“I might be ready to embrace a snake, but, if one comes to bite you, I should kill it and protect you.”

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

“Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”

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

“I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realised that the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder.”

“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”

“Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”

“Words like aparigraha (non-possession) and samabhava (equability) gripped me. How to cultivate and preserve that equability was the question.”

“Effort is within man’s control, not the fruit thereof.”

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

“Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it”

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

“The future depends on what we do in the present.”

“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary."

“One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole”