“How much more does Sonia Gandhi’s son know about the past of the party of which he is now the vice president? Not very much. In Rahul Gandhi’s understanding of his party’s history, only five leaders have mattered: his mother, his father, his grandmother, his great-grandfather and Mahatma Gandhi, the only Indian politician whom he (and Sonia) have granted parity with their own family. Gokhale, Tilak, Rajaji, Azad, Kamaraj, even (or especially) Patel—these are merely names (and sometimes not even that) to the heir apparent. By”

“Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him.”

“But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.”

“So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him.”

“If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior.”

“Spiritual relationship is far more precious than Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.” 

“Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mind of truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there.”

“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.”

“Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth.”

“When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee,' I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.”

“It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners.”

“God can never be realised by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life.”

“You must be the change you want for the world.”

“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.”

“The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice.”