“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 cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.” 

“Be the change you want to see”

“There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions.”

“Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed.”

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

“Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.”

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

“I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”

“Create and preserve the image of your choice.”

“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 deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there”

“Lebe, als würdest Du morgen sterben und lerne, als ob Du ewig leben würdest.”

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

“Our contribution to the progress of the world must, therefore, consist in setting our own house in order.”