"When I was growing up and I was going to overpriced colleges, they were always telling us, “You’ve got to accumulate a wonderful resume, you’ve got to climb this hurdle and this hurdle and this hurdle, become partner, become editor-in-chief, become Supreme Court judge.” And that seems to lead to permanent dissatisfaction, because once you become a Supreme Court judge, you want to become the head of the court in the Hague, or once you get the Pulitzer Prize you want the Nobel Prize, so there’s never any end to that craving. So I think going nowhere in some ways seemed to me a more promising alternative than always trying to get somewhere."

http://ideas.ted.com/want-to-be-happy-slow-down/

"I see now, working in the humanitarian world, we start to help people, and we get derailed by conflict of ego, corruption — human shortcomings. So the best thing you could do instead of training to run an NGO or make accounts would be to start to become a better human being so that you can serve others better and not be distracted by trying to make everyone perfect on the way. That’s the job of the Buddha, not your job."

http://ideas.ted.com/want-to-be-happy-slow-down/