“Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed.... Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone.”

“As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.”

“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.”

“To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion.”

“If we are unmanly today, we are so, not because we do not know how to strike, but because we fear to die.”

“The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.”

“Du und ich: Wir sind eins. Ich kann dir nicht wehtun, ohne mich zu verletzen.”

“Cuando hay una tormenta los pajaritos se esconden, pero las águilas vuelan más alto”

“Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mind of truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there.”

“Where love is, there God is also.”

“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.”

“The real seat of taste was not the tongue but the mind”

“It is simple impertinence for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world.”

“(When asked what he thought of Western civilization): 'I think it would be a good idea.” 

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated