“If we are unmanly today, we are so, not because we do not know how to strike, but because we fear to die.”

“Solitude is a catalyst for innovation”

“You don't know who is important to you until you actually lose them.”

“The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there”

“There are innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable.”

“But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. In regard to every action one must know the result that is expected to follow, the means thereto, and the capacity for it. He, who, being thus equipped, is without desire for the result and is yet wholly engrossed in the due fulfillment of the task before him is said to have renounced the fruits of his action.”

“service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.”

“I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen.”

“As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.”

“Religion which takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.”

“In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.”

“All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.”

“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.”

“No matter how explicit the pledge, people will turn and twist the text to suit their own purpose”

“A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.”