“The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings.” 

“You will incur no sin by killing your kinsmen’ — this is said repeatedly in the Gita. If a person remains unconcerned with defeat or victory, knowing that they are a part of life, he commits no sin in fighting. But we should also say that he earns no merit. If we seek merit, we shall also incur sin. Even the best thing has an element of evil in it. Nothing in the world is wholly good or wholly evil. Where there is action there is some evil. If a person learns to make no distinction between gain and loss, pleasure and pain, he would rarely be tempted to commit a sin.”

“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.”

“So long as there are different religions, every one of them may need some outward distinctive symbol. But when the symbol is made into a fetish and an instrument of proving the superiority of one’s religion over others’, it is fit only to be discarded.”

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

“A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

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

“Kepuasan sebenarnya terletak dalam usaha yang kita lakukan bukan dalam pencapaiannya.”

“people continued—regardless of all that leads man forward—to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence.”

“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”