Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) was an American author, motivational speaker, and professor renowned for his teachings on love and human connections. Born on March 31, 1924, in Los Angeles, Buscaglia earned a Ph.D. in English and became a professor at the University of Southern California. He gained widespread recognition with his best-selling book, “Love,” which emphasized the importance of love in all aspects of life. Buscaglia’s charismatic and engaging speaking style made him a sought-after speaker, and he became a popular figure on television and in lecture halls. He founded the Love Foundation and dedicated his life to promoting love, compassion, and genuine human relationships. Leo Buscaglia’s legacy endures through his impactful books, lectures, and the lasting influence he had on inspiring people to live more fulfilling and connected lives.
Leo Buscaglia Quotes
1. “Love yourself, accept yourself, forgive yourself, and be good to yourself, because without you the rest of us are without a source of many wonderful things.”
— Leo Buscaglia
2. “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”
— Leo Buscaglia
3. “Your talent is God’s gift to you. What you do with it is your gift back to God.”
— Leo Buscaglia
4. “Change is the end result of all true learning.”
— Leo Buscaglia
5. “To love others you must first love yourself.”
— Leo Buscaglia
6. “Only the weak are cruel. Gentleness can only be expected from the strong.”
— Leo Buscaglia
7. “The person who risks nothing, does nothing, has nothing, is nothing, and becomes nothing. He may avoid suffering and sorrow, but he simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow or love. Chained by his certitude, he is a slave; he has forfeited his freedom. Only the person who risks is truly free.”
— Leo Buscaglia
8. “Let go. Why do you cling to pain? There is nothing you can do about the wrongs of yesterday. It is not yours to judge. Why hold on to the very thing which keeps you from hope and love?”
— Leo Buscaglia
9. “A life without love, no matter how many other things we have, is an empty, meaningless one.”
— Leo Buscaglia
10. “Risks must be taken because the greatest hazard in life is to risk nothing.”
— Leo Buscaglia
11. “A life without passion is not living, it’s merely existing.”
— Leo Buscaglia
12. “Death is a challenge. It tells us not to waste time. It tells us to tell each other right now that we love each other.”
— Leo Buscaglia
13. “The greatest risk is to risk nothing at all.”
— Leo Buscaglia
14. “Worry never robs tomorrow of its sorrow, it only saps today of its joy.”
— Leo Buscaglia
15. “In a crazy world, it’s only your insanity that will keep you sane.”
— Leo Buscaglia
16. “Compassion is an act of tolerance where kindness and forgiveness reign. When we make the compassionate choice, we enhance the dignity of each individual, which is the very essence of loving them.”
— Leo Buscaglia
17. “The most painful thing to experience is not defeat but regret.”
— Leo Buscaglia
18. “I have a very strong feeling that the opposite of love is not hate – it’s apathy. It’s not giving a damn.”
— Leo Buscaglia
19. “Life is a paradise for those who love many things with a passion.”
— Leo Buscaglia
20. “Value yourself. The only people who appreciate a doormat are people with dirty shoes.”
— Leo Buscaglia
21. “Don’t hold to anger, hurt, or pain. They steal your energy and keep you from love.”
— Leo Buscaglia
22. “Listening is love in action.”
— Leo Buscaglia
23. “The easiest thing to be in the world is you. The most difficult thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.”
— Leo Buscaglia
24. “Those who think they know it all have no way of finding out they don’t…”
— Leo Buscaglia
25. “We all fear what we don’t know – it’s natural.”
— Leo Buscaglia
26. “Life is uncharted territory. It reveals its story one moment at a time.”
— Leo Buscaglia
27. “Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.”
— Leo Buscaglia
28. “You have the choice. You can choose joy over despair, happiness over tears, action over apathy, growth over stagnation.”
— Leo Buscaglia
29. “It’s not enough to have lived. We should be determined to live for something. May I suggest that it be creating joy for others, sharing what we have for the betterment of personkind, bringing hope to the lost and love to the lonely.”
— Leo Buscaglia
30. “Life is a great and wondrous mystery, and the only thing we know that we have for sure is what is right here right now. Don’t miss it.”
— Leo Buscaglia
31. “The life and love we create is the life and love we live.”
— Leo Buscaglia
32. “Choose the way of life. Choose the way of love. Choose the way of caring. Choose the way of goodness. It’s up to you. It’s your choice.”
— Leo Buscaglia
33. “Don’t spend your precious time asking “Why isn’t the world a better place?” It will only be time wasted. The question to ask is “How can I make it better?” To that there is an answer.”
— Leo Buscaglia
34. “To love is to risk not being loved in return.”
— Leo Buscaglia
35. “Say “yes” to life! “Yes” to wonder, to joy, to despair. “Yes” to pain, “yes” to what you don’t understand. Try “yes.” Try “always.” Try “possible.” Try “hopeful.” Try “I will.” And try “I can.””
— Leo Buscaglia
36. “The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another’s, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.”
— Leo Buscaglia
37. “In order to learn, you have to be free. You have to be free to experiment, free to try, free to make mistakes…”
— Leo Buscaglia
38. “Love is always open arms. If you close your arms about love you will find that you are left holding only yourself.”
— Leo Buscaglia
39. “Love is always bestowed as a gift – freely, willingly, and without expectation. We don’t love to be loved; we love to love.”
— Leo Buscaglia
40. “We all need each other.”
— Leo Buscaglia
41. “A growing relationship can only be nurtured by genuineness.”
— Leo Buscaglia
42. “A life lived in love will never be dull.”
— Leo Buscaglia
43. “No one gets out of this world alive, so the time to live, learn, care, share, celebrate, and love is now.”
— Leo Buscaglia
44. “In the end you have only you.”
— Leo Buscaglia
45. “Forgive others, forgive yourself, forgive yourself for not being perfect, and accept responsibility for your own life.”
— Leo Buscaglia
46. “Happiness is intrinsic, it’s an internal thing. When you build it into yourself, no external circumstances can take it away.”
— Leo Buscaglia
47. “Change. It has the power to uplift, to heal, to stimulate, surprise, open new doors, bring fresh experiences, and create excitement in life. Certainly, it is worth the risk.”
— Leo Buscaglia
48. “People are not here to meet your expectations.”
— Leo Buscaglia
49. “Catch the beauty of the moment!”
— Leo Buscaglia
50. “The essence of education is not to stuff you with facts but to help you discover your uniqueness, to teach you how to develop it, and then to show you how to give it away.”
— Leo Buscaglia
51. “We don’t love to be loved in return; we love to love.”
— Leo Buscaglia
52. “One does not fall “in” or “out” of love. One grows in love.”
— Leo Buscaglia
53. “The only thing of value we can give kids is what we are, not what we have.”
— Leo Buscaglia
54. “To laugh is to risk appearing a fool, to weep is to risk appearing too sentimental, to reach out for another is to risk involvement, and to expose feelings is to risk exposing one’s true self.”
— Leo Buscaglia
55. “Find the person who will love you because of your differences and not in spite of them and you have found a lover for life.”
— Leo Buscaglia
56. “Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.”
— Leo Buscaglia
57. “Love is not a thing, it is not lost when given. You can offer your love completely to hundreds of people and still retain the same love you had originally.”
— Leo Buscaglia
58. “Don’t brood. Get on with living and loving. You don’t have forever.”
— Leo Buscaglia
59. “What love we’ve given, we’ll have forever. What love we fail to give, will be lost for all eternity.”
— Leo Buscaglia
60. “To love oneself is to struggle to rediscover and maintain your uniqueness.”
— Leo Buscaglia
61. “To live in love is life’s greatest challenge. It requires more subtlety, flexibility, sensitivity, understanding, acceptance, tolerance, knowledge and strength than any other human endeavor.”
— Leo Buscaglia
62. “Relish love in your old age! Aged love is like aged wine; it becomes more satisfying, more refreshing, more valuable, more appreciated and more intoxicating!”
— Leo Buscaglia
63. “A total immersion in life offers the best classroom for learning to love.”
— Leo Buscaglia
64. “The hardest battle you are ever going to have to fight is the battle to be just you.”
— Leo Buscaglia
65. “One cannot give what he does not possess. To give love you must possess love. To love others you must love yourself.”
— Leo Buscaglia
66. “Fantastic things happen – to the way we feel, to the way we make other people feel. All this simply by using positive words.”
— Leo Buscaglia
67. “We seem to gain wisdom more readily through our failures than through our successes. We always think of failure as the antithesis of success, but it isn’t. Success often lies just the other side of failure.”
— Leo Buscaglia
68. “If I don’t have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.”
— Leo Buscaglia
69. “Most of us remain strangers to ourselves, hiding who we are, and ask other strangers, hiding who they are, to love us.”
— Leo Buscaglia
70. “When we give ourselves in love we become our most vulnerable. We are never safe. We become open to disappointment and hurt.”
— Leo Buscaglia
71. “Every moment spent in unhappiness is a moment of happiness lost.”
— Leo Buscaglia
72. “Life is meant to be a celebration! It shouldn’t be necessary to set aside special times to remind us of this fact. Wise is the person who finds a reason to make every day a special one.”
— Leo Buscaglia
73. “Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.”
— Leo Buscaglia
74. “We need to learn to let go as easily as we grasp and we will find our hands full and our minds empty.”
— Leo Buscaglia
75. “I love to think that the day you’re born, you’re given the world as a birthday present.”
— Leo Buscaglia
76. “Don’t walk in my head with your dirty feet.”
— Leo Buscaglia
77. “Love and the self are one and the discovery of either is the realization of both.”
— Leo Buscaglia
78. “Too often we underestimate the power of a touch…”
— Leo Buscaglia
79. “Labels are distancing phenomena. They push us away from each other.”
— Leo Buscaglia
80. “Why do some people always see beautiful skies and grass and lovely flowers and incredible human beings, while others are hard-pressed to find anything or any place that is beautiful?”
— Leo Buscaglia
81. “Never idealize others. They will never live up to your expectations.”
— Leo Buscaglia
82. “God made mud, God made dirt, God made boys so girls could flirt.”
— Leo Buscaglia
83. “Time has no meaning in itself unless we choose to give it significance.”
— Leo Buscaglia
84. “Don’t look over people’s shoulders. Look in their eyes. Don’t talk at your children. Take their faces in your hands and talk to them. Don’t make love to a body, make love to a person.”
— Leo Buscaglia
85. “A loving relationship is one in which the loved one is free to be himself – to laugh with me, but never at me; to cry with me, but never because of me; to love life, to love himself, to love being loved. Such a relationship is based upon freedom and can never grow in a jealous heart.”
— Leo Buscaglia
86. “There are scores of people waiting for someone just like us to come along; people who will appreciate our compassion, our encouragement, who will need our unique talents. Someone who will live a happier life merely because we took the time to share what we had to give.”
— Leo Buscaglia
87. “Education should be the process of helping everyone to discover his uniqueness, to teach him how to develop that uniqueness, and then to show him how to share it because that’s the only reason for having anything.”
— Leo Buscaglia
88. “I’d like to be remembered for being a good, kind, loving, gentle man who attempted to live wisely, and who cared a lot.”
— Leo Buscaglia
89. “Learn to bend. It’s better than breaking.”
— Leo Buscaglia
90. “Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.”
— Leo Buscaglia
