"If I was not fighting against child labor, I don't know what else I could do. It was always in my heart, I could not live without that … It's really a kind of spiritual feeling which is difficult to explain … And the smiles come on the face of the children when they realize that they are free. … When you are living in a globalized economy and a globalized world, you cannot live in isolation, all the problems and solutions are interconnected, and so the problem of child labor in any part of the world is your problem. … The world should have one thing in mind — if the children are exploited in any part of the world, if the children are deprived of their childhood in any part of the world, the world cannot live in peace … The world cannot be human."

“It was a passion from my childhood to work for children, I carried it forward. I have been very strongly advocating that poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labour. It perpetuates poverty. If children are deprived of education, they remain poor.”

“I work in 144 countries. I work in Africa with equal passion, in Latin America with equal passion. I've worked in Pakistan with equal passion. So it is a global fight. But I'm proud that India is where this fight began and it began through me. Then, it spread to other countries. We are born in the land of the Mahatma where solutions are made with peace and non-violence. I've been working 100% through non-violent means. I strongly believe in the principles of peace in all my fight.”

“My mother saw me being attacked. She cried when I left engineering for this cause. She understood my fight, encouraged me. I remember all those who were with me in this struggle, including two colleagues who were killed. Whenever I free children from slavery and take them back to their mothers, the tears of happiness in their eyes are like blessings of God. When I see the faces of liberated children, I find their smile of freedom divine and it gives me divine strength. I never feel I'm liberating them, rather it feels like they're giving me freedom.”

“I think of it all as a test. This is a moral examination that one has to pass... to stand up against such social evils.”

“Poverty must not be used as an excuse to continue child labor and exploitation of children … It’s a triangular relationship between child labor, poverty and illiteracy, and I have been trying to fight all of these things together.”

“I hope that youngsters and civil society organizations and every Indian will feel proud. It is a noble cause to work for the rights of children. It is a movement against child labour and everyone must join it.”