“Our nation is like a tree of which the original trunk is swarajya and the branches are swadeshi and boycott.”

If we trace the history of any nation backwards into the past, we come at last to a period of myths and traditions which eventually fade away into impenetrable darkness.

Religion and practical life are not different. To take sanyas (renunciation) is not to abandon life. The real spirit is to make the country, your family, work together instead of working only for your own. The step beyond is to serve humanity and the next step is to serve God.

After all, our Killers are our …Brothers!!??

The most practical teaching of the Gita, and one for which it is of abiding interest and value to the men of the world with whom life is a series of struggles, is not to give way to any morbid sentimentality when duty demands sternness and the boldness to face terrible things.

The geologist takes up the history of the earth at the point where the archaeologist leaves it, and carries it further back into remote antiquity.

Swaraj is my birthright, and I shall have it!

It may be providence’s will that the cause I represent may prosper more by my suffering than by my remaining free.

The old idea of a composer suddenly having a terrific idea and sitting up all night to write it is nonsense. Nighttime is for sleeping.

Lots of people talk to animals… Not very many listen, though… That’s the problem.

Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

One of the things I’ve learned is to be receptive of feedback.

Competitions are for horses, not artists.

Breath is the king of mind.

The transpersonal is more awe-inspiring, more exciting than the thing we confuse it for.

I feel no different than I felt at 99, 98 or 97. Just because you live a long time, you get all this attention. Just because you survived? Of course, I survived a lot.