Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi (Page 3 of 4)

Non-co-operators will make a serious mistake if they seek to convert people to their creed by violence.

Freedom and slavery are mental states.

Free, open love I have looked upon as dog's love. Secret love is, besides, cowardly.

Anything that exists is possible.

What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of the British or foreign rule.

Education in the understanding of citizenship is a short-term affair if we are honest and earnest.

A fearless woman who knows that her purity is her best shield can never be dishonoured.

God is the shield of the nonviolent.

The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there.

It was not easy to commit suicide as to contemplate it.

Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it.

It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.

Religion is a thing to be lived. It is not merely sophistry.

Soul-force comes only through God's grace and never descends upon a man who is a slave to lust.

Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul force or the power of the godhead within us.

Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself?

Selfless action is a source of strength.

Never has man reached his destination by persistence in deviation from the straight path.

Where there is no strength of mind there can be no strength of soul.

Celibacy is a great help, inasmuch as it enables one to lead a life of full surrender to God.

Dignity of human nature requires that we must face the storms of life.

The renunciation of the Gita is the acid test of faith.

When a man wants to make up with his Maker, he does not consult a third party.

There's no God higher than truth.

There is no god higher than truth.

All good thoughts and ideas mean nothing without action.

Only the toad under the harrow knows where it pinches him.

When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is to stop the war.

To know music is to transfer it to life.

Non-co-operation is the nation's notice that it is no longer satisfied to be in tutelage.

Even as a tree has a single trunk, but many branches and leaves, there is one religion but any number of faiths.

God of Truth and Justice can never create distinctions of high and low among His own children.

Conquer the heart of the enemy with truth and love, not by violence.

The finite human being shall never know in its fullness Truth and Love which is itself infinite.

Untouchability is a blot on Hinduism. It is a canker eating into its vitals.

If untouchability is an integral part of Hinduism, the latter is a spent bullet.

Men like me feel that untouchability is no integral part of Hinduism, it is an excrescence.

Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability.

Untouchability, I hold, is a sin, if Bhagavadgita is one of our Divine Books.

Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability.

The attack on untouchability is an attack on this high-and low-ness.

Untouchability is an error of long standing.

Untouchability is a terrible reality.

My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity.

I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning the freedom of India.

The purification required is not of untouchables but of the so-called superior castes.

Anger, lust and such other evil passions raging in the heart are the real untouchables.

Even a little untruth destroys a man, as a drop of poison ruins milk.

Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil often are found together.

I call myself a labourer because I take pride in calling myself a spinner, weaver, farmer and scavenger.

Satyagraha, of which civil resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life.

Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and ahimsa don't go together any more that water and fire.

A person unbound by vows can never be absolutely relied upon.

Blind adoration, in the age of action, is perfectly valueless, is often embarrassing and, equally, often painful.

The force of the spirit is ever progressive and endless. Its full expression makes it unconquerable in the world.

With every true friendship, we build more firmly the foundations on which the peace of the whole world rests.

If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood.

In matters concerning religion, I consider myself not a child but an adult with 35 years of experience.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry.

It is necessary first to purify the drunken and dissolute worshippers in charge of some of these temples.

Keep your values positive, because your values become your destiny.

A balanced intellect presupposes a harmonious growth of body, mind and soul.

Unless our hands go hand in hand with our heads, we will be able to do nothing whatsoever.

A man's true wealth hereafter is the good he has done to his fellowmen.

Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit.

We must become the change we want to see.

Even a single lamp dispels the deepest darkness.

Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in the human evolution.

Ahimsa can be practiced only towards those that are inferior to you in every way.

How can I even secretly harbour the thought that my neighbour's faith is inferior to mine?

The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction.

Ahimsa in theory no one knows. It is as indefinable as God.

The Vedas are as indefinable as God and Hinduism.

There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything.

Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them.

When large numbers of wholly innocent men are in jail, we may take it that Swaraj is at hand.

The earth has everything for all human needs, but nothing for his greed.

India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.

Every fight is one between different angles of vision illuminating the same truth.

Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.

It amazes me to find an intelligent person who fights against something which he does not at all believe exists.

All true art must help the soul to realize its inner self.

Life is one indivisible whole.

All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect and liable to error.

There is always a limit to self-indulgence, but none to self-restraint.

When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books.

A faith gained in strength only when people were willing to lay down their lives for it.

A vow imparts stability, ballast and firmness to one's character.

What the two hands of the labourer can achieve, the capitalist will never get with all his gold and silver.

Kashmir is the real test of secularism in India.

All the dry ethics of the world turn to dust because apart from God they are lifeless.

Personally I like to believe that all become honest, the millennium is round the corner!

Machinery is the chief symbol of modern civilization; it represents a great sin.

The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince's head.

God is omnipresent; even a pebble in the Narmada can represent Him and serve as an object of worship.

To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.

The message of khaddar can penetrate to the remotest villages if we only will that it shall be so.

I believe in absolute oneness of God and therefore also of humanity.

The final goal of all religions is to realise the essential oneness.

An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity.

There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of nonviolence.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won.

Let our lives be open books for all to study.

A vow must lead one upwards, never downwards towards perdition.

Evil is, good or truth misplaced.

A man who wants to control his animal passions easily does so if he controls his palate.

Centralization as a system is inconsistent with a non-violent structure of society.

If love or non-violence be not the law of our being, the whole of my argument falls to pieces.

Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms.

So long as we fear the outside world, we must cease to think of Swaraj.

Mankind is one, seeing that all are equally subject to the moral law. All men are equal in God's eyes.

It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man.

For me popular violence is as much an obstruction in our path as the Government violence.

That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values.

I should wish to die if a man who is impure should parade his purity in front of me.

Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.

No empire intoxicated with the red wine of power and the plunder of weaker races has yet lived long in this world.

Voluntary service of others demands the best of which one is capable, and must take precedence over service of self.

Swaraj, without any qualifying clause, includes that which is better than the best one can conceive or have today.

I must try to live in society and yet remain untouched by its pitfalls.

A resolute and wise refusal to take part in festivities will be an incentive for introspection and self-purification.

If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.

I must not refrain from saying that India can gain more by waiving the right of punishment.

The removal of untouchability is a question of the purification of Hinduism.

Carrying arms for the removal of the Arms Act can never fall under any scheme of nonviolence.

The propagation of truth and nonviolence can be done less by books than by actually living on those principles.

Every expression of truth has in it the seeds of propagation, even as the sun cannot hide its light.

Real beauty is my aim.

A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognizing the dignity of labour.

Renunciation is everyone's prerogative.

Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself.

What God may have enabled me to do is but a repayment of debt, and he who repays a debt deserves no praise.

God demands nothing less than self -- surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having.

There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it.

Touch-me-notism that disfigures the present day Hinduism is a morbid growth.

Prosecution of the constructive programme means constructing the structure of Swaraj.

Cow-protection can only be secured by cultivating universal friendliness, i.e. ahimsa.

Sanitation is more important than Independence.

Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and be self-contained.

The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die.

One hour spent in spinning should be an hour of self-development for the spinner.

A nonviolent life is an act of self-examination and self-purification, whether by an individual, group or nation.

Robust faith in oneself and brave trust of the opponent, so called or real, is the best safeguard.

The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.

My firm belief is that he reveals Himself daily to every human being but we shut our ears to the still small Voice.

God has been described by all the scriptures of the world as protector and saviour of the sinner.

It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt.

Swaraj would be real Swaraj only when there would be no occasion for safeguarding any rights.

A man of faith will remain steadfast to truth even though the whole world might appear to be enveloped in falsehood.

A devotee of Rama may be said to be the same as the steadfast one (sthitaprajnya) of the Gita.

To shirk taking of vows betrays indecision and want of resolution.

If the poet spun for half an hour daily, his poetry would gain in richness.

The spinning wheel is not meant to oust a single man or woman from his or her occupation.

No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will.

Begin your day with prayer, and make it so soulful that it may remain with you until the evening.

As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence.

Nonviolence is a plant of slow growth, it grows imperceptibly but surely.

Let not the spirit wander while the words of prayer run on out of our mouth.

Whatever can be useful to those starving millions is beautiful to my mind.

To a starving man, God can only appear in the form of bread.

I cannot be subservient anywhere.

God's word is : He who strives never perishes.

Every calamity should lead to a thorough cleansing of individual as well as social life.

All the other industries will receive warmth and sustenance from khadi industry.

God alone is truth, everything else is transitory and illusory.

No nation keeps another in subjection without herself turning into a subject nation.

What is life worth without trials and tribulations which are the salt of life.

My politics is my religion, my religion is my politics.

Knowledge gained through experience is far superior and many times more useful than bookish knowledge.

True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth.

Nonviolence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution; its vast possibilities are yet unexplored.

Repression does for a true man or a nation what fire does for gold.

A true man of piety will consider himself a sinner and, therefore, untouchable.

It is my unshakable belief that India's destiny is to deliver the message of nonviolence to mankind.

I still somehow or other fancy that my philosophy represents the true meaning of the teaching of the Gita.

No Indian who aspires to follow the way of true religion can afford to remain aloof from politics.

My knowledge of the letter of the Shastras is better, but of true religion they are able to give me but little.

True religion being the greatest thing in life and in the world, has been exploited the most.

It is a travesty of true religion to consider one's own religion as superior and other's as inferior.

Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.

It is a crime and a sin to regard a person as untouchable because he is born in a particular community.

Our struggle does not end so long as there is a single human being considered untouchable on account of his birth.

Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.

To practice nonviolence in mundane matters is to know its true value.

Creation of effective public opinion depends on the cultivation of true courage, born of truthfulness and nonviolence.

India has an unbroken tradition of nonviolence from times immemorial.

Vehement writing, even if it is charged with truth, is no answer to violent action.

Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world.

I believe that the yarn we spin is capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life!

You have the choice to create the life your heart is yearning to live.

The most distinctive and largest contribution of Hinduism to India's culture is the doctrine of ahimsa.

The problem today is not lack of proper resources, but lack of proper distribution.

Today the cities dominate and drain the villages so that they are crumbling to ruin.

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.

Though God may be Love, God is Truth above all.

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.

If non-violence is the Law of our being, the future is with Women.

We may not be God, but we are of God, even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.

It's not just words. Action expresses priorities.

Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.