“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice.

I don’t mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.

You don’t help a country by supporting a military regime that denies any sign of democracy, and what defeated Pakistan was its military regime.

I learned very soon to get along by myself.

I cannot understand how anyone can be an Indian and not be proud.

When it’s impossible, it’s better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.

There is not love where there is no will.

My father was a saint. I’m not.

It is our duty to create a social milieu in which the young and the socially weak feel that the present and future belong to them.

The old need the company of the young so that they renew their contact with life.

To become capable, one must have faith in oneself.

It’s not right to say that my father influenced me more than others, and I wouldn’t be able to say whether my personality was formed more by my father or my mother or the Mahatma [Gandhi] or the friends who were with us.

To be a mother, a housewife, never cost me any sacrifice – I savored every minute of those years.

Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision.

In all communities you find groups that behave badly. But you must understand them too.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

From some things that I have said one may get the idea that some of the slaves did not want freedom. This is not true. I have never seen one who did not want to be free, or one who would return to slavery.

For thousands of years, there have been lies about being gay or not being gay. If you know they’re lies, you’re free.

Freedom, Truth, Honour, you could rattle off a hundred such words and behind every one of them would gather a thousand punks, pompous little farts, waving the banner with one hand and reaching under the table with the other.

In that power of self-control lies the seed of eternal freedom.

Does freedom of speech give the right to offend?

Some souls seek to walk in awareness. Souls who walk in awareness choose a different path. They seek to experience all the peace and joy, limitlessness and freedom, wisdom and love that Oneness brings.

Our wills are simply not of our own making. Thoughts and intentions emerge from background causes of which we are unaware and over which we exert no conscious control. We do not have the freedom we think we have.

The faithful believe that certain truths have been ‘revealed.’ The skeptics and secularists believe that truth is only to be sought by free inquiry and trial and error. Only one of those positions is dogmatic.