Question 1

What is the best book to start with?

Accepted Answer

A Confession, chapters 4 to 9, then chapter 1 of The Kingdom of God Is Within You. It is short and personal, and it shows him reasoning his way to the views he became famous for.

Question 2

What is the most famous quote?

Accepted Answer

This library does not measure fame, and it does not rank lines by how often they are shared. The first line it files for Leo Tolstoy that is not marked Questionable or Misattributed is “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” (Anna Karenina, Part 1, chapter 1 (tr. Constance Garnett), Paraphrase or translation).

Question 3

What is the most misquoted line?

Accepted Answer

The library marks this as Misattributed: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” This exact wording is not in his text. It compresses a longer passage from 'Three Methods of Reform', which is listed separately. Wikiquote traces the variant to a 1999 self-help book.

Question 4

What is one key idea, in a sentence?

Accepted Answer

Non-resistance: Do not meet evil with force. He read 'resist not evil' as a literal rule, and Gandhi turned it into a political method.