is wondrous. If we only concentrate on breathing in and seeing that our body is a wonder, we can see that nothing else is really important. I’s only the peace in our body and in our mind that matters. Anyone can attain this insight. While we sit, we can be with our breathing, we can let go of tensions, and we can have peace. This peace is the most precious thing there is, more precious than any pursuit.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Everyone knows that anger is not good for us and for other people. Everyone knows that. But the fact is that they cannot help it. They are overwhelmed by the energy of violence, of anger; that is why everyone should learn the art of embracing anger and transforming it.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When you look at a tree in a storm, you see that the top of the tree is very unstable and vulnerable. The wind can break the smaller branches at any time. But when you look down to the trunk of the tree, you have a different impression. You see that the tree is very solid and still, and you know that it will be able to withstand the storm. We are also like a tree. Our head is like the top of the tree during a tempest of a strong emotion, so we have to bring our attention down to the level of our navel. We begin to practice mindful breathing … If you train yourself to practice like this during difficult times, you will survive these storms. You have to be aware that your emotion is just an emotion. It comes, stays for some time, and then goes away.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Whether we have happiness or not depends on the seeds in our consciousness. If our seeds of compassion, understanding, and love are strong, those qualities will be able to manifest in us. If the seeds of anger, hostility and sadness in us are strong, then we will experience much suffering. To understand someone, we have to be aware of the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. And we need to remember that his is not solely responsible for those seeds. His ancestors, parents, and society are co-responsible for the quality of the seeds in his consciousness. When we understand this, we are able to feel compassion for that person. With understanding and love, we will know how to water our own beautiful seeds and those of others, and we will recognize seeds of suffering and find ways to transform them.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When we are angry, we are not usually inclined to return to ourselves. We want to think about the person who is making us angry, to think about his hateful aspects—his rudeness, dishonesty, cruelty, maliciousness, and so on. The more we think about him, listen to him, or look at him, the more our anger flares. His dishonesty and hatefulness may be real, imaginary, or exaggerated, but, in fact, the root of the problem is the anger itself, and we have to come back and look first of all inside ourselves.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“If your house is on fire, the most urgent thing to do is to go back and try to put out the fire, not to run after the person you believe to be the arsonist. If you run after the person you suspect has burned your house, your house will burn down while you are chasing him or her. That is not wise. You must go back and put out the fire. So when you are angry, if you continue to interact with or argue with the other person, if you try to punish her, you are acting exactly like someone who runs after the arsonist while everything goes up in flames.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“We have to learn the art of stopping—stopping our thinking, our habit energies, our forgetfulness, the strong emotions that rule us. When an emotion rushes through us like a storm, we have no peace. We turn on the TV and then we turn it off. We pick up a book and then we put it down. How can we stop this state of agitation? How How can we stop our fear, despair, anger, and craving? We can stop by practicing mindful breathing, mindful walking, mindful smiling, and deep looking in order to understand. When we are mindful, touching deeply the present moment, the fruits are always understanding, acceptance, love, and the desire to relieve suffering and bring joy.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“The Buddha taught many techniques to help us calm our body and mind and look deeply at them … when we are angry, we do not deny it … we hold our anger in our two arms like a mother holding her crying baby … and this alone can calm our anger and ourselves … when we are calm enough, we can look deeply to understand what has brought this anger to be, what is causing our baby's discomfort … our anger was triggered when our friend spoke to us meanly, and suddenly we remember that he was not at his best today because his father is dying. We reflect like this until we have some insights into what has caused our suffering. With insight, we know what to do and what not to do to change the situation.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Feeling the heat of anger right now, I close my eyes and look into the future. Three hundred years from now, where will you, where will I, be?”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“If you can sit down quietly and listen compassionately to that person for one hour, you can relieve a lot of his suffering. Listen with only one purpose: to allow the other person to express himself and find relief from his suffering. Keep compassion alive during the whole time of listening. You have to be very concentrated while you listen. You have to focus on the practice of listening with all your attention, your whole being: your eyes, ears, body, and your mind. If you just pretend to listen, and do not listen with one hundred percent of yourself, the other person will know it and will not find relief from his suffering. If you know how to practice mindful breathing and can stay focused on the desire to help him find relief, then you will be able to sustain your compassion while listening.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Any peace talks should begin with making peace with ourselves. First we need to recognize our anger, embrace it, and make peace with it. You don’t fight your anger, because your anger is you. Your anger is the wounded child in you. Why should you fight your anger? The method is entirely nonviolent: awareness, mindfulness, and tenderly holding your anger within you. Like this, your anger will transform naturally.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“When we feel anger, irritation, or indignation arising in us, we pause. We stop and come back to our breathing straight away. We do not say or do anything when we are inhabited by this kind of energy, so we don’t escalate the conflict. We wait until we’re calm again. Being able to pause is the greatest gift. It gives us the opportunity to bring more love and compassion into the world rather than more anger and suffering.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“You are doing your best in order to embrace it, and so you no longer consider your partner as an enemy to be punished. You see him or her as an ally who is still there to support you.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“Due to attachment, anger, and foolishness, I have committed numberless mistakes in speech, deed and thought. I bow my head and repent. I vow from today to begin anew, to live day and night in mindfulness, and not to repeat my previous mistakes.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh

“The practice is to transform yourself. If you don't have garbage, you can't make compost. And if you have no compost, you have nothing to nourish the flower in you. You need the suffering, the afflictions in you. Since they are organic, you know that you can transform them and make good use of them.”

—Thich Nhat Hanh