A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: We did it ourselves.

I am inviting you to go deeper, to learn and to practice so that you become someone who has a great capacity for being solid, calm, and without fear, because our society needs people like you who have these qualities, and your children, our children, need people like you, in order to go on, in order to become solid, and calm, and without fear.

People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls. They will practice Indian yoga and all its exercises, observe a strict regimen of diet, learn the literature of the whole world - all because they cannot get on with themselves and have not the slightest faith that anything useful could ever come out of their own souls.

Many people are very, very concerned with the children in India, with the children in Africa where quite a number die, maybe of malnutrition, of hunger and so on, but millions are dying deliberately by the will of the mother. And this is what is the greatest destroyer of peace today. Because if a mother can kill her own child - what is left for me to kill you and you kill me -- there is nothing between.

Prayer in action is love, and love in action is service. Try to give unconditionally whatever a person needs in the moment. The point is to do something, however small, and show you care through your actions by giving your time ... Do not worry about why problems exist in the world - just respond to people's needs ... We feel what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean, but that ocean would be less without that drop.

Unless you see your nature, you shouldn't go around criticizing the goodness of others. There's no advantage in deceiving yourself. Good and bad are distinct. Cause and effect are clear. But fools don't believe and fall straight into a hell of endless darkness without even knowing it. What keeps them from believing is the heaviness of their karma. They're like blind people who don't believe there's such a thing as light. Even if you explain it to them, they still don't believe, because they're blind. How can they possibly distinguish light?

Even though you try to put people under control, it is impossible. You cannot do it. The best way to control people is to encourage them to be mischievous. Then they will be in control in a wider sense. To give your sheep or cow a large spacious meadow is the way to control him. So it is with people: first let them do what they want, and watch them. This is the best policy. To ignore them is not good. That is the worst policy. The second worst is trying to control them. The best one is to watch them, just to watch them, without trying to control them.

I want ... to consort with people whose emotions are not ... cold and standoffish.

You cannot have a desire to surrender because that's non-surrender. Surrender arises spontaneously sometimes in people who don't even have a word for it. And I know that openness is there in many people.

We forget that despite the superficial differences between us, people are equal in their basic wish for peace and happiness.

Many people identify their sense of self with the problems they have, or think they have.

There will be life after Mandela. On my last day I want to know that those who remain behind will say: 'The man who lies here has done his duty for his country and his people.'

I sense that the moment has come to commit all of the Church's energies to a new evangelization... No believer in Christ, no institution of the Church can avoid this supreme duty: to proclaim Christ to all peoples.

All I'm saying is that minerals are just a rudimentary form of consciousness whereas the other people are saying that consciousness is a complicated form of minerals.

The greatest force is derived from the power of thought. The finer the element, the more powerful it is. The silent power of thought influences people even at a distance, because mind is one as well as many. The universe is a cobweb; minds are spiders.

I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life

I send people away because attachment happens both ways.

It is wise to persuade people to do things and make them think it was their own idea.

Once you are clear about what you are doing and why, other people’s opinions will not matter.

People are as repelled by a liar, as they are of serpents.

We are who we are, and when you accept people instead of trying to change them to fit your needs, your relationships can fully blossom.

Stay at home in your mind. Don't recite other people's opinions.

But deluded people don't realize that their own mind is the Buddha. They keep searching outside.