A great man is different from an eminent one in that he is ready to be the servant of the society. |
A people and their religion must be judged by social standards based on social ethics. No other standard would have any meaning if religion is held to be necessary good for the well-being of the people. |
Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence. |
Emerson has said that consistency is a virtue of an ass. No thinking human being can be tied down to a view once expressed in the name of consistency. More important than consistency is responsibility. A responsible person must learn to unlearn what he has learned. A responsible person must have the courage to rethink and change his thoughts. Of course there must be good and sufficient reason for unlearning what he has learned and for recasting his thoughts. There can be no finality in rethinking. |
Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle. |
Every man must have a philosophy of life, for everyone must have a standard by which to measure his conduct. And philosophy is nothing but a standard by which to measure. |
Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class. |
For a successful revolution it is not enough that there is discontent. What is required is a profound and thorough conviction of the justice, necessity and importance of political and social rights. |
Given the time and circumstances, nothing under the sun shall stop this country from becoming a super power.Being grateful has limitations, no man can be grateful at the cost of his dignity, no woman at the cost of her chastity and no country at the cost of its freedom.I hope that Mr. Gandhi will not drive me to the necessity of making a choice between his life and rights of my people, for I shall never consent to deliver my people bound hand and foot to the orthodox for generations to come. |
Hero-worship in the sense of expressing our unbound admiration is one thing. To obey the hero is a totally different kind of worship. There is nothing wrong in the former while the latter is no doubt a most pernicious thing. The former is man's respect for which is noble and of which the great men are only an embodiment. The latter is the serf's fealty to his lord. The former is consistent with respect, but the latter is a sign of debasement. The former does not take away one's intelligence to think and independence to act. The latter makes one perfect fool. The former involves no disaster to the state. The latter is a source of positive danger to it. |
History bears out the proposition that political revolutions have always been preceded by social and religious revolutions. Social reform in India has few friends and many critics. |
History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them. |
I feel that the constitution is workable, it is flexible and it is strong enough to hold the country together both in peacetime and in wartime. Indeed, if I may say so, if things go wrong under the new Constitution, the reason will not be that we had a bad Constitution. What we will have to say is that Man was vile. |
I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity. |
I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved. |