“I realized that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. And since then, whenever I have heard of someone threatening to commit suicide, it has had little or no effect on me.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

“You can't hurt me without my permission.”

“Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.”

“My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.”

“Good travels at a snail's pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.”

“It is not that I do not get angry. I don't give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice.”

“The earth provides enough to satisfy every person's need, but not every person's greed.”

“What is described is the conflict within the human body between opposing moral tendencies, which are imagined as distinct figures. A seer such as Vyasa would never concern himself with a description of mere physical fighting. It is the human body that is described as Kurukshetra, as dharmakshetra9 . The epithet may also mean that for a Kshatriya a battlefield is always a fi eld of dharma. Surely a fi eld on which the Pandavas too were present could not be altogether a place of sin.”

“There is no god higher than truth.”

“There are moments in your life when you must act even though you cannot carry your best friends with you. The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.”

“Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt.”

“I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher”

“Le Mahatma Gandhi, que j'admire beaucoup, a dit : "Si tu rends oeil pour oeil, le monde deviendra aveugle." Je voudrais, quant à moi, dessiller les yeux des hommes plutôt qu'augmenter leur cécité ou leur indifférence devant les injustices.”

“My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions.”