Periyar quotes

There is no use of simply acquiring titles or amassing wealth if one has no self-respect and scientific knowledge.

Village reform is not merely cleaning the roads, constructing schools, and worshipping monasteries. It is not a mere celebration of festivals.

Man is equal to man. There should not be exploitation. One should help the other. No one should harm anybody. Generally, there should be no room for grievance or complaint from anybody. Everyone should live and let others live, with a national spirit.

By helping the poor, we must be able to remove their poverty. But extending help to one here and one there in the form of providing food will not remove poverty.

A male has the right to wander about as he pleases. He has the right to marry any number of girls. This practice has led to prostitution.

Wisdom lies in thinking. The spearhead of thinking is rationalism.

There is no god, there is no god, there is no god at all. He who invented god is a fool. He who propagates god is a scoundrel. He who worships god is a barbarian.

Foreigners are sending messages to the planets. We are sending rice and cereals to our dead fore-father through the Brahmins. It is a wise deed?

The word ‘Sudra’ which means ‘Son of prostitute’ should not find a place even in the history hereafter. We will not allow it to find a place in the dictionary or encycl.

Money lending is a horrible profession. If we are to call it otherwise it is lawful plundering.

The number of those who do selfless public service and those who serve without expecting any return, should increase. Their sterling qualities should show the way to the people at large. Their life would be a model to show how man should conduct himself in public life.

Marriages should culminate on account of the wishes of the couple. It is their knitting of the hearts that should lead to marriages.

Man is equal to man. There should not be exploitation. One should help the other. No one should harm anybody. Generally there should be no room for grievance or complaint from anybody. Everyone should live and let others live, with a national spirit.

As long as we give room for domination and the dominators, there will be worries and worried people. Poverty and pestilence will live eternally in the country.

Every one has the right to refute any opinion. But no one has the right to prevent its expression.

Man treats woman as his own property and not as being capable of feelings, like himself. The way man treats women is much worse than the way landlords treat servants and the high-caste treat the low-caste. These treat them so demeaningly only in situations mutually affecting them; but men treat cruelly and as slaves, from their birth till death.

The terms Husband' andWife’ are inappropriate. They are only companions ad partners. One does not slave for other. They both have equal status.

Therefore, one can observe true chastity, natural chastity, and independent chastity among the people only when these cruelties are removed and never through compulsions, a different canon for the two sexes, and commandments written by the mighty for the weak that produce only slavish chastity and enforced chastity.