You can love somebody without it being like that. You keep them a stranger, a stranger who's a friend.
I have never been hurt by what I have not said.
Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.
When people are bewildered they tend to become credulous.
There is no force so democratic as the force of an ideal.
I cannot think of anything characteristically American that was not produced by toil. I cannot think of any American man or woman preeminent in the history of our nation who did not reach their place through toil. I cannot think of anything that represents the American people as a whole so adequately as honest work.
A display of reason rather than a threat of force should be the determining factor in the intercourse among nations.
No matter how perfect & honest a person is, there will always be people to criticize. In other words, if everyone agrees with someone, there is something fundamentally wrong with what that individual is doing. If you are not criticized, you are not in the right track.
I have a deep connection with Mahatma Gandhi, partly because my mother was a very, very staunch Gandhian and brought us up that way. When I was six years old, and all the girls were getting nylon dresses, I was very keen to get a nylon frock for my birthday. My mother said, I can get it for you, but would you ratherthrough how you live and what you wear and what you eatensure that food goes into the hands of the weaver or ensure that profits go into the bank of an industrialist? That became such a checkstone for everything in life.
As much as I converse with sages and heroes, they have very little of my love and admiration. I long for rural and domestic scene, for the warbling of birds and the prattling of my children.
Every new thing you make will be (should be) the nicest thing you’ve made so far, because you’re learning and getting better with each and every new project.