“I might be ready to embrace a snake, but, if one comes to bite you, I should kill it and protect you.”

“To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness, and should insist upon choosing as their representatives only such persons as are good and true.”

“Chiar şi cel mai mic neadevăr îl strică pe om, la fel cum o picătură de otravă poate strica un lac întreg.”

“unity to be real must survive the severest strain without breaking.”

“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.”

“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”

“Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk. I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no disadvantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”

“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”

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

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

“We labour under a sort of superstition that the child has nothing to learn during the first five years of its life. On the contrary the fact is that the child never learns in after-life what it does in its first five years.”

“Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.”

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