François Gautier Quotes

“Being married to a daughter of India is a natural complement of my being in this country for 30 years. My roots are very much in this country, even though I remain a Westerner.”

“I have an interest in spirituality, and it opens up so many different areas of Indian life.”

“I have no intention of going back to France, except for yearly visits to meet my family.”

“I started writing and photographing for different publications and finally ended up being the correspondent in South Asia, for the Geneva-based Journal de Genève, which at one time used to be one of the best international newspapers in Europe.”

“I was born in Paris in 1950. I had a strict upper-class Catholic education but I never really fitted in the system and revolted against it quite early.”

“Many live in the ivory tower called reality; they never venture on the open sea of thought.”

“More important than the quest for certainty is the quest for clarity.”

“The West remains obsessed by the caste system.”

“An organization should be like a picture frame. The frame shouldn’t eat away the picture. In other words, just as it isn’t possible to hold a picture in the absence of a frame, without an organization any work, whether spiritual or social, can’t happen. At the same time, if the organization becomes too bureaucratic, it’s like the frame eating the picture away.”

“Half the health we spend gaining our wealth, and then spend half our wealth trying to gain back our health. This is not a very intelligent thing to do.”

“Life without wisdom is incomplete. Wisdom that does not give rise to feelings is incomplete. Feeling that does not transfer into action is incomplete. Action that does not give rise to fulfillment is incomplete. Fulfillment is returning to self.”

“You accept food and music from every part of the world without reservation, don’t you? You don’t have to be Danish to eat Danish pastries or Italian to eat pasta and pizzas. You don’t have to be a German to enjoy Beethoven or an Indian to listen to sitar music. Why then, when it comes to wisdom, do we become so narrow-minded?”