“The same talk, the same thoughts, and always about the same things! And they are all satisfied and confident that it should be so, and will go on living like that till they die.”

“Nobody likes hard times, but it’s the unpleasant experiences that are often the catalysts to build the character required for our destiny.”

“Whatever makes you crazy is what you were created to crack. Whatever makes you sleepless is what you were born to succeed in. Don’t give up!”

“He who passively accepts evil is as much involved in it as he who helps to perpetrate it. He who accepts evil without protesting against it is really cooperating with it.”

“Anger is an agro-chemical that makes self-destruction to grow faster. Like a stone thrown upward, all angry people eventually fall down into the dirty ditch of sorrowful self-harm and a pathetic loss of real-self.”

“When the leader lacks confidence, the followers lack commitment.” 

“There is more hunger for love and appreciation in this world than for bread.”

“God has given us two hands--one to receive with and the other to give with. We are not cisterns made for hoarding; we are channels made for sharing.”

“The vitality [of] the Bible [is] exhibited in every generation . . .Its power to transform lives is its best apologetic.”

“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.”

“It was my good fortune to be linked with Mme. Curie through twenty years of sublime and unclouded friendship. I came to admire her human grandeur to an ever growing degree. Her strength, her purity of will, her austerity toward herself, her objectivity, her incorruptible judgement— all these were of a kind seldom found joined in a single individual... The greatest scientific deed of her life—proving the existence of radioactive elements and isolating them—owes its accomplishment not merely to bold intuition but to a devotion and tenacity in execution under the most extreme hardships imaginable, such as the history of experimental science has not often witnessed.”

“Father! Can I box him? Please!” 

“Prison is a still point in a turning world, and it is very easy to remain in the same place in jail while the world moves on.”

“I have no ambition to govern men; it is a painful and thankless office.” 

“To compel a man to subsidize with his taxes the propagation of ideas which he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical.”