“Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always.”

“Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”

“Sacrifice is joy.”

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

“You civilised fellows are all cowards. Great men never look at a person’s exterior. They think of his heart.”

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

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

“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”

“Where there is life, there is love.”

“I am now of the opinion that children should first be taught the art of drawing before learning how to write.”

“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”

“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.”

“If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.”

“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”