Inspiring Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi
(Page 5 of 8)

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.

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.

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.