I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.

I do regard spinning and weaving as a necessary part of any national system of education.

I have no weapon but nonviolence.

How heavy is the toll of sins and wrong that wealth, power and prestige exact from man.

I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

The Attainment of freedom, whether for a person, a nation or a world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of nonviolence for each