“I am now of the opinion that children should first be taught the art of drawing before learning how to write.”

“To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being.”

“When your intellect, once perverted by listening to all manner of arguments, is totally absorbed in the contemplation of God, you will then attain yoga. When a person is firmly established in samadhi — samadhi means fixing the mind on God — he is filled with ecstatic love and, therefore, can be completely indifferent to this world.”

“That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.”

“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.”

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”

“How heavy is the toll of sins and wrongs that wealth, power and prestige exact from man!”

“Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”

“A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.”

“Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”

“The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism.”

“To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.”

“There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle.”

“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

“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.”