Violence begins with the fork.
We must be ever courteous and patient with those who do not see eye to eye with us. We must resolutely refuse to consider our opponents as enemies.
I believe that just as everyone inherits a particular form so does he inherit the particular characteristics and qualities of his progenitors, and to make this admission is to conserve one’s energy.
I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties.
Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.
Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed.
A true Brahmachari will not even dream of satisfying the fleshly appetite.
Purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings.
It is simple impertinence for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world.
Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.
Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.
That we should obey laws whether good or bad is a new-fangled notion. There was no such thing in former days. The people disregarded those laws they did not like and suffered the penalties for their breach.
I may have become Christian, were it not for Christians.
The truest test of a democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or property of anyone else.
All crime is a kind of disease and should be treated as such.
A man with a grain of faith in God never loses hope, because he ever believes in the ultimate triumph of Truth.
The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within.
No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor and, instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal.
If you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold.
There is no one without faults, not even men of God. They are men of God not because they are faultless, but because they know their faults, they strive against them, they do not hide them, and are ever ready to correct themselves.