“Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison.”

“I realized that it was not as easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it. And since then, whenever I have heard of someone threatening to commit suicide, it has had little or no effect on me.”

“That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action.”

“Duryodhana tells Dronacharya7 that his own pupil, Dhrishtadyumna8 has planned the deployment (on the Pandava side). They are, on both sides, his pupils, to whom he has imparted the same knowledge. But it depends on them whether they use that knowledge well or for ill.”

“Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

“I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. It was almost impossible for me to sleep in the dark, as I would imagine ghosts coming from one direction, thieves from another and serpents from a third. I could not therefore bear to sleep without a light in the room. ”

“Where there is fear there is no religion.”

“But all my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.”

“Be the change you want to see in the world”

“Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways.”

“Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.” 

“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

“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.”

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

“It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow-beings.”