“But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.”

“Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement.”

“Dobbiamo diventare il cambiamento che vogliamo vedere.”

“There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.” 

“You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

“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.”

“As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.”

“The real seat of taste was not the tongue but the mind”

“I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.”

“There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”

“I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties.”

“Therefore the Gita is not for those who have no faith. The author makes Krishna say: ‘Do not entrust this treasure to him who is without sacrifice, without devotion, without the desire for this teaching and who denies Me. On”

“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”

“Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.”