Felice Leonardo “Leo” Buscaglia (1924–98) was an American self-help author and motivational speaker. He championed the philosophy that love heals all and gained a reputation as an “apostle of love” for concluding his speeches by hugging every audience member.
Buscaglia got his start as a speech therapist and a supervisor of special education in Pasadena, California. When working as an education professor at the University of Southern California, the suicide of one of his students distressed him. He was inspired to teach a course titled “Love 101,” combining sociology and psychology. Six hundred students attended the first lecture, prompting Buscaglia to launch his career as a motivational writer and speaker. His first book, Love (1972,) examined the phenomenon of human love as the one unifying force in life.
Buscaglia authored over a dozen books and sold more than 11 million copies in 20 languages. His other notable books were Living, Loving and Learning (1982) and Loving Each Other (1984.) Once, five of his books appeared on the New York Times best-seller list simultaneously.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Leo Buscaglia
Love is life. And if you miss love, you miss life.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Life, Love
A wonderful realization will be the day you realize that you are unique in all the world. There is nothing that is an accident. You are a special combination for a purpose-and don’t let them tell you otherwise, even if they tell you that purpose is an illusion. (Live an illusion if you have to). You are that combination so that you can do what is essential for you to do. Don’t ever believe that you have nothing to contribute. The world is an incredible unfulfilled tapestry. And only you can fulfill that tiny space that is yours.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Identity
Who is the loving person? The loving person is the person who loves him or herself. I say this so often, and people say, “Oh yes, you’re so right,” but they don’t do it! You will never be able to love anyone else until you love yourself. Even With your Fat Thighs!
—Leo Buscaglia
We need not be afraid to touch, to feel, to show emotion. The easiest thing in the world is to be what you are, what you feel. The hardest thing to be is what other people want you to be. Don’t let them put you in that position.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Honesty, Courage, People, Individuality, Love
I believe that you control your destiny, that you can be what you want to be. You can also stop and say, “No, I won’t do it, I won’t behave his way anymore. I’m lonely and I need people around me, maybe I have to change my methods of behaving and then you do it.”
—Leo Buscaglia
A life of love is one of continual growth, where the doors and windows of experience are always open to the wonder and magic that life offers. To love is to risk living fully.
—Leo Buscaglia
If we wish to free ourselves from enslavement, we must choose freedom and the responsibility this entails.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Freedom
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
This loving person is a person who abhors waste—waste of time, waste of human potential. How much time we waste. As if we were going to live forever.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Action, Learning, Time Management
We all need each other.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Aid, Help, Assistance
Responsibility of any kind can seem intimidating and for this reason man may often be afraid of truly deep relationships with other human beings. A relationship suggests to him the most extreme of responsibilities. It implies a burden, a restriction of freedom, seldom the converse. A student in love class, for instance, commented, “I’ve always been afraid of deep relationship because of the responsibility it seemed to impose. I was afraid of the demands it would make of me and I worried I wouldn’t be able to meet those demands. I was amazed to find that when I did get the courage to form a relationship, I actually became stronger. I acquired two minds instead of one, four hands, four arms, four legs, and another’s world. In joining forces with someone, I got twice the strength to grow, with twice as many alternatives. Now it’s easier for me to love others. I am stronger and I am less afraid”. He had discovered an important insight.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Courage, Mind, Love, Discover, Freedom, Strength, Lies, Reason, Rest, Act, Kind, Responsibility
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
Topics: Letting Go
We all fear what we don’t know—it’s natural.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Fear
We are no longer puppets being manipulated by outside powerful forces: we become the powerful force ourselves.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Chance, Circumstance
Don’t smother each other. No one can grow in the shade.
—Leo Buscaglia
Only when we give joyfully, without hesitation or thought of gain, can we truly know what love means.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Sacrifice
The most painful thing to experience is not defeat but regret.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Regret
We live in a small world. Not a leaf falls that doesn’t affect a myriad of things. When we reach out to someone in love and the effect is made—everyone, everything which comes in contact with the person we’ve effected is better for it. Of course, the converse is true, too.
—Leo Buscaglia
Time has no meaning in itself unless we choose to give it significance.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Time, Meaning, Focus and Priorities, Time Management
Each of our acts makes a statement as to our purpose.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Purpose, One liners
What’s the good of all our learning, knowing how to read and write and spell if no one ever teaches us the value of life, of our uniqueness, and personal dignity?
—Leo Buscaglia
It is paradoxical that many educators and parents still differentiate between a time for learning and a time for play without seeing the vital connection between them.
—Leo Buscaglia
Go around—listen to how many times a day you say, “I love” instead of, “I hate”. Isn’t it interesting that children, as they learn the process of language, always learn the word “no” years before they learn the word “yes”? Ask linguists where they hear it. Maybe if they heard more of “I love, I love, I love” they’d hear it sooner and more often.
—Leo Buscaglia
Life lived for tomorrow will always be just a day away from being realized.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Live-now
What you are is God’s gift to you, what you do with yourself is your gift to God.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Gifts
Love withers with predictability; its very essence is surprise and amazement. To make love a prisoner of the mundane is to take its passion and lose it forever.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Romance
I have learned that love is the most powerful force available to us. When we have real love we have the strength to perform miracles.
—Leo Buscaglia
I don’t believe in unconditional love. In fact, I think it’s unwise. My love has had a condition that if ever my love keeps you from you, from your growing, and realizing your personal potential, then I must step aside. No one has the right to stand in the way of another’s joy, development, or unique perceptions.
—Leo Buscaglia
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
Topics: Purpose, Vision, Joy
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
Topics: The Present, Living
We need others. We need others to love and we need to be loved by them. There is no doubt that without it, we too, like the infant left alone, would cease to grow, cease to develop, choose madness and even death.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Love, Doubt, Death
Our greatest joy and satisfaction comes from the act of giving.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Satisfaction
People are not here to meet your expectations.
—Leo Buscaglia
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
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
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 and feel and change and grow and love and live.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Feelings, Generations, Danger, Risk
You can’t imagine the joy I feel when I hear that something I’ve said or done or written has helped others to regain their sense of dignity, to motivate them to develop their unique potential, to encourage them to reach out to others in love.
—Leo Buscaglia
If I don’t have wisdom, I can teach you only ignorance.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Wisdom
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
Topics: Love, Kindness, Motivation, Goodness, Life, Power
I still get wildly enthusiastic about little things… I play with leaves. I skip down the street and run against the wind.
—Leo Buscaglia
Topics: Inner-child
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Lloyd Alexander American Writer
Norman Mailer American Novelist, Journalist
Lionel Trilling American Critic
Raymond Chandler American Novelist
Thomas Wolfe American Novelist
Ellery Queen American Crime Fiction Authors
Truman Capote American Novelist
William Gaddis American Novelist
Leon Uris American Writer
Don DeLillo American Author