Q0300

“To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good, and to cleanse one's…” — Dhammapada (Dhammapada 183)

Verified English quotation. Primary source: Dhammapada 183. Theme: good.

English

To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good, and to cleanse one's mind—this is the teaching of the Buddhas.
Thinker Dhammapada
School Early Buddhism
Source Dhammapada 183
Theme Good
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source and attribution

The archive attributes this English wording to Dhammapada 183 and files it under Early Buddhism. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

About Dhammapada

Dhammapada appears in this archive through verified English quotations associated with the Early Buddhism tradition. Biographical certainty varies by figure and text; where the “author” is a scripture or school anthology, read the name as a traditional attribution rather than a modern individual biography.

How to read this passage

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Dhammapada and Philippa Foot), good is framed through Early Buddhism and Analytic Philosophy. Some passages define good; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language. This passage enters that discussion through good.

Concepts in this quote

Good
Good appears in this archive as a live philosophical concern—not a slogan. These verified English passages show how thinkers treat good as a problem of judgment, practice, or explanation.

How to cite this quotation

APA: Dhammapada. (n.d.). To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good, and to cleanse one's mind—this is the teaching of the Buddhas. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0300

MLA: Dhammapada. “To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good,….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0300.

Chicago: Dhammapada. “To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good,….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0300.

Frequently asked questions

What is the source of the quotation “To avoid all evil, to cultivate the good,…”?

The passage is attributed to Dhammapada, Dhammapada 183. The archive attributes this English wording to Dhammapada 183 and files it under Early Buddhism. That locator distinguishes the passage from loose internet attributions: readers can return to the named work or section to check translation, surrounding argument, and edition-specific wording.

What does Dhammapada mean by good?

Across 4 recurring voices here (notably Dhammapada and Philippa Foot), good is framed through Early Buddhism and Analytic Philosophy. Some passages define good; others warn how it fails; still others relocate it inside habit, community, or language. This passage enters that discussion through good.

Same thinker

More from Dhammapada

  1. Mind precedes all mental states; mind is their chief; they are mind-made.
  2. Hatred is never appeased by hatred in this world. By non-hatred alone is hatred appeased. This is an eternal law.
  3. One is one's own refuge; who else could be the refuge?
  4. Let one not regard the faults of others, nor what others have done or left undone; let one regard rather one's own deeds, done and undone.
  5. You yourselves must strive; the Buddhas only point the way.

All quotations by Dhammapada

Same theme

More on good

  1. It is through wonder that people both now begin and first began to philosophize.
  2. A person's character is their destiny.
  3. What is opposed brings together; from what differs comes the finest harmony.
  4. Death is nothing to us: for what has been dissolved has no sensation, and what has no sensation is nothing to us.
  5. Pleasure is the beginning and end of the happy life — not the pleasures of profligates, but freedom from pain in the body and from disturbance in the soul.

Browse the good theme