
“Let us cultivate our garden.”
Citas, Candide (1759)
Source: A Woman's Thoughts About Women (1858), Ch. 8
Context: Let every one of us cultivate, in every word that issues from our mouth, absolute truth. I say cultivate, because to very few people — as may be noticed of most young children — does truth, this rigid, literal veracity, come by nature. To many, even who love it and prize it dearly in others, it comes only after the self-control, watchfulness, and bitter experience of years.
“Let us cultivate our garden.”
Citas, Candide (1759)
Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech (2012)
Slavery and Freedom (1939), p. 147
Context: There is absolute truth in anarchism and it is to be seen in its attitude to the sovereignty of the state and to every form of state absolutism. … The religious truth of anarchism consists in this, that power over man is bound up with sin and evil, that a state of perfection is a state where there is no power of man over man, that is to say, anarchy. The Kingdom of God is freedom and the absence of such power... the Kingdom of God is anarchy.
“God's mouth knows not how to speak falsehood, but he brings to pass every word.”
Source: Prometheus Bound, lines 1032–1033
Selected Shorter Writings (Phillipsburg: PRR Publishing, 1970), p. 463
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 572.
The Uttarpara Address (1909)
Context: That which we call the Hindu religion is really the eternal religion, because it is the universal religion which embraces all others. If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose. This is the one religion that can triumph over materialism by including and anticipating the discoveries of science and the speculations of philosophy. It is the one religion which impresses on mankind the closeness of God to us and embraces in its compass all the possible means by which man can approach God. It is the one religion which insists every moment on the truth which all religions acknowledge that He is in all men and all things and that in Him we move and have our being. It is the one religion which enables us not only to understand and believe this truth but to realise it with every part of our being. It is the one religion which shows the world what the world is, that it is the Lila of Vasudeva. It is the one religion which shows us how we can best play our part in that Lila, its subtlest laws and its noblest rules. It is the one religion which does not separate life in any smallest detail from religion, which knows what immortality is and has utterly removed from us the reality of death.
“There is one river of truth, which receives tributaries from every side.”
Stromata (Miscellanies, c. 198–203 AD), I: 5.
Variant: Variant translation: There is one river of truth, but many streams fall into it on this side and that.
Source: How to Become President (1940), Ch. 6 : How not to offend anybody