12 Inspirational Mindfulness Quotes About Real World Change

Earlier this year, the Mindful editorial team had the joy of interviewing 10 women leading the charge to make the world a more kind, connected place for our 2025 edition of the Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement feature article. With each conversation, we were inspired by these women’s stories, heartened by their dedication to true compassion, and puzzled over how we were going to fit so much wisdom into such short profiles. Spoiler alert: Despite our best efforts, a lot of great stuff ended up having to be cut. Here, we’re sharing some of their wise words that didn’t make it into the feature, but deserve to be shared. 

To learn more about The Powerful Women of the Mindfulness Movement: 2025, check out the feature article here, and guided meditations by the women here. 

12 Mindfulness Quotes About Making a Difference

1. “When people discuss access and equity in a way that is simply a marketing ploy, it comes through. I always say, if you’re not willing to change an environment—whether that’s a digital environment or a print environment or a physical environment—but you’re interested in calling it an inclusive space, then you’re not really, honestly making that an inclusive space. We have to change environments in order to make sure that there’s access for everybody to be there.” – Sue Hutton

2. “I don’t want to say I’m not that interested in reducing stress with people. That’s great. But I feel, once we reduce that stress, can we go to the next big step of deepening our understanding of our interconnectedness?” – Shalini Bahl

“Once we reduce that stress, can we go to the next big step of deepening our understanding of our interconnectedness?”

3. “All of our experiences are woven with all others. So that’s a way of understanding, what is our responsibility? If I belong to this family of beings, what’s my responsibility in this larger, very responsive world?” – Yuria Celidwen

4. “Instead of using the term inner critic, I sometimes use the word judge. We have a personal, internalised way that the swirling thoughts govern our life, but we also have a collective way that works as well. The judge judges inward, but that same aspect of my personality also judges outward. We’re doing the same process, but it’s just not individually, it’s collectively. This helps us see the link between the inner voice that criticises us and the collective voice that creates things like implicit bias and systemic oppression.” – Caverly Morgan

5. “Most survivors of gun violence do not see themselves in a mental health bucket, which prevents them from seeking resources that could really help them recover from the trauma.” – Brenda K. Mitchell

6. “If you turn away from suffering, you just get more and more alienation and you get more and more tension because you’re turning away from something that’s just woven into the fabric of life. So if you want to be a fully whole human being, then it’s really important to be able to be with suffering.” – Vidyamala Burch

7. “In the field of psychology, our theories really came from Europe. If you take the history of psychology classes, everything is Socrates and Plato…and well, there’s a whole world of wisdom out there. What are the wisdom traditions outside of Europe that can inform our healing?” – Shelly Harrell

“Let me help you stay strong so we can create the kind of change we want to make in the world.”

8. “In my work, I’m like, let me help you stay strong so we can create the kind of change we want to make in the world, seeing the global mental health crisis and being the beginning of solving the world’s most meaningful problems and actively creating what we want to create, which is a more peaceful, sustainable, and equal world.” – Melli O’Brien

9. “There’s so much wisdom that starts with being mindful of the body, where the tension is, where is releasing, how is fear manifesting, how is anger manifesting, how is hatred manifesting? Can I just take a moment and at least be kind to myself, noting, ‘This body is suffering.’ If we could just have this moment of mindfulness of the body and this attitude of kindness, just for our body first, I would say that would be opening a window for us to see more clearly how suffering is being created by ourselves and also how kindness and love can heal at least this body to some extent and opening the possibility of extending that to people who are around us, people who we care for first, and hopefully that would be a rippling effect.” – S. Helen Ma

10. “What gets in the way of change is resistance, because we are wired as humans to resist change. And what allows us to disrupt that is cultivating these ‘discovery skills’ of awareness, compassion, and curiosity.” – Shalini Bahl

11. “We may all want to regulate and feel more peace and calm. But that is only a step so that we can then do the right action to change the things that continue to bring chaos into the world. To understand how we can better serve the community, so that we can all emerge in a better way.” – Yuria Celidwen

“If I’m beating myself up every day to be a better person, I can’t be part of a collective that is bringing something different to the collective energy.”

12. “When it comes to things like bias or racism or any form of systemic oppression, we can’t expect ourselves to collectively have a more authentic form of healing if we don’t even know how to do that internally. If I’m beating myself up every day to be a better person, I can’t be part of a collective that is bringing something different to the collective energy.” – Caverly Morgan