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Essay Topic: Education

• “Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.” Nelson Mandela
• “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.” Mahatma Gandhi
• “Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.” Margaret Mead
• “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learnt in school.” Einstein
• “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.” Aristotle
• Intelligence plus character - that is the goal of true education.
• Education is a bridge from misery to hope
• “Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man.” Swami Vivekananda
• Education that does not mould the character is absolutely worthless. – Mahatma Gandhi
• To educate a person in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to the society – Theodore Roosevelt
• The object of education is to prepare the young to educate themselves throughout their lives.
• “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” - Martin Luther King
• “You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” ― Brigham Young

Essay Topic: Science and Religion

• “All thinking men are atheists.” Ernest Hemingway
• “The notion that Science and Spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” Carl Sagan
• “Science without Religion is lame and Religion without Science is blind” Einstein
• “What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” Christopher Hitchens
• “Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.” - Martin Luther King

Essay Topic: Democracy

• “The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.” Churchill
• “The tyranny of a prince in an oligarchy is not so much dangerous to the public welfare as the apathy of a citizen in a democracy” Montesquieu
• “The ballot is stronger than the bullet.” Abraham Lincoln
• “There cannot be daily democracy without daily citizenship.” Ralph Nader
• ”I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong.” Mahatma Gandhi
• “Democracy is not law of the majority but protection of the minority.” Albert Camus
• “In a democracy, the individual enjoys not only the ultimate power, but carries the ultimate responsibility.” Norman Cousins
• Government exists for the interests of the governed, not for the governors.” - Thomas Jefferson
• “The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men.” - Plato

Essay Topic: Materialism/Consumerism/Environment

• The Earth does not belong to us: we belong to the Earth
• “The world has enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s greed.” Mahatma Gandhi
• Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans
• We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors, we borrow it from our children.
• We never know the worth of water till the well is dry.

Essay Topic: Peace/Justice

• “When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace.” William Gladstone
• “Peace and Justice are two sides of the same coin.” Eisenhower
• “Poverty is the worst form of violence.” Mahatma Gandhi
• Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed – Eisenhower
• The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.”
• “There was never a bad peace or a good war.”
• “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
• War does not decide who is right but who is left.”
• The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” ― Martin Luther King Jr.
• Loka Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu (Let the whole world be prosperous and peaceful)

Essay Topic: Judiciary
Yatho Dharma Thatho Jayaha: Where there is justice, there is victory.

Essay Topic: Corruption

• As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in remaking the world but in remaking ourselves - Mahatma Gandhi
• Confucius - Righteousness is the foundation stone of peace and good governance.
• Buddha - Dharma is the foundation stone of good governance
• The worst disease in the world today is corruption. And there is a cure: transparency Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.

Essay Topic: Caste
The caste system is opposed to the religion of the Vedanta. Caste is a social custom, and all our great preachers have tried to break it down. —Swami Vivekananda

Conclusion Phrases

Gandhiji’s Talisman

• Sarve Bhavantu Sukhina (May all be Happy)
  Sarve Santu Niramaya (May all be without disease)
  //Sarve Bhadrani Pashyantu (May all have well-being)
  Maa Kaschit Dukh Bhagh Bhavet (May none have misery of any sort)//
• Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam
  (Whole world is one family)
  (Asato ma Sadgamaya) From unrighteousness to righteousness
  (Tamaso ma jyotirgamaya) From darkness to light
  (Mrityorma Amritgamaya) From mortality towards immortality
• Sarva Dharma Sama Bhava – [Ramakrishna Paramahamsa and Vivekananda] All religions are equal. - first used by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 in Harijan

Seva Parmo Dharma
Service, in our Indian ethos, is the ultimate duty
Satyamev Jayate
Ahimsa Parmo Dharma

Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

• “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
• “Happiness is when what you think, what you say and what you do are in harmony.”
• “An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
• “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”
• “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory.”
• “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from indomitable will.”
• “The good man is the friend of all living things.”
• “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”
• “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
• “Violent means will give violent freedom.”
• “There is higher courts than courts of justice and that is conscience.”
• “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonesty.”
• “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”

Essay Topic: Hunger

• Hunger is actually the worst weapon of mass destruction. It claims millions of victims each year."
• “There are people in the world, so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

Essay Topic: Privacy
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”

Essay Topic: Free Speech

• Freedom is the right to tell people what they do not want to hear
• I do not agree with what you have to say, but I'll defend to the death your right to say it. – Voltaire
• Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high
• Where knowledge is free
• Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
• By narrow domestic walls
• Where words come out from the depth of truth
• Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection
• Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way
• Into the dreary desert sand of dead habit
• Where the mind is led forward by thee
• Into ever-widening thought and action
• Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake