“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.”

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world”

“It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”

“You may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them.”

“I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“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.”

“masses follow the classes.”

“One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole”

“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.”

“I believe in trusting. Trust begets trust. Suspicion is foetid and only stinks. He who trusts has never yet lost in the world.”

“The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”

“The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.”

“Therefore the Gita is not for those who have no faith. The author makes Krishna say: ‘Do not entrust this treasure to him who is without sacrifice, without devotion, without the desire for this teaching and who denies Me. On”

“The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.”