“Whatever you do well in the darkness tells more about who you are than what you do best in light. Watch out!”

“In Hinduism, incarnation is ascribed to one who has performed some extraordinary service of mankind. All embodied life is in reality an incarnation of God, but it is not usual to consider every living being an incarnation. Future generations pay this homage to one who, in his own generation, has been extraordinarily religious in his conduct. I can see nothing wrong in this procedure;”

“Think twice before you speak, because your words and influence will plant the seed of either success or failure in the mind of another.”

“True freedom never comes until we fully realize that we don’t need to struggle to get from man what God freely gives us: love, acceptance, approval, security, worth, and value.

“Surely what a man does when he is taken off his guard is the best evidence for what sort of man he is.”

“We must have a virile, dynamic, aggressive Christian who lives Christ seven days a week, who is ready to die, if necessary, for his faith.”

“Don't die with the music on your tongue unsung! Don't die with the apps in your mind undesigned! Don't die with the books in your head unpublished! Don't die with the sermons in your heart unpreached! Live well and die well!”

“Live simply so others may simply live.”

“As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books.”

“To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”

“A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit.”

“Japan knows the horror of war and has suffered as no other nation under the cloud of nuclear disaster. Certainly Japan can stand strong for a world of peace.”

“The shore was God, the stream was tradition, and the oars were the free will given to me to make it to the shore where I would be joined with God. Thus the force of life was renewed within me, and I began to live once again.”

“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.”

“no labor is really menial unless you’re not getting adequate wages.”