“If we have lost faith in our vernaculars, it is a sign of want of faith in ourselves; it is the surest sign of decay.”

“Un lucru a săpat rădăcini adânci în sufletul meu: credinţa că morala stă la baza tuturor lucrurilor şi că adevărul este substanţa întregii moralităţi. Astfel că adevărul a devenit singurul meu scop. El a devenit din ce în ce mai important pentru mine, iar sensurile pe care i le-am dat au devenit din ce în ce mai largi.”

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

“With my meagre knowledge of my own religion i do not want to belong to any religious body”

“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.”

“At every moment we have to decide whether a particular action will serve the atman or the body. We cannot, however, break open the cage of the body, and so we must simultaneously follow vidya and avidya, of knowledge and ignorance.”

“An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war property so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects .... The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil-human greed.”

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

“Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.”

“There is no God higher than the truth.”

“When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.”

“A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.”

“I learned from Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner, I learnt from Hussain how to attain victory while being oppressed.”

“The Mahabharata was not composed with the aim of describing a battle. The description of the battle serves only as a pretext.”