“Love is creative and redemptive. Love builds up and unites; hate tears down and destroys. The aftermath of the ‘fight with fire’ method which you suggest is bitterness and chaos, the aftermath of the love method is reconciliation and creation of the beloved community. Physical force can repress, restrain, coerce, destroy, but it cannot create and organize anything permanent; only love can do that. Yes, love—which means understanding, creative, redemptive goodwill, even for one’s enemies—is the solution to the race problem.”

“But I know, somehow, that only when it is dark enough, can you see the stars.”

“Whatever you are be a good one.”

“After each failure, ask forgiveness, pick yourself up, and try again. Very often what God first helps us towards is not the virtue itself but just this power of always trying again.”

“If my house has collapsed at one blow, that is because it was a house of cards. The faith which 'took these things into account' was not faith but imagination.”

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

“Prayer should not be merely an act, but an attitude of life.”

“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”

“No matter what you do, 10% of the population will not like you.” 

“The greatest testimony to this dark world today would be a band of crucified and risen men and women, dead to sin and alive unto God, bearing in their bodies “the marks of the Lord Jesus” [Galatians 6:17 NKJV].”

“It’s better to have a great team with a weak dream than a great dream with a weak team. Your team must be the size of your dream.”

“Praying before you have an emergency is like putting money in the bank. If you have money set aside, then a car problem you were not expecting does not need to upset you. You have provided a way to continue living a simple, joy-filled life before you experienced a need. Start today getting some prayers in reserve. Fill up your prayer tank and you will avoid constantly living in crisis mode.”

“We need to encourage new believers to feed on God’s Word—it is nourishment for the soul.”

“Europe I travelled third—and only once first, just to see what it was like—but there I noticed no such difference between the first and the third-classes. In South Africa third-class passengers are mostly Negroes, yet the third-class comforts are better there than here.”

“sitting on that bench just pondering. I don't”