“We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings.”

“Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. The endeavour to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realization.”

“If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.”

“Purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one's surroundings.”

“You civilised fellows are all cowards. Great men never look at a person’s exterior. They think of his heart.”

“I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.”

“I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one's self-respect.”

“I realised that even a man’s reforming zeal ought not to make him exceed his limits. I also saw that in thus lending trust-money I had disobeyed the cardinal teaching of the Gita, viz., the duty of a man of equipoise to act without desire for the fruit. The error became for me a beacon-light of warning.”

“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.”

“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.”

“An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war property so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects .... The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil-human greed.”

“I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown of my feet by any”

“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.”

“I shall think myself blessed only when I see Him in every one of my daily acts; Verily He is the thread which supports Muktanand's life.”

“There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions.”