“It is my firm belief that if our plans of education are followed up, there will not be a single idolator among the respectable classes of Bengal thirty years hence.”

Speech delivered at the East India Association, London, on 13th May 1870. See Female Education in India for full speech.

Section 9 : Ethical Outlook
Founding Address (1876), Life and Destiny (1913)
Context: The question what to believe is perhaps the most momentous that anyone can put to himself. Our beliefs are not to be classed among the luxuries, but among the necessaries of existence. They become particularly important in times of trouble. They are like the life-boats carried by ocean ships. As long as the sea is smooth and there is every appearance of a prosperous voyage, the passengers seldom take note of the boats or inquire into their sea-worthiness. But when the storm breaks and danger approaches, then the capacity of the boats and their soundness become matters of the first importance.

Letter 330, to Christopher Isherwood, 28 August 1938
Selected Letters (1983-1985)

Source: Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (1968), "Philosophy as a Revolutionary Weapon", p. 2

Cardinal Winning Lecture (February 2, 2008)

1890s, Plessy v. Ferguson (1896)
Context: In view of the constitution, in the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.

Retrospection of his own life. From this phrase, alternative names for each decades of human life are derived in Chinese.
Source: The Analects, Chapter II

Parnassus, Preface