“We cannot afford to raise any institution to the rank of a fetish. To do so would be simply to become the slaves of our own machinery.”

That within us which seeks to know and to progress is not the mind but something behind it which makes use of it.

A great thing would be done if all these God-visions could embrace and cast themselves into each other; but intellectual dogma and cult egoism stand in the way.

Faith is the soul’s witness to something not yet manifested, achieved or realised, but which yet the Knower within us, even in the absence of all indications, feels to be true or supremely worth following or achieving.

The existence of poverty is the proof of an unjust and ill-organised society, and our public charities are but the first tardy awakening in the conscience of a robber.

If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose.

Witness and stand back from Nature, that is the first step to the soul’s freedom.

India saw from the beginning, – and, even in her ages of reason and her age of increasing ignorance, she never lost hold of the insight, – that life cannot be rightly seen in the sole light, cannot be perfectly lived in the sole power of its externalities.

The fly that touches honey cannot use it’s wings; so too the soul that clings to spiritual sweetness ruins it’s freedom and hinders contemplation.

What the soul sees and has experienced, that it knows; the rest is appearance, prejudice and opinion.

We are sons of God And must be even as he.

The all-embracing vast being which is there behind the play of the universe and with which you will have to identify yourself – for this is your true self.

When Reason died, then Wisdom was born.

The first principle of true teaching is that nothing can be taught.

Each victory gained over oneself means new strength to gain more victories.

Evolution of consciousness is the central motive of terrestrial existence.

When we have passed beyond knowings, then we shall have Knowledge.

When you look at a corporation, just like when you look at a slave owner, you want to distinguish between the institution and the individual.

States are not moral agents, people are, and can impose moral standards on powerful institutions.

I believe in marriage. I believe marriage is a really important institution; it’s one of the most important institutions we have.

In a free society these institutions must be wholly free – which is to say that their function is to serve as checks upon the state.

I believe that the general growth in large [financial] institutions have occurred in the context of an underlying structure of markets in which many of the larger risks are dramatically — I should say, fully — hedged.

Those of us who have looked to the self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity are in a state of shocked disbelief.

Institutions of the newer participants in global finance had not been tested, until recently…recent crisis have underscored certain financial structure vulnerabilities that are not readily assuaged in the short run.

A democratic constitution, not supported by democratic institutions in detail, but confined to the central government, not only is not political freedom, but often creates a spirit precisely the reverse, carrying down to the lowest grade in society the desire and ambition of political domination.