"Don't seek God in temples. He is close to you. He is within you. Only you should surrender to Him and you will rise above happiness and unhappiness."

"Truth, like gold, is to be obtained not by its growth, but by washing away from it all that is not gold."

"Government is an association of men who do violence to the rest of us."

"In historic events, the so-called great men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but the smallest connection with the event itself. Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will, is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole course of history and predestined from eternity."

"Let us forgive each other - only then will we live in peace"

"Happiness does not depend on outward things, but on the way we see them"

"Pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete joy."

"There is trouble with a wife, but it's even worse with a woman who is not a wife"

"Happiness is a state of mind, you know. I don't think you are permanently happy. One is happy about certain things and not so happy about others."

"I was happy to be with my parents. I didn't see very much of them, so I was very happy when my father was there and out of jail."

"I have already reached out to the janata, and I am only trying to acquaint myself with people's problems."

"My son had nothing to do with policy or decision making, nor did I discuss the elections or any other matter with him."

"I am frequently attacked."

"Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is."

"There are grave misgivings that the discussion on ecology may be designed to distract attention from the problems of war and poverty."

"Forgiveness is "a "virtue of the brave."

"Opportunities are not offered. They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance... and courage."

"To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality."

"Until the day she died, my mother continued to fight for the rights of women. She joined all the women's movements of the time; she stirred up a lot of revolts. She was a great woman, a great figure. Women today would like her immensely."

"You soon realize that the peak you've climbed was one of the lowest, that the mountain was part of a chain of mountains, that there are still so many, so many mountains to climb...And the more you climb, the more you want to climb - even though you're dead tired."

"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 learned very soon to get along by myself."

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

"The greatest of all contraceptives is affluence."

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

"Difficulties can't be eliminated from life. Individuals will always have them, countries will always have them...The only thing is to accept them, if possible overcome them, otherwise to come to terms with them. It's all right to fight, yes, but only when it's possible."

"The meek may one day inherit the earth, but not the headlines."

"My grandfather once told me that there are two kinds of people: those who do the work, and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition there."

"Education is a liberating force, and in our age it is also a democratizing force, cutting across the barriers of caste and class, smoothing out inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances."

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

"A nation's strength ultimately consist in what it can do on its own and not in what it can borrow from other."

"Women sometimes go too far, it's true. But it's only when you go too far that others listen."

"To become capable, one must have faith in oneself."

"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."

"The purpose of life is to believe, to hope, and to strive."

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

"Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something."

"Popularity is not a gurantee of quality."

"A nation' s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others."

"I do not like carving the world into segments; we are one world."

"The collective judgment of the electorate must be respected."

"Love is the extremely difficult realization that something other than oneself is real."

"I think being a woman is like being Irish... Everyone says you're important and nice, but you take second place all the time."

"Writing is like getting married. One should never commit oneself until one is amazed at one's luck."

"People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us."

"One of the secrets of a happy life is continous small treats."

"Falling out of love is chiefly a matter of forgetting how charming someone is."

"We can only learn to love by loving."

"Jealousy is the most dreadfully involuntary of all sins."

"Every book is the wreck of a perfect idea."