Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. 

If you give me rice, I’ll eat today; if you teach me how to grow rice, I’ll eat every day. 

A principle is a principle and in no case can it be watered down because of our incapacity to live it in practice. We have to strive to achieve it, and the striving should be conscious, deliberate and hard. 

Nothing is impossible for pure love. 

To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves. 

I want to realize brotherhood or identity not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such things as crawl upon earth. 

Patience means self-suffering. 

I am part and parcel of the whole and cannot find God apart from the rest of humanity. 

If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed ? but hate these things in yourself, not in another. 

It is the law of love that rules mankind. 

The very first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance, loving kindness. 

It Is possible to live in peace. 

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it 

If we wish to create a lasting peace we must begin with the children. 

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. 

There is no road towards peace; peace is the road 

Three quarters of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world would finish if people were to put on the shoes of their adversaries and understood their points of view 

It is my conviction that nothing enduring can be built on violence. The only safe way to overcome an enemy is to make of that enemy a friend. 

See the good in people and help them. 

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives. 

Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views. 

To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness. 

If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them. 

When you know the truth, the truth makes you a soldier. 

I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest. Even if the sacrifice demanded my very life, I hope I may be prepared to give it. 

It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business. 

If one takes care of the means, the end will take care of itself. 

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises, he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. 

Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs the matchless and pure strength of faith. 

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry… 

While everything around me is ever changing, ever dying, there is underlying that change a living power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates…. For I can see in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. 

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

There’s enough on this planet for everyone’s needs but not for everyone’s greed. 

Roving dogs do not indicate the civilisation or compassion of the society. They betray on the country the ignorance and lethargy of its members. 

I believe in the essential unity of all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one person gains spiritually, the whole world gains, and that if one person falls, the whole world falls to that extent. 

To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of all creation as oneself. 

What is faith if it is not translated into action? 

At times of writing I never think what I have said before. My aim is not to be consistent with my previous statements on a given question, but to be consistent with truth as it may present itself to me at a given moment. The result has been that I have grown from truth to truth. 

Detachment is not indifference. it is the prerequisite for effective involvement. Often what we think is best for others is distorted by our attachments to our opinions. We want others to be happy in the way we think they should be happy. It is only when we want nothing for ourselves that we are able to see clearly into others needs and understand how to serve them. 

We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime. 

The golden way is to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family as one. 

Nonviolence means an ocean of compassion. It means shedding from us every trace of ill will for others. It does not mean abjectness or timidity, or fleeing in fear. It means, on the contrary, firmness of mind and courage, a resolute spirit. 

There is no god higher than truth. 

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind. 

Everyone wants to be strong and self sufficient, but few are willing to put in the work necessary to achieve worthy goals. 

Adversity is the mother of progress. 

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

Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. 

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul. 

I think it would be a good idea. 

Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it. 

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. 

If we were to drive out the English with the weapons with which they enslaved us, our slavery would still be with us even when they have gone. 

Hinduism is a living organism liable to growth and decay subject to the laws of Nature. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. The changes in the season affect it. It has its autumn and its summer, its winter and its spring. It is, and is not, based on scriptures. It does not derive its authority from one book. Non violence has found the highest expression and application in Hinduism. 

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

If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence. 

That which looks for mercy from an opponent is not non-violence. 

Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one’s opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth. 

In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things [as the war] to go on. My non-violence seems almost impotent. But the answer comes at the end of the daily quarrel that neither God nor non-violence is impotent. Impotence is in men. I must try on without losing faith even though I may break in the attempt. 

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary. 

A non-violent revolution is not a program of seizure of power. It is a program of transformation of relationships, ending in a peaceful transfer of power. 

It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator. 

The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice. 

A vow is fixed and unalterable determination to do a thing, when such a determination is related to something noble which can only uplift the man who makes the resolve. 

As the means, so the end. 

By education, I mean an all-round drawing of the best in child and man in body, mind and spirit. 

The real difficulty is that people have no idea of what education truly is. We assess the value of education in the same manner as we assess the value of land or of shares in the stock-exchange market. We want to provide only such education as would enable the student to earn more. We hardly give any thought to the improvement of the character of the educated. The girls, we say, do not have to earn; so why should they be educated? As long as such ideas persist there is no hope of our ever knowing the true value of education. 

A teacher who establishes rapport with the taught, becomes one with them, learns more from them than he teaches them. He who learns nothing from his disciples is, in my opinion, worthless. Whenever I talk with someone I learn from him. I take from him more than I give him. In this way, a true teacher regards himself as a student of his students. If you will teach your pupils with this attitude, you will benefit much from them. 

Basic education links the children, whether of the cities or the villages, to all that is best and lasting in India. 

Love requires that true education should be easily accessible to all and should be of use to every villager in this daily life. The emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one’s life usefully is the best education for citizenship. 

Education should be so revolutionized as to answer the wants of the poorest villager, instead of answering those of an imperial exploiter. 

Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind. 

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

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education. 

The person who discovered the law of love was a far greater scientist than any of our modern scientists. Only our explorations have not gone far enough and so it is not possible for everyone to see all its workings. 

I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease. 

It has often occurred to me that a seeker after truth has to be silent. 

My greatest weapon is mute prayer. 

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. Freedom and slavery are mental states. 

An eye for an eye makes us all blind. 

Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals? 

Real beauty is my aim. 

Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today. 

Love never claims, it ever gives. 

That atomic energy though harnessed by American scientists and army men for destructive purposes may be utilised by other scientists for humanitarian purposes is undoubtedly within the realm of possibility. … An incendiary uses fire for his destructive and nefarious purpose, a housewife makes daily use of it in preparing nourishing food for mankind. 

If you want to change the world, be that change. 

Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you. 

It is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others’ religions as we would have them respect our own, a friendly study of the world’s religions is a sacred duty. 

A nation’s greatness is measured by how it treats its weakest members. 

To a man with an empty stomach food is God 

Heroes are made in the hour of defeat. Success is, therefore, well described as a series of glorious defeats. 

War is an unmitigated evil. But it certainly does one good thing. It drives away fear and brings bravery to the surface. 

A friendly study of the world’s religions is a sacred duty. 

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. 

There is no god greater than truth. 

Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only for our own happiness, but that of the world at large. 

Whether humanity will consciously follow the law of love, I do not know. But that need not disturb me. The law will work just as the law of gravitation works whether we accept it or not. 

God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west… keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts. 

Live simply that others might simply live. 

Non-violence … is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. 

So far as I can see the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. 

Everyone has faith in God though everyone does not know it. For everyone has faith in himself and that multiplied to the nth degree is God. The sum total of all that lives is God. We may not be God, but we are of God, even as a little drop of water is of the ocean. 

Many could forgo heavy meals, a full wardrobe, a fine house, etcetera. It is the ego they cannot forgo. 

Generosity consists not the sum given, but the manner in which it is bestowed 

There is not a moment when I do not feel the presence of a Witness whose eye misses nothing and with whom I strive to keep in tune. 

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization. 

If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. When once we have grasped this point, final victory is beyond question. Whatever difficulties we encounter, whatever apparent reverses we sustain, we may not give up the quest for truth. 

Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections. 

Love is the law of life. 

The pure love of one soul can offset the hatred of millions. 

We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do… We believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race. 

Love has more force than a besieging army. 

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. 

Life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. Death is as necessary for man’s growth as life itself. 

God comes to the hungry in the form of food. 

Honesty is incompatible with amassing a large fortune. 

Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be. 

A man who is swayed by negative emotions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth. 

Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock. 

I have known many meat eaters to be far more nonviolent than vegetarians. 

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die. 

The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork. 

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest… no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak… Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism… true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village. 

Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher laws – to the strength of the spirit. 

One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. 

To give one’s heart is to give all. 

A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless. 

Forces of nature act in a mysterious manner. We can but solve the mystery by deducing the unknown result from the known results of similar events. 

Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth. 

Unity, to be real, must stand the severest strain without breaking. 

It is the reformer who is anxious for the reform, and not society, from which he should expect nothing better than opposition, abhorrence and even mortal persecution. 

Courtesy towards opponents and eagerness to understand their view-point is the ABC of non-violence. 

It ill becomes us to invoke in our daily prayers the blessings of God, the Compassionate, if we in turn will not practice elementary compassion toward our fellow creatures. 

All our philosophy is as dry as dust if it is not immediately translated into some act of living service. 

Every worthy act is difficult. Ascent is always difficult. Descent is easy and often slippery. 

I consider myself a Hindu, Christian, Moslem, Jew, Buddhist and Confucian. 

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world. I believe that they are all God- given and I believe that they were necessary for the people to whom these religions were revealed. And I believe that if only we could all of us read the scriptures of the different faiths from the standpoints of the followers of these faiths, we should find that they were at bottom all one and were all helpful to one another. 

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn. 

I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence. 

The path of self-purification is hard and steep. One has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world’s praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. 

Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares. 

People become what they expect themselves to become 

Well, India is a country of nonsense 

Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness. 

I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility. 

The Bhagavad-Gita calls on humanity to dedicate body, mind and soul to pure duty and not to become mental voluptuaries at the mercy of random desires and undisciplined impulses. 

I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability which is amazing and he seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed. 

Duly Enlightened Gandhi’s head by Mall of the ‘Free Press Journal,’ Bombay, in 1932Watches may disagree, but let us not. 

Everything we do is futile, but we must do it anyway. 

Go for the throat. If you cant, go for the nads. 

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

The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country’s and ultimately that of the whole of mankind. 

I eat to live, to serve, and also, if it so happens, to enjoy, but I do not eat for the sake of enjoyment. 

God is Truth, Truth is God. 

I am, and have been for years, a confirmed anti-vaccinationist…I have not the least doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process that is harmful in the end. 

Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue. 

Speak only if it improves upon the silence. 

Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two. What is obtained by love is retained for all time. What is obtained by hatred proves a burden in reality for it increases hatred.” – by Mohandas K. Gandhi – 

it’s easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone 

Before [Hindus and Moslems] dare think of freedom, they must be brave enough to love one another, to tolerate one another’s religion, even prejudices and superstitions, and to trust one another. This requires faith in oneself. 

Is the God of the Mahometan different from the God of the Hindu? Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? Wherein is the cause for quarreling? 

I came to the conclusion long ago . . . that all religions were true, and also that all had some error in them. 

My own veneration for other faiths is the same as that for my own faith; therefore no thought of conversion is possible 

Do not crave to know the views of others, nor base your intent thereon. To think independently for yourself is a sign of fearlessness. 

My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth 

Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live 

The process of learning should be as far as possible a pleasurable one and not laborious 

Speed is irrelevant if you are going in the wrong direction. 

I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth…as my life consists of nothing but those experiments. 

Sanitation is more important than Independence. 

We have to be the change we want in the world. 

As long as the superstition that people should obey unjust laws exists, so long will slavery exist 

As a rule, the mind, residing in a body that has become weakened by pampering, is also weak, and where there is no strength of mind there can be no strength of soul. 

You Christians look after a document containing enough dynamite to blow all civilisation to pieces, turn the world upside down and bring peace to a battle-torn planet. But you treat it as though it is nothing more than a piece of literature. 

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

But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep. 

Don’t let anybody walk trough your mind with dirty feet. 

I am a passionate seeker after truth which is but another name for God. 

Never make a promise in haste. 

No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ill together. Sacrifice is ‘making sacred’. He must be a poor specimen of humanity who is in need of sympathy for his sacrifice. 

The greater our innocence, the greater our strength and the swifter our victory 

There are two days in the year that we can not do anything, yesterday and tomorrow 

People cannot hurt you without your permission. 

Nature Cure is so simple easy and cheap…..this system of treatment should be used. 

Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself 

When you surrender completely to God, as the only truth worth having, you find yourself in service of all that exists. It becomes your joy and recreation. You never tire of serving others. 

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality. 

The story of Ramakrishna is a story of religion in practice. His life enables us to see God face to face…. In this age of skepticism Ramakrishna presents an example of a bright and living faith which gives solace to thousands of men and women who would otherwise have remained without spiritual light. 

It will be necessary for us Indians – Hindus, Muslims, Christians, Jews, Parsis and all others to whom India is their home – to recognize a common flag to live and die for. 

At the individual level Swaraj is vitally connected with the capacity for dispassionate self-assessment , ceaseless self purification and growing self-reliance…. It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves 

If we know how much passive violence we perpetrate against one another, we will understand why there is so much physical violence plaguing societies and the world. 

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

We cannot be speakers who do not listen. But neither can we be listeners who do not speak. 

The earth has enough resources for our need, but not for our greed. 

The measure of a country’s greatness should be based on how well it cares for its most vulnerable populations. 

There is little that separates humans from other sentient beings – we all feel joy, we all deeply crave to be alive and to live freely, and we all share this planet together. 

Spiritually, compulsory disarmament has made us unmanly, and the presence of an alien army of occupation, employed with deadly effect to crush in us the spirit of resistance, has made us think we cannot look after ourselves or put up a defense against foreign aggression, or even defend our homes and families… 

Learn as if you will live forever. 

In the midst of darkness, light persists. 

A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women 

Non-cooperatio n with evil is a sacred duty. 

The soul of India lives in its villages. 

A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness can be spread without diminishing that of yourself. 

The truth can never be wrong, even if no one hears it. 

Far more indispensable then food for the physical body is spiritual nourishment for the soul. One can do without food for a considerable time, but a man of the spirit cannot exist for a single second without spiritual nourishment. 

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness. 

God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know. 

To a hungry man, a piece of bread is the face of God. 

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

There are no good-byes, where ever you’ll be, you’ll be in my heart. 

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

Those who cannot renounce attachment to the results of their work are far from the path. 

The one religion is beyond all speech. 

Faith is put to the test when the situation is most difficult. 

Faith becomes lame, when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason! 

A leader is useless when he acts against the promptings of his own conscience. 

To retaliate against the relatives of the co-religionists of the wrong-doer is a cowardly act. 

Ashram means a community of men of religion. I feel that an ashram was a necessity of life for me. 

If you want real peace in the world, start with children. 

I have no disciples, being myself an aspirant after discipleship and in search of a guru. 

The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice. 

I believe that there is no prayer without fasting and there is no real fast without prayer. 

One can measure the greatness and the moral progress of a nation by looking at how it treats its animals. 

I wish to change there minds, not kill them for weaknesses we all poses. 

When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is nonviolence. 

Peace is the most powerful weapon of mankind. 

The real love is to love them that hate you, to love your neighbor even though you distrust him. 

God lives, but not as we. His creatures live but to die. But God is life. Therefore, goodness is not an attribute. Goodness is God. 

I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ. 

There are as many different religions as there are individuals. 

The world is big enough to satisfy everyones needs, but will always be too small to satisfy everyones greed 

What we can do, we will try to do. 

I find that we are all such sinners that it is better to leave the judging to God. 

Literary education must follow the education of the hand -the one gift that distinguishes man from beast. 

Forgiveness is the virtue of the brave. 

I can not give you the reference of Ram Chandar or Krishna, because they were not historical figures. I can not help it but to present to you the names of (Hazrat) Abu Bakar (RA) and (Hazrat) Umar Farooq (RA). They were leaders of a vast Empire, yet they lived a life of austerity. 

It is for us to make the effort. The result is always in God’s hands. 

You can’t lead a true life without suffering 

I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. A thoughtless word hardly ever escaped my tongue or pen. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. We find so many people impatient to talk. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth. 

All truths, not merely ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs, are highly beautiful. 

You may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them. 

You can judge a society by the way it treats it’s animals 

If you do nothing there will be no results 

Find purpose. The means will follow. 

Illness or disease is only Nature’s warning that filth has accumulated in some portion or other of the body; and it would surely be the part of wisdom to allow Nature to remove the filth, instead of covering it up with the help of medicines. 

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? 

My faith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness. 

The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members 

Violence will prevail over violence, only when someone can prove to me that darkness can be dispelled by darkness 

Prayer from the heart can achieve what nothing else can in the world. 

In the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. 

The way to truth lies through ahimsa (nonviolence). 

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

My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving the dear ones unprotected. 

Start changing yourself if you want to change the life around you. 

Think of the poorest person you know and see if your next act will be of any use to him. 

Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself. 

Genuine laughter is true eloquence and more effective than speech 

A full and candid admission of one’s mistakes should make proof against its repetition. 

Truth and nonviolence demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be. 

The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right. 

Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies. 

My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all-embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount the distress or exploitation of other nationalities. 

By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, if I secure it at the hands of my opponent, I should bow down my head to him. 

It will profit you nothing to remember old wrongs and nurse old enmities. 

The Bible is as much a book of religion with me as the Gita and the Koran. 

Religion is not what you will get after reading all the scriptures of the world. It is not really what is grasped by the grain. It is a heart grasp. 

Peace is the state where love abides and seeks to share itself. 

I am a Christian and a Hindu and a Muslim and a Jew. 

An institution that suffers from a plethora of leaders is surely in a bad way. 

A mother would never by choice sleep in a wet bed but she would gladly do so in order to spare the dry bed for her child. 

I have not know a worthy son to whom his mother appeared ugly. 

To conceal ignorance is to increase it. An honest confession of it, however, gives ground for the hope that it will diminish some day or the other. 

Non-violence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves. 

Weeding is as necessary to agriculture as sowing. 

Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all, but let not democracy degenerate into mobocracy. 

I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice. 

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice. 

I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of a better one. Tolerance may imply a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one’s own, whereas ahirhsa teaches us to entertain the same respect for the religious faiths of others as we accord to our own, thus admitting the imperfection of the latter. 

[Upon being asked what he thought of Western civilization:] It would be a good idea. 

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent. 

We must be the change we wish to see in the world. 

Whatever the ultimate fate of my country, my love for you remains, and will remain, undiminished. My non-violence demands universal love, and you are not a small part of it. It is that love which has prompted my appeal to you. 

I’m a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience, which is God. 

There are limits to self-indulgence, none to restraint. 

If India adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her religion and introduced it in her politics. Swaraj would descend upon India from heaven. But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet. 

In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy. 

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. 

Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave. 

There is no love where there is no will. 

A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. 

Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding. 

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem. 

Faith is a function of the heart…. 

A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success. 

A correct diagnosis is three-fourths the remedy. 

I do not want a kingdom, or heaven; what I want is to remove the trouble of the oppressed, the poor, and the needy. 

Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love. 

Faith is not a delicate flower which would wither away under the slightest stormy weather. 

To forgive and accept injustice is cowardice. 

I do not regard flesh-food as necessary for us at any stage and under any clime in which it is possible for human beings ordinarily to live, I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. 

I believe in the doctrine of non-violence as a weapon of the weak. I believe in the doctrine of non-violence as a weapon of the strongest. I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed. 

In this age of the rule of brute force, it is almost impossible for anyone to believe that any one else could possibly reject the law of the final supremacy of brute force. 

I can combine the greatest love with the greatest opposition to wrong. 

All my actions have their rise in my inalienable love of mankind. 

My doctrine means that I must identify myself with life, with everything that lives, that I must share the majesty of life in the presence of God. The sum-total of this life is God. .. Man is not at peace with himself until he has become like unto God. The endeavor to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realisation. This self-realisation is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures… to be a real devotee is to realise oneself. Self-realisation is not something apart. 

No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor and, instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal. 

Civility does not …mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good. 

The only true resistance to this Government… [is] to cease to co-operate with it. 

Be the change you want to see. 

If you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold. 

The goal ever recedes from us. The greater the progress the greater the recognition of our unworthiness. Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. 

I do not seek redemption from the consequences of my sin. I seek to be redeemed from sin itself. Until I have attained that end, I shall be content to be restless. 

There is no one without faults, not even men of God. They are men of God not because they are faultless, but because they know their faults, they strive against them, they do not hide them, and are ever ready to correct themselves. 

It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends. 

A person who has truly realized the principle of nonviolence has the God given strength for his weapon, and the world has not yet known anything that can match it. 

Freedom is like birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves. 

No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. 

When nonviolence is accepted as the law of life, it must pervade the whole being and not be applied to isolated acts. 

Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height. 

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won’t have to struggle; we won’t have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering. 

Truth is the first thing to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be added unto you. 

To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul. 

It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God’s attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray. 

If you worry about yesterday’s failures, then today’s successes will be few. The future depends on what we do in the present 

What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? 

There is no path to peace; peace is the path. 

The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind. 

Evil is, good or truth misplaced. 

Celebration of Independence Day with great pomp and show was quite appropriate when we were fighting for independence which we had neither seen nor handled. Now we have handled it and we seem to be disillusioned. At least – I am, even if you are not. What are we celebrating today? Surely, not our disillusionment. 

There’s no God higher than truth. 

Behaviour is the mirror in which we can display our image. 

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. 

You can’t shake hands with a closed fist. 

I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all. 

There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves. All birth takes place in a moment. 

I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three months’ stay in England and Europe that made me feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime it flourishes, and that if you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you. 

I believe in trusting. Trust begets trust. Suspicion is foetid and only stinks. He who trusts has never yet lost in the world. 

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment. 

I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things. 

I hold that without truth and nonviolence there can be nothing but destruction of humanity. 

There is nothing on earth that I would not give up, excepting of course, two things and two things only, truth and nonviolence. 

My commitment is to truth not consistency. 

If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody’s personal concern! 

Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew. 

No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice, no matter where it occurred. 

It’s not just words. Action expresses priorities. 

We are the makers of our own state and…individuals who realize the fact need not, ought not, to wait for collective action. 

All big things are made up of trifles. My entire life has been built on trifles. 

Human nature will find itself only when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal. 

We often confuse spiritual knowledge with spiritual attainment. Spirituality is not a matter of knowing scriptures and engaging in philosophical discussions. It is a matter of heart culture, of unmeasurable strength. 

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: 

H. G. Wells was not the only one to mention Churchill and Hitler in the same breath: “Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler.” 

I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. . . . I know God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone. 

Indeed, the test of orderliness in a country is not the number of millionaires it owns, but the absence of starvation among its masses. 

The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children. 

A man of character will make himself worthy of any position he is given. 

Love is the subtlest force in the world. 

The Law of Love, call it attraction, affinity, cohesion if you like, governs the world. 

If love wasn’t the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. 

Love transcends all animosity and is never partial. 

You cannot succeed in one department of life while cheating on another, life is an indivisible whole. 

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right. 

The measure of a society can be how well its people treat its animals 

Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways. I am sensible of the fact that they are indescribable and inscrutable. But if mortal man will dare to describe them, he has no better medium than his own inarticulate speech. 

I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace. 

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.(…) If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today. 

Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practice it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence. 

I know that in embarking on non-violence I shall be running what might be termed a mad risk. But the victories of truth have never been won without risks. 

The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force. 

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

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

Strictly speaking, no activity and no industry is possible without a certain amount of violence, no matter how little. Even the very process of living is impossible without a certain amount of violence. What we have to do is to minimize it to the greatest extent possible. 

It took Britain half the resources of the planet to achieve its prosperity; how many planets will a country like India require? 

By noiselessly going to a prison a civil-resister ensures a calm atmosphere. 

I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. 

I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully. 

Whilst I may not actually help anyone to retaliate, I must not let a coward seek shelter behind nonviolence so-called. Not knowing the stuff of which nonviolence is made, many have honestly believed that running away from danger every time was a virtue compared to offering resistance, especially when it was fraught with danger to one’s life. As a teacher of nonviolence I must, so far as it is possible for me, guard against such an unmanly belief. 

Self-defense…is the only honourable course where there is unreadiness for self-immolation. 

Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defense or for the defense of the defenseless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right. 

Be the change you are trying to create. 

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use. 

You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won’t help, but that is no excuse, you must still act. 

Learning takes us through many states of life, but it fails utterly in the hour of danger and temptation. Then faith alone saves. 

No charter of freedom will be worth looking at which does not ensure the same measure of freedom for the minorities as for the majority. 

True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding the true path for ourselves, and fearlessly following it. 

Contraceptive methods are like putting a premium on vice. It makes men and women reckless… As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception] , no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her. 

The day a woman can walk freely on the roads at night, that day we can say that India has achieved independence 

The greatness of the human being is not in the reincarnation of the world but in the reincarnation of ourselves. 

It’s very dangerous to mix up the words natural and habitual. We have been trained to be quite habitual at communicating in ways that are quite unnatural. 

It’s a big error to dream of a society where nobody needs to be good. 

I like their Christ, but I don’t like their Christians. 

Everything that we do is insignificant…and…it is very important that we do it! 

It is better to resist oppression by violent means than to submit, but it is best of all to resist by nonviolent means. 

Eye for eye and the world will go blind. 

Of all the black crimes that humanity is committing against the great Creation, vivisection is the blackest. 

Is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If nonviolence is to be the law of our being, the future is with women. 

Your life is your message. 

There are sufficient resources on this planet to answer the needs of all, but not enough to satisfy everyone’s greed. 

I do not believe that the spiritual law works on a field of its own. On the contrary, it expresses itself only through the ordinary activities of life. It thus affects the economic, the social and the political fields. 

We may attack systems. We must not attack men. 

The best way of losing a cause is to abuse your opponent and to trade upon his weakness. 

The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that, too, unconditional assistance. 

We must be the world we want to create. 

Today, as it was 2,000 years ago, the Kingdom of God is within each of us. It is not within a church, a temple, a mosque or synagogue. 

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence. 

For the poor, the economic is spiritual. 

I am conscious of my own limitations. That consciousness is my only strength. 

I have in my life never been guilty of saying things I did not mean – my nature is to go straight to the heart and if often I fail in doing so for the time being, I know that Truth ultimately makes itself heard and felt, as it has often done in my experience. 

I believe in the absolute oneness of God and, therefore, also of humanity. I have always believed God to be without form. What I did hear was like a Voice from afar, and yet quite near. 

A nation that is capable of limitless sacrifice is capable of rising to limitless heights. The purer the sacrifice the quicker the progress. 

Truth, purity, self-control, firmness, fearlessness, humility, unity, peace, and renunciation – these are the inherent qualities of a civil resister. 

You will eat not to satisfy your palate but your hunger. A self-indulgent man lives to eat; a self-restrained man eats to live. 

A certain degree of physical harmony and comfort is necessary, but above a certain level it becomes a hindrance instead of a help. Therefore the ideal of creating an unlimited number of wants and satisfying them seems to be a delusion and a snare. 

I shall never know God if I do not wrestle with and against evil, even at the cost of life itself. 

An unjust law in itself is an act of violence. 

If we remain nonviolent, hatred will die as everything does from disuse. 

In order to get meat, we have to kill. And we are certainly not entitled to any other milk except the mother’s milk in our infancy. 

Man’s happiness really lies in contentment. 

When faced with a choice between violence and cowardice, always choose violence 

For me patriotism is the sme as humanity. I am patriotic because I am human and humane. It is not exclusive. I will not hurt England or Germany to serve India . . . My patriotism is inclusive and admits of no enmity or ill-will. 

Life is one indivisible whole. 

Everything I have personally experienced, and that also has been expressed by the leaders of the great religions points to the fact that a global spirituality already exists and was intrinsically there from the start as God (by whatever name) is one and is indivisible – everywhere outside time and place. 

One has to speak out and stand up for one’s convictions. Inaction at a time of conflagration is inexcusable. 

When the ego dies, the soul awakes. 

Nothing enduring can be built on violence. 

If you`d be loved, be worthy to be love 

If it weren’t for Christians, I’d be a Christian. 

A man who throws himself on God ceases to fear man 

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God’s attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray. 

We don’t use guns because we don’t have guns 

Permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence 

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions? 

Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress. 

Simplicity is the essence of universality. 

Anything that exists is possible. 

Every good movement passes through five stages, indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression, and respect. 

Truthful movements spontaneously attract to themselves all manner of pure and disinterested help. 

I learnt from Hussein how to achieve victory while being oppressed. 

Life will not be a pyramid with the apex sustained by the bottom, but an oceanic circle whose centre will be the individual. 

In this day of wonders no one will say that a thing or an idea is worthless because it is new. To say it is impossible because it is difficult is again not in consonance with the spirit of the age. Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. 

We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. This is the divine mystery supreme. A wonderful thing it is and the source of our happiness. We need not wait to see what others do. 

[I]t seems to me as clear as daylight that abortion would be a crime. 

Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers. 

If we are to make progress, we must not repeat history but make new history. We must add to inheritance left by our ancestors. 

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth. 

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

Nature can provide for the needs of people; [she] can’t provide for the greed of people. 

God never occurs to you in person but always in action. 

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind. 

One thing we have endeavoured to observe most scrupulously, namely, never to depart from the strictest facts and, in dealing with the difficult questions that have arisen during the year, we hope that we have used the utmost moderation possible under the circumstances. 

Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt. 

Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed. 

Leo Tolstoy’s life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non-resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self-suffering. 

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. 

I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption. 

Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep. 

In the march towards Truth, anger, selfishness, hatred, etc., naturally give way, for otherwise Truth would be impossible to attain. A man who is swayed by passions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth. 

Look at the sparrows; they do not know what they will do in the next moment. Let us literally live from moment to moment. 

We must become the change we want to see. 

The future depends on what we do in the present. 

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall.. think of it, always. 

Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation. 

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity…If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior…If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women. 

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity. 

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

My faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, ‘God is, was and ever shall be’. 

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear. 

Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love. 

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. For the least sin, it wouldn’t take us longTo get so we had no one left to live with.For to be social is to be forgiving. 

Forgiveness is choosing to love. 

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest. 

There is no reason to believe that there is one law for families and another for nations. 

Retaliation is counter-poison and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of Love alone can destroy the poison of hate. 

I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense. 

To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy. 

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

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt. 

Democracy and violence can ill go together. 

Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side. 

In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself. 

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep. 

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular. 

Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest. 

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man’s ingenuity. 

The only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts – that is where the battle should be fought. 

Performance of one’s duties should be independent of public opinion. 

The spirit of democracy cannot be superimposed from the outside. It must come from within. 

I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same chance as the strong. 

My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. 

There is more to life than simply increasing its speed. 

Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large. 

They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me-then they will have my dead body, not my obedience. 

I should love to satisfy all, if I possibly can; but in trying to satisfy all, I may be able to satisfy none. I have, therefore, arrived at the conclusion that the best course is to satisfy one’s own conscience and leave the world to form its own judgment, favorable or otherwise. 

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole. 

There is no such thing as “too insane” unless others turn up dead due to your actions. 

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something,it makes me incapable of doing it. When I believe I can,I acquire the ability to do it even if I did’ have it in the beginning.””Mahatma Gandhi 

I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of Hussein, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. 

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. 

Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means. 

The unlimited capacity of the plant world to sustain man at his highest is a region as yet unexplored by modern science. 

The ideal that marriage aims at is that of spiritual union through the physical. The human love that it incarnates is intended to serve as a stepping stone to diving or universal love. 

Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified. 

Civilization is the encouragement of differences. 

True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world. 

I was a coward. I used to be haunted by the fear of thieves, ghosts and serpents. I did not dare to stir out of doors at night. Darkness was a terror to me. It was almost impossible for me to sleep in the dark, as I would imagine ghosts coming from one direction, thieves from another and serpents from a third. I could not therefore bear to sleep without a light in the room. 

Men flocked to see it and ascended it as it was a novelty and of unique dimensions. It was the toy of the exhibition. So long as we are children we are attracted by toys, and the tower was a good demonstration of the fact that we are all children attracted by trinkets. That may be claimed to be the purpose served by the Eiffel Tower. 

Watches may disagree, but let us not. 

I am a poor mendicant. My earthly possessions consist of six spinning wheels, prison dishes, a can of goat’s milk, six homespun loincloths and towels and my reputation, which cannot be worth much. 

Do you think I am superstitious? I am a super-atheist. 

The concepts of truth may differ. But all admit and respect truth. That truth I call God. For sometime I was saying, “God is Truth,” but that did not satisfy me. So now I say, “Truth is God.” 

It is not a mistake to commit a mistake, for no one commits a mistake knowing it to be one. But it is a mistake not to correct the mistake after knowing it to be one. If you are afraid of committing a mistake, you are afraid of doing anything at all. You will correct your mistakes whenever you find them. 

My method is conversion, not coercion, it is self-suffering, not the suffering of the tyrant. I know that method to be infallible. 

If we are to stand the final heat of the battle, we must learn to stand our ground in the face of cavalry or baton charges and allow ourselves to be trampled under horses’ hooves, or be bruised with baton charges. 

Such expression is impossible in a cramped atmosphere. As I have no desire to offer civil disobedience I cannot write freely. As the author of satyagraha I cannot, consistently with my profession, suppress the vital part of myself for the sake of being able to write on permissible subjects. … It would be like dealing with the trunk without the head. 

To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that one that must be loved is not a friend. There is not merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend. 

There would be nothing to frighten you if you refused to be afraid. 

If you want something really important to be done you must not merely satisfy the reason, you must move the heart also. 

Hatred can be overcome only by love. 

In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth. 

My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. 

All your scholarship would be in vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions. 

Wherever you are you will always be in my heart. 

The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination? 

Withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government. 

The end is inherent in the means. 

There is no love where there is no will 

What, however, left a deep impression on me was the reading of the Ramayana before my father. During part of his illness my father was in Porbandar. There every evening he used to listen to the Ramayana. 

Rama Nama should come from the heart. In that event, Rama Nama could become an effective remedy against all ailments. A man who believes in Rama Nama would not make a fetish of the body but would regard it as a means of serving God. And for making it into a fit instrument for that purpose, Rama Nama is the sovereign means. To install Rama Nama in the heart requires infinite patience. It might even take ages. But the effort is worthwhile. Rama Nama cannot come from the heart unless one has cultivated the virtues of truth, honesty and purity within and without. 

If you want something done, ask. If you want something done quickly, ask, and then begin counting down from ten with no explanation. 

We must widen the circle of our love till it embraces the whole village; the village in its turn must take into its fold the district, the district the province, and so on until the scope of our love becomes co-terminous with the world. 

If blood be shed, let it be our own. Let us cultivate the calm courage to die without killing. 

There is no such thing as ‘too insane’ unless others turn up dead due to your actions. 

Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people. 

Selfishness is blind. 

We stand on the threshold of a twilight-whether morning or evening we do not know. One is followed by the night, the other heralds the dawn. 

True beauty lies in purity of the heart. 

The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane. 

Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity. 

Truth should be the very breath of our life. When once this state in the pilgrim’s progress is reached, all other rules of correct living will come without any effort, and obedience to them will be instinctive. 

In fact, it is more correct to say that Truth is God, than to say that God is Truth. 

A man who is truthful and does not mean ill even to his adversary will be slow to believe charges even against his foes. He will, however, try to understand the viewpoints of his opponents and will always keep an open mind and seek every opportunity of serving his opponents. 

I shall die, but I will not kill. 

True beauty consists of purity of heart. 

The best politics is right action. 

God is the hardest taskmaster I have known on this earth, and he tries you through and through. And when you find that your faith is failing or your body is failing you, and you are sinking, he comes to your assistance somehow or other and proves to you that you must not lose your faith and that he is always at your beck and call, but on his terms, not on your terms. So I have found. I cannot really recall a single instance when, at the eleventh hour, he has forsaken me. 

Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one’s faith is, the more it whets one’s reason. When faith becomes blind it dies. 

The wind of God’s grace is incessantly blowing. Lazy sailors on the sea of life do not take advantage of it. But the active and strong always keep the sails of their minds unfurled to catch the favorable winds and thus reach their destination very soon. 

Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood. 

Purity of life is the highest and truest art. 

Why worry one’s head over a thing that is inevitable? Why die before one’s death? 

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

Means are not to be distinguished from ends. If violent means are used, there will be bad results. 

The cause is everything. Those even who are dearest to us must be shunted for the sake of the cause. 

Bullies are always to be found where there are cowards. 

Nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger… . Between violence and cowardly flight I can only prefer violence to cowardice. 

Possession of arms implies an element of fear, if not of cowardice. 

The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from the grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children. 

A man who has broken with his past feels a different man. He will not feel it a shame to confess his past wrongs, for the simple reason that these wrongs do not touch him at all. 

The only safe and honorable course for a self-respecting man is to do what I have decided to do, that is, to submit without protest to the penalty of disobedience … not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience. 

Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. 

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

We do not know whether it is good to live or to die. Therefore, we should not take delight in living, nor should we tremble at the thought of death. We should be equiminded towards death. This is the ideal. It may be long before we reach it, and only a few of us can attain it. Even then, we must keep it constantly in view, and the more difficult it seems of attainment, the greater should be the effort we put forth. 

… in the midst of death life persists … 

The wise are unaffected either by death or life. These are but faces of the same coin. 

I know no diplomacy save that of truth. 

I own no enemy on earth. That is my creed. 

Fear of disease killed more men than disease itself. 

But success and failure are of no account. They are God’s concern, not mine. 

Let our first act each morning be the following resolve: I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God. 

There are subjects where reason cannot take us far and we have to accept things on faith. Faith then does not contradict reason but transcends it. Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason. 

No one has the capacity to judge God. We are drops in that limitless ocean of mercy. 

I implicitly believe in the truth of the saying that not a blade of grass moves but by His will. He will save it (my life) if He needs it for further service in this body. None can save it against His will. 

I believe in the absolute oneness of God and, therefore, also of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. The rays of the sun are many through refraction. But they have the same source. I cannot, therefore, detach myself from the wickedest soul (nor may I be denied identity with the most virtuous). 

Both heaven and hell are within us. 

It is possible for a single individual to defy the whole might of an unjust empire to save his honor, his religion, his soul, and lay the foundation for that empire’s fall or its regeneration. 

It is beneath human dignity to lose one’s individuality and become a mere cog in the machine. 

Do not judge others. Be your own judge and you will be truly happy. If you will try to judge others, you are likely to burn your fingers. 

Though I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal. 

It is knowledge that ultimately gives salvation. 

Life is but an endless series of experiments. 

Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy. 

… the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties driven asunder. 

… we have to learn to use that force (love) among all that lives, and in the use of it consists our knowledge of God. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction. 

I believe that the sum total of the energy of mankind is not to bring us down but to lift us up, and that is the result of the definite, if unconscious, working of the law of love. The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal. 

… there are chords in every human heart. If we only knew how to strike the right chord, we would bring out the music. 

Behind my non-cooperation there is always the keenest desire to cooperate on the slightest pretext even with the worst of opponents. To me, a very imperfect mortal, ever in need of God’s grace, no one is beyond redemption. 

In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, non-cooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evildoer. I am endeavoring to show my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that evil can only be sustained by violence. Withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. 

Belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that human nature in the essence is one and therefore unfailingly responds to the advances of love … 

I have no secret methods. I know no diplomacy save that of truth. I have no weapon but non-violence. 

It is no non-violence if we merely love those that love us. It is non-violence only when we love those that hate us. 

Non-violence … is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, Unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind. 

We have to make truth and non-violence not matters for mere individual practice but for practice by groups and communities and nations. That at any rate is my dream. I shall live and die in trying to realize it. My faith helps me to discover new truths every day. 

Non-violence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave. 

The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents. 

What is wanted is a deliberate giving up of violence out of strength. 

A jailer is as much a prisoner as his prisoner. 

I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics. 

Power is of two kinds: one is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. 

God answers prayer in His own way, not ours. 

God turns His back on those who quarrel among themselves. 

Religion is not what is grasped by the brain, but a heart grasp. 

Does not the history of the world show that there would have been no romance in life if there had been no risks? 

Indeed, one perfect resister is enough to win the battle of Right against Wrong. 

There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to man 

If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior 

The mantram becomes one’s staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God. 

I have found that life persists in the midst of destruction and, therefore, there must be a higher law than that of destruction. Only under that law would a well-ordered society be intelligible and life worth living. 

Retreat itself is often a plan of resistance and may be a precursor of great bravery and sacrifice. Every retreat is not cowardice which implies fear to die. 

Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food. 

Restraint never ruins one’s health. 

Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others. 

The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man. 

The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice. 

Who can deny that much that passes for science and art today destroys the soul instead of uplifting it and instead of evoking the best in us, panders to our basest passions? 

All sins are committed in secrecy. The moment we realize that God witnesses even our thoughts, we shall be free. 

Man must choose either of the two courses, the upward or the downward; but as he has the brute in him, he will more easily choose the downward course than the upward, especially when the downward course is presented to him in a beautiful garb. Man easily capitulates when sin is presented in the garb of virtue. 

The chains of a slave are broken the moment he considers himself a free man. 

True suffering does not know itself and never calculates. 

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

Every moment of my life I realize that God is putting me on my trial. 

Truth is superior to man s wisdom. 

In the dictionary of the seeker of truth there is no such thing as being “not successful.” He is or should be an irrepressible optimist because of his immovable faith in the ultimate victory of Truth, which is God. 

I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it. 

I have an implicit faith … that mankind can only be saved through non-violence, which is the central teaching of the Bible, as I have understood the Bible. 

Crime and vice generally require darkness for prowling. They disappear when light plays upon them. 

Few men are wantonly wicked. 

One may detest the wickedness of a brother without hating him. 

Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately today she does not realize what a tremendous advantage she has over man. As Tolstoy used to say, they are laboring under the hypnotic influence of man. If they would realize the strength of non-violence they would not consent to be called the weaker sex. 

If she [woman] is weak in striking, she is strong in suffering. 

If we develop the force of will, we shall find that we do not need the force of arms. 

I believe all war to be wholly wrong. 

War with all its glorification of brute force is essentially a degrading thing. 

You cannot stop big wars if you carry on little wars yourselves. 

May not men earn their bread by intellectual labor? No, the needs of the body must be supplied by the body. 

To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one’s faith in man and God, even one’s own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith. 

I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in fear of God and who would see Him face to face, restraint in diet both as to quantity and quality is as essential as restraint in thought and speech. 

My non-violence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities. 

My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty. 

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward, you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward, this trampling is on a much bigger scale; and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle. 

I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of a better one. Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one 

To lose patience is to lose the battle. 

The light of the world will illuminate within you when you fast and purify yourself. 

What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner. 

More caution and perhaps more restraint are necessary in breaking a fast than in keeping it. 

Wherever flaxseeds become a regular food item among the people, there will be better health. 

I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen. 

A man of truth must also be a man of care. 

I’m a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. 

I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. 

Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions. 

Like the bee gathering honey from the different flowers, the wise person accepts the essence of the different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions. 

It is better to allow our lives to speak for us than our words. God did not bear the cross only two thousand years ago. He bears it today, and he dies and is resurrected from day to day. It would be a poor comfort to the world if it had to depend on a historical God who died two thousand years ago. Do not, then, preach the God of history, but show him as he lives today through you. 

There will have to be rigid and iron discipline before we achieve anything great and enduring, and that discipline will not come by mere academic argument and appeal to reason and logic. Discipline is learnt in the school of adversity. 

There are times when you have to obey a call which is the highest of all, i.e. the voice of conscience even though such obedience may cost many a bitter tear, and even more, separation from friends, from family, from the state, to which you may belong, from all that you have held as dear as life itself. For this obedience is the law of our being. 

The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance, Co-operation which needs consideration is as a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind. 

I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher 

No matter how explicit the pledge, people will turn and twist the text to suit their own purpose 

And he who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend 

For a bowl of water give a goodly meal; For a kindly greeting bow thou down with zeal; For a simple penny pay thou back with gold; If thy life be rescued, life do not withhold. Thus the words and actions of the wise regard; Every little service tenfold they reward. But the truly noble know all men as one, And return with gladness good for evil done. 

I recall having read, at the brothers’ instance, Madame Blavatsky’s Key to Theosophy. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition. 

Even a single lamp dispels the deepest darkness. 

The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations. 

Doubt is invariably the result of want or weakness of faith. 

Literary education is of no value, if it is not able to build up a sound character. 

There are innumerable definitions of God because his manifestations are innumerable. 

We have no evidence whatsoever that the soul perishes with the body. 

If all Christians acted like Christ, the whole world would be Christian. 

Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible. 

After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that (1) all religions are true; (2) all religions have some error in them; (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one as one’s own close relatives. 

The lower animals are our brethren. I include among them the lion and the tiger. We do not know how to live with these carnivorous beasts and poisonous reptiles because of our ignorance. 

The fullest life is impossible without an immovable belief in a Living Law in obedience to which the whole universe moves. 

I am a proud staunch Sanatani Hindu. 

Hinduism is a relentless pursuit of Truth. “Truth is God” and if today it has become moribund, inactive, irresponsive to growth, it is because we are fatigued; and as soon as the fatigue is over, Hinduism will burst upon the world with a brilliance perhaps unknown before. 

I am a Hindu because it is Hinduism which makes the world worth living. I am a Hindu hence I Love not only human beings, but all living beings. 

I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of others. 

I have no other wish in this world but to find light and joy and peace through Hinduism. 

I call myself a Sanatani Eternal Hindu, because I believe in the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Puranas, and all that goes by the name of Hindu scripture, and therefore in avataras and rebirth… 

Hinduism is like the Ganga, pure and unsullied at its source but taking in its course the impurities in the way. Even like the Ganga it is beneficent in its total effect. It takes a provincial form in every province, but the inner substance is retained everywhere. 

Hinduism is a living organism. One and indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vast tree with innumerable branches. Knowledge is limitless and so also the application of truth. Everyday we add to our knowledge of the power of Atman (soul) and we shall keep on doing so. 

Hinduism insists on the brotherhood of not only all mankind but of all that lives. 

Hinduism has made marvelous discoveries in things of religion, of the spirit, of the soul. We have no eye for these great and fine discoveries. We are dazzled by the material progress that Western science has made. Ancient India has survived because Hinduism was not developed along material but spiritual lines. 

Hindu Dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. The deeper you dive the more treasures you find. 

Every Hindu boy and girl should possess sound Samskrit learning. 

All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities. 

I believe it to be perfectly possible for an individual to adopt the way of life of the future. . . without having to wait for others to do so. 

Cowards can never be moral. 

The mind may wander, but let not the senses wander with it. If the senses wander where the mind takes them, one is done for. 

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated? What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy. What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals? The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. Non-cooperation with evil is a sacred duty. 

If you take care of your immediate surroundings, the universe will take care of itself. 

Responsibility will mellow and sober the youth and prepare them, for the burden they must discharge. 

The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity. 

The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit. 

Your capacity to keep your vow will depend on the purity of your life. 

Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value. 

[It] is impossible for us to establish a living vital connection with the masses unless we will work for them, through them and in their midst, not as their patrons but as their servants. 

What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells? 

“Be the change you want to see in the world”…and, if you can’t be that change, then either get out of the way of the person who wants to be that change or support the individual with your financial resources. 

I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind. 

A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy. 

I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it. 

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

Monotony is the law of nature. Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises. The monotony of necessary occupation is exhilarating and life giving. 

Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise. 

If you think the world is all wrong, remember that it contains people like you. 

In our progress towards the goal, we ever see more and more enchanting scenery. 

A small group of determined and like-minded people can change the course of history. 

I do believe that where there is a choice between cowardice and non-violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. 

In this instance of the fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly bracketed with the natives. The British Indian does not need any such restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the native from arming himself. Is there a slightest vestige of justification for so preventing the British Indian? 

If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British. 

Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized – the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals. 

Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down all kaffirs of the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen. 

A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir. 

Poverty is the greatest violence. 

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

The hardest metal yields to sufficient heat. Even so must the hardest heart melt before sufficiency of the heat of non- violence. And there is no limit to the capacity of non-violence to generate heat. 

All good thoughts and ideas mean nothing without action 

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

Change yourself – you are in control. 

Without action, you aren’t going anywhere. 

Take care of this moment. 

Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self. 

Continue to grow and evolve. 

One must become as humble as the dust before he can discover truth. 

What is Truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the “voice within” tells you. All that I can in true humility present to you is that Truth is not to be found by anybody who has not got an abundant sense of humility. If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth you must reduce yourself to zero. 

If an enemy strikes your left cheek, offer him your right. 

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. 

It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet 

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants. 

It is necessary to correct the error that vegetarianism has made us weak in mind, or passive or inert in action. I do not regard flesh-food as necessary at any stage 

I still believe that man, not having been given the power of creation, does not posses the right of destroying the meanest creature that lives. The perogative of destruction belongs solely to the Creator of all that lives. 

Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation. 

Just think out for yourselves, if a man who was good yesterday has become bad after having come in contact with me, is he responsible that he has deteriorated or am I? … It is well to take the blame sometimes. 

The ally we must cultivate is the part of our enemy which knows the truth. 

Every murder or other injury, no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another is a crime against humanity. 

Be the change you seek. 

For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect. 

To me, God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality: God is fearlessness. God is the source of Light and Life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience… He is a personal God to those who need His personal presence. He is embodied to those who need His touch. He is the purest essence. He simply is to those who have faith. He is all things to all men. 

The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God. 

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. 

Be truthful, gentle, and fearless. 

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price. 

Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place. 

Once one assumes an attitude of intolerance, there is no knowing where it will take one. Intolerance, someone has said, is violence to the intellect and hatred is violence to the heart. 

I contend that non-violent acts exert pressure far more effective than violent acts, for the pressure comes from goodwill and gentleness. 

I believe that it is impossible to end hatred with hatred. 

Good government is no substitute for self-government. 

Wildlife is decreasing in the jungles, but it is increasing in the towns. 

I care so deeply about this matter that I’m willing to take on the legal penalties, to sit in this prison cell, to sacrifice my freedom, in order to show you how deeply I care. Because when you see the depth of my concern, and how civil I am in going about this, you’re bound to change your mind about me, to abandon your rigid, unjust position, and to let me help you see the truth of my cause. 

For me the present is merged in eternity. I may not sacrifice the latter for the present. 

A person who is worried about the outcome of his work does not see his goal; he sees only his opposition and the obstacles before him. 

A true soldier does not argue as he marches, how success is going to be ultimately achieved. But he is confident that if he only plays his humble part well, somehow or other the battle will be won. In is that spirit that every one of us should act. It is not given to us to know the future. But it is given to everyone of us to know how to do our own part well. 

Truth quenches untruth, love quenches anger, self-suffering quenches violence. This eternal rule is a rule not for saints only but for all. 

Even as wisdom often comes from the mouths of babes, so does it often come from the mouths of old people. The golden rule is to test everything in the light of reason and experience, no matter from where it comes. 

Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it. 

He who trifles with truth cuts at the root of Ahimsa [non-violence]. He who is angry is guilty of Himsa. 

Breach of promise is no less an act of insolvency than a refusal to pay one’s debt. 

However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. 

Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth & violence. Even if my belief is a fond delusion, it will be admitted that it is a fascinating delusion. 

Non-violence is not a quality to be evolved or expressed to order. It is an inward growth depending for sustenance upon intense individual effort. 

Non-violence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Non-violence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Perfect non-violence is the highest bravery. Non-violent conduct is never demoralising; cowardice always is. 

Better than cowardice is killing and being killed in battle. 

Let no one charge me with ever having abused or encouraged weakness or surrendered on matters of principle. But I have said, as I say again, that every trifle must not be dignified into a principle. 

Real suffering bravely borne, melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering. And there lies the key to Satyagraha. 

Man and his deed are two distinct things. Whereas a good deed should call forth approbation and a wicked deed dis-approbation, the doer of the deed, whether good or wicked always deserves respect or pity as the case may be. Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which though easy enough to understand is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. 

A man who broods on evil is as bad a man who does evil, if he is no worse. 

Man has reason, discrimination and free-will such as it is. The brute has no such thing. It is not a free agent, and knows no distinction between virtue and vice, good and evil. Man, being a free agent, knows these distinctions, and when he follows his higher nature, shows himself far superior to the brute, but when he follows his baser nature can show himself lower than the brute. 

Woman in the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate in the minutest details in the activities of man, and she has equal right to liberty of freedom and liberty with him. 

It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, rules us we would have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilised men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence. 

It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another. 

The only way love punishes in by suffering. 

Golden fetters are no less galling to a self-respecting man that iron ones; the sting lies in the fetters, not in the metal. 

It would conduce to national progress and save a great deal of time and trouble if we cultivated the habit of never supporting the resolutions either by speaking or voting for them if we had not either the intention or the ability to carry them out. 

If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake. 

What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red – not merely Germany and Japan. 

Nations are born out of travail and suffering 

This campaign of non-cooperation has no reference to diplomacy, secret or open. The only diplomacy it admits of is the statement and pursuance of truth at any cost. 

An opponent is entitled to the same regard for his principles as we would expect others to have for ours. Non-violence demands that we should see every opportunity to win over opponents. 

Indeed one’s faith in one’s plans and methods is truly tested when the horizon before one is the blackest. 

Non-cooperation is an attempt to awaken the masses, to a sense of their dignity and power. This can only be done by enabling them to realise that they need not fear brute force, if they but know the soul within. 

Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy. 

Non-cooperation is beyond the reach of the bayonet. It has found an abiding place in the Indian heart. Workers like me will go when the hour has struck, but non-cooperation will remain. 

Non-cooperation is directed not against men but against measures. It is not directed against the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non-cooperation lies not in hatred but in justice if not in love. 

Insistence on truth can come into play when one party practices untruth or injustice. Only then can love be tested. True friendship is put to the test only when one party disregards the obligation of friendship. 

If we want to cultivate a true spirit of democracy we cannot afford to be intolerant. Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause. 

It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself, for we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being, is to slight those divine powers and thus to harm not only that Being, but with Him, the whole world. 

I believe that cunning is not only morally wrong but also politically expedient, and have therefore always discountenanced its use even from the practical standpoint. 

How can one be compelled to accept slavery? I simply refuse to do the master’s bidding. He may torture me, break my bones to atoms and even kill me. He will then have my dead body, not my obedience. Ultimately, therefore, it is I who am the victor and not he, for he has failed in getting me to do what he wanted done. 

Power invariably elects to go into the hands of the strong. That strength may be physical or of the heart or, if we do not fight shy of the word, of the spirit. Strength of the heart connotes soul-force. Let it be remembered that physical force is transitory, even as the body is transitory. But the power of spirit is permanent even as the spirit is everlasting. 

No religion which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason, will survive the coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have changed and character, not possession of wealth, title or birth, will be the test of merit. 

As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side. 

It is through truth & non-violence that I can have some glimpse of God. Truth & non-violence are my God. They are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. 

Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy. 

I have but shadowed forth my intense longing to lose myself in the Eternal and become merely a lump of clay in the Potter’s divine hands so that my service may become more certain because uninterrupted by the baser self in me. 

The spirit of non-violence necessarily leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance on God, the rock of ages. If we would seek his aid, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart. 

In nature there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us. Religions are given to mankind so as to accelerate the process of realisation of fundamental unity. 

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

My trust is solely in God. And I trust men only because I trust God. If I had no God to rely upon, I should be like Timon, a hater of my species. 

God tries his votaries through and through but never beyond endurance. He gives them strength enough to go through the ordeal he prescribes for them. 

It is easy enough to say, I do not believe in God. For God permits all things to be said of Him with impunity. he looks at our acts. And any breach of His Law carries with it, not its vindictive, but it purifying, compelling punishment. 

Human society is a ceaseless growth, and unfoldment in terms of spirituality. 

I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be upset by God, but, at the same time, where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, on matter how a man’s plans are frustrated the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated. 

A clean confession combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance. 

Perfection is the exclusive attribute of God, and it is indescribable, untranslatable. I do believe that it is possible for human beings to become perfect, even as God is perfect. It is necessary for all of us to aspire after that perfection but when that blessed state is attained, it become indescribable, indefinable. 

Of all the animal creations of God, main is the only animal who has been created in order that he may know his Maker. Man’s aim is life is not therefore to add from day to day to his material prospects and to his material possessions, but his predominant calling is, from day to day to come nearer to his own Maker. 

Mankind is notoriously too dense to read the signs that God sends from time to time. We require drums to be beaten into our ears, before we should wake from our trance and hear the warning and see that to lose oneself in all, is the only way to find oneself. 

I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience which is God. 

We are merely instruments of the Almighty’s will and therefore ignorant of what helps us forward and what acts as an impediment. We must thus rest satisfied with the knowledge only of the means and if these are pure, we can fearlessly leave the end to take care of itself. 

When anything assumes the strength of a creed, it becomes self-sustained and derives the needed support from within. 

The world is touched by sacrifice. It does not then discriminate about the merits of a cause. No so God – He is all seeing. He insists on the purity of the cause and on adequate sacrifice thereof. 

Humankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter – hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. 

I cannot in all conscience agree to anyone being sent to the gallows. God alone can take life because He alone gives it . . . 

I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man, and believing as I do in the theory of reincarnation, I live in the hope that if not in this birth, in some other birth I shall be able to hug all of humanity in friendly embrace. 

The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation. 

Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious, will land itself in chaos and may be self-destroyed. 

Intolerance, discourtesy and harshness….. are taboo in all good society and are surely contrary to the spirit of democracy. 

There is always enough for the needy, there is never enough for the greedy. 

I must dissent emphatically from any proposal to spend any money on preparing a statue of me, more especially at a time when people do not have enough food and clothing. 

If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o’-the-wisp. 

Begin with duties of a man and rights will follow as spring follows winter 

I learned from my illiterate but wise mother that all rights to be deserved and preserved came from duty well done. Thus the very right to live accrues to us only when we do the duty of citizenship of the world. From this one fundamental statement, perhaps it is easy enough to define the duties of Man and Woman and correlate every right to some corresponding duty to be first performed. Every other right can be shown to be a usurpation hardly worth fighting for. 

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

I understood . . . that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own. 

Change occurs when deeply felt private experiences are given public legitimacy. 

The principle of majority does not work when differences on fundamentals are involved. 

If one does not practice nonviolence in one’s own personal relations with others and hopes to use it in bigger affairs, one is vastly mistaken. 

Full effort is full victory. 

Men say I am a saint losing himself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to become a saint. 

President means chief servant 

Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years. Don’t you think you should take a vacation?” Gandhi smiled and replied, “I am always on vacation. 

For the nonviolent person, the whole world is one family. He will fear none, nor will others fear him. 

Faith is the function of the heart. 

He who trusts has never yet lost in the world. A suspicious man is lost to himself and the eworld…. Suspicion is of the brood of violence. Non-violence cannot but trust… 

We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right. 

It was Ba’s inspiration which helped me reach the heights of my inner self. She was my priceless jewel. 

God speaks to us every day only we don’t know how to listen. 

Don’t listen to friends when the Friend inside you says “Do this.” 

As the elephant is powerless to think in the terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in the terms of, or legislate for, the Indian. 

Nothing once begun should be abandoned, unless it is proved to be morally wrong. 

I think it is wrong to expect certainties in this world, where all else but God that is Truth is an uncertainty. All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient. But there is a Supreme Being hidden therein as a Certainty, and one would be blessed if one could catch a glimpse of that Certainty and hitch one’s waggon to it. The quest for that Truth is the summum bonum of life. 

Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction. 

It dawned upon me that fasting could be made as powerful a weapon of indulgence as of restraint 

Force, violence, pressure, or compulsion with a view to conformity, are both uncivilized and undemocratic 

Truth is transcendent. There are many expressions of it and ways to glimpse it. We cannot hold it in our clenched fist, but must hold it in our open palm and invite others to see it for themselves. 

The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one’s conduct and a little receptiveness. 

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

It does not require money, to live neat, clean and dignified.. 

Hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. 

The devotee of truth is often obliged to grope in the dark. 

World has things which full fill man needs, but not greeds. 

Violence begins with the fork. 

Yet even differences prove helpful, where there are tolerance, charity and Truth. 

We must be ever courteous and patient with those who do not see eye to eye with us. We must resolutely refuse to consider our opponents as enemies. 

I believe that just as everyone inherits a particular form so does he inherit the particular characteristics and qualities of his progenitors, and to make this admission is to conserve one’s energy. 

I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties. 

Good travels at a snail’s pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time. 

Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy. 

Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed. 

If you want a change in the world, be the change 

A true Brahmachari will not even dream of satisfying the fleshly appetite 

Purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings. 

Those who believe religion and politics aren’t connected don’t understand either. 

It is simple impertinence for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world. 

Service without humility is selfishness and egotism. 

Disease increases in proportion to the increase in the number of doctors in a place. 

Homeopathy cures a larger percentage of cases than any other form of treatment and is beyond doubt safer and more economical. 

Solitude is a catalyst for innovation 

If you are left with only one piece of homespun,wear it with dignity 

That we should obey laws whether good or bad is a new-fangled notion. There was no such thing in former days. The people disregarded those laws they did not like and suffered the penalties for their breach. 

I may have become Christian, were it not for Christians. 

The truest test of a democracy is in the ability of anyone to act as he likes, so long as he does not injure the life or property of anyone else. 

I don’t believe in stereotypes, I prefer to hate people on a more personal basis. The measure of a truly great man is the courtesy with which he treats lesser men. An eye for an eye will make the whole world go blind. 

If you have no character to lose, people will have no faith in you. 

To put up with. . . distortions and to stick to one’s guns come what may – this is the. . . gift of leadership. 

Be the change that you want to see 

A perfect mind comes from a perfect heart, not the heart known by a doctor’s stethoscope but the heart which is the seat of God. 

Prayer needs no speech. It is in itself independent of any sensuous effort. But it must be combined with the utmost humility. 

A heart-felt prayer is not recitation with the lips. It is a yearning from within which expresses itself in every word, every act, nay every thought of people. 

All crime is a kind of disease and should be treated as such. 

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. 

A man with a grain of faith in God never loses hope, because he ever believes in the ultimate triumph of Truth. 

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

The outward freedom that we shall attain will only be in exact proportion to the inward freedom to which we may have grown at a given moment. And if this is a correct view of freedom, our chief energy must be concentrated on achieving reform from within. 

Nonviolence is the law of the human race and is infinitely greater than, and superior to, brute force. 

Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking, or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; to me, the female sex is not the weaker sex. 

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? 

The sacrifice which causes sorrow to the doer of the sacrifice is no sacrifice. Real sacrifice lightens the mind of the doer and gives him a sense of peace and joy. The Buddha gave up the pleasures of life because they had become painful to him. 

As long as you are trying your very best, there can be no question of failure. 

True education is that which proves useful in life and makes you industrious. 

Religions are different roads converging on the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? I believe that all religions of the world are true more or less. I say “more or less” because I believe that everything the human hand touches, by reason of the very fact that human beings are imperfect, becomes imperfect. 

The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it. 

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

If we are to create peace in our world, we must begin with our children. 

May the work of your hands be a sign of gratitude and reverence to the human condition. 

Keep my word positive. Words become my behaviors. Keep my behaviors positive. Behaviors become my habits. Keep my habits positive. Habits become my values. Keep my values positive. Values become my destiny. 

No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important. For it will be by those small things that you shall be judged. 

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

[He] alone is truly nonviolent who remains nonviolent even though he has the ability to strike. 

In the application of the method of non-violence, one must believe in the possibility of every person, however depraved, being reformed under humane and skilled treatment. 

So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see… 

Fear gone, there can be no hatred. 

Fear has its use, but cowardice has none. I may not put my finger into the jaws of a snake, but the very sight of the snake need not strike terror into me. 

Fear is not a disease of the body; fear kills the soul. 

There can be no rule of God in the present state of iniquitous inequalities in which a few roll in riches and the masses do not get enough to eat. 

I think it would be an excellent idea. 

We want to go in for suffering, and there may be torture. If we put the women in front the Government may hesitate to inflict on us all the penalty that they might otherwise inflict. 

When you are right,you have no need to be angry. When you are wrong, you have no right to be angry. 

… man was not born a carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that the earth grows. I know we must all err. I would give up milk if I could, but I cannot. I have made that experiment times without number. I could not, after a serious illness, regain my strength, unless I went back to milk. That has been the tragedy of my life. But the basis of my vegetarianism is not physical, but moral. If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef tea or mutton, even on medical advice, I would prefer death. That is the basis of my vegetarianism. 

True happiness brings more richness than all the money in the world. 

The earth, the air, the land and the water are not an inheritance from our fore fathers but on loan from our children. So we have to handover to them at least as it was handed over to us. 

I submit that scientists have not yet explored the hidden possibilities of the innumerable seeds, leaves and fruits for giving the fullest possible nutrition to mankind. 

It is better to allow our lives to speak for us than our words. 

Live simply so that others may simply live. 

There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent. 

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home, including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service 

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. 

The spirit of democracy… requires change of the heart… requires the inculcation of the spirit of brotherhood. 

Heroes are made in the hour of defeat 

There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness. 

When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day. 

It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are capable of. 

An error can never become true however many times you repeat it. The truth can never be wrong, even if no one hears it. 

Education is the basic tool for the development of consciousness and the reconstitution of society. 

A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty. 

I have so much to accomplish today that I must meditate for two hours instead of one. 

Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall in the clutches of the wolf. 

Many an individual has turned from the mean, personal, acquisitive point of view to one that sees society as a whole and works for its benefit. If there has been such a change in one person, there can be the same change in many. 

Sympathy is what you have for someone after they die, pity you have for someone when they don’t have a date to the biggest dance of the year. Empathy is what I do to you when you judge me. Envy is having pity on yourself. Can you discern the rest for yourself? 

I once Experimented with marijuna, next thing I know I’m waking up with blood on my hands…….and not my own blood. 

He who does not see God in the next person he meets need look no further. 

How can I make difference so that I may bring peace to this world that I love and cherish so much? A name flickers instantly in my mind. 

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. 

To slight a single human being, is to slight those divine powers and thus to harm not only that being but with him, the whole world. 

I have endeavored to show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession of medicine and that it is injurious to mankind. 

Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. 

As in laws or in war, the longest purse finally wins. 

It hurts me to think that people in their rush for everything modern despise all their ancient traditions and ignore them in their lives. 

Let your thoughts be positive for they will become your words. Let your words be positive for they will become your actions. Let your actions be positive for they will become your values. Let your values be positive for they will become your destiny. 

God’s word is: ‘He who strives never perishes.’ I have implicit faith in that promise. Though, therefore, from my weakness I fail a thousand times, I shall not lose faith. 

What may appear as the truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appeared to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree. 

Bravery is not a quality of the body. It is of the soul. 

Freedom and slavery are mental states. 

It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that millions of people have ceased to use their hands as hands. Nature has bestowed upon us this great gift which is our hands. If the craze for machinery method continues, it is highly likely that a time will come when we shall be so incapacitated and weak that we shall begin to curse ourselves for having forgotten the use of the living machines given to us by God. 

It is easier to bridge the oceans that lie between continents than it is to bridge the gap between individuals or the peoples. 

The way of peace is the way of truth. Truthfulness is even more important than peacefulness. 

The future of India lies in its villages 

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the culture of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any 

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul. 

Man is the center of a circle without a circumference, except the one he creates for himself. 

Your future depends on what you do today. 

Let us work together for unity and love. 

When you make yourself into zero, your power becomes invincible. 

Let your life be your message. 

Let our lives be open books for all to study. 

Your action expresses your priorities. 

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something,it makes me incapable of doing it. When I believe I can,I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.'”Mahatma Gandhi 

Education without courage is like a wax statue – beautiful to look at but bound to melt at the first touch of a hot stuff. 

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

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth. 

Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two… The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love. 

The Divine Music is incessantly ringing within all of us, but the loud senses drown the delicate Music, which is unlike and infinitely superior to anything we can perceive with our senses. 

Be the compromise you want to see in the world. 

The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of the different religions. 

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent. 

Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mind of truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there. 

We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings. 

Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter. 

Whatever one does cheerfully is good for health. 

True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind. 

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

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

If you want to change the world, start with yourself. 

Live like Jesus did, and the world will listen. 

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. 

Music has given me peace. I can remember occasions when music instantly tranquillized my mind, when I was greatly agitated over something. Music has helped me to overcome anger. 

What is truth? A difficult question; but I have solved it for myself by saying that it is what the ‘voice within’ tells you. 

What you feel and how you react to something is always up to you. There may be a “normal” or a common way to react to different things. But that’s mostly just all it is. 

Don’t talk about it. The rose doesn’t have to propagate its perfume. It just gives it forth, and people are drawn to it. Live it, and people will come to see the source of your power. 

We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor…. Millions will always remain poor. 

Happiness, the goal to which we all are striving is reached by endeavoring to make the lives of others happy, and if by renouncing the luxuries of life we can lighten the burdens of others…. surely the simplification of our wants is a thing greatly to be desired! And so, if instead of supposing that we must become hermits and dwellers in caves in order to practice simplicity, we set about simplifying our affairs, each according to his own convictions and opportunity, much good will result and the simple life will at once be established. 

Think for tomorrow but act for today. 

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. You must be the change you wish to see in the world. 

You never know where your actions will lead to. But if you don’t do anything they will lead you nowhere. 

If you do what you enjoy doing you’ll never have to work hard. 

With my meager knowledge of my own religion I do not want to belong to any religious body 

As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books. 

When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people. 

I have known only one way of carrying on missionary work, viz., by personal example and discussion with searchers for knowledge. 

He who runs to the doctor, vaidya, or hakim for every little ailment, and swallows all kinds of vegetable and mineral drugs, not only curtails his life, but by becoming the slave of his body instead of remaining its master, loses self-control, and ceases to be a man. 

…service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. 

You can’t hurt me without my permission. 

But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant to other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God. 

The story of the creation and similar things in it did not impress me very much, but on the contrary made me incline somewhat towards atheism. 

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

It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to speak impromptu. I hesitated whenever I had to face strange audiences and avoided making a speech whenever I could. Even today I do not think I could or would even be inclined to keep a meeting of friends engaged in idle talk. 

I felt that God could be realized only through service. And service for me was the service of India, because it came to me without my seeking, because I had an aptitude for it. 

If I was to be their real teacher and guardian, I must touch their hearts, I must share their joys and sorrows, I must help them to solve the problems that faced them, and I must take along the right channel the surging aspirations of their youth. 

Forgive and forget, but never forget to forgive. You may find a happier heart is the key to a happier life. 

And whilst he may not claim superiority by reason of learning, I myself must not withold that meed of homage that learning, wherever it resides, always commands. 

Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. 

Only this much I knew – that under ideal conditions, true education could be imparted only by the parents, and that then there should be the minimum of outside help. 

My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth. 

Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr Coates, who happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said: 

But I never again went through this street. There would be other men coming in this man’s place and, ignorant of the incident, they would behave likewise. Why should I unnecessarily court another kick? I therefore selected a different walk. 

The incident deepened my feeling for the Indian settlers. I discussed with them the advisability of making a test case, if it were found necessary to do so, after having seen the British Agent in the matter of these regulations. 

The real seat of taste was not the tongue but the mind 

If you don’t ask, you don’t get it 

If it had not been for the Christians that I have known I might have been a Christian. 

Men in prison are “civilly dead” and have no claim to any say in policy. 

Thanks to the Court’s decision, only clean Indians (meaning upper caste Hindu Indians) or colored people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trains. 

We believe as much in the purity of races as we think they (the Whites) do…by advocating the purity of all races. 

I do not wish my house to be walled and my windows stuffed. I want all cultures to blow freely through my dwelling. 

There are a lot of ways to become a failure, but never taking a chance is the most successful. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it. 

The man has not the power to create life. Therefore, he has not either, the right to destroy it. 

Love is the humblest yet the most powerful force that the human being has. 

Violence is the fear to other’s ideals. 

The external freedom won’t be given to us but in the exact measure as we’ve known at a given moment, to developing our internal freedom. 

It’s more important to put the own heart in the prayer than to put other’s words with nothing of the own heart. 

Sickness is the result not only of our acts, but out thoughts also. 

If a man were so placed or could so place himself as to be absolutely above all dependence on his fellow-beings he would become so proud and arrogant as to be a veritable burden and nuisance to the world. 

Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically. 

The truth is to be found nowhere else other than within ourselves. 

If I did not have a sense of humor, I would have long ago killed myself. 

Destruction is not the law of humans. Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. Every murder or other injury, no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another is a crime against humanity. 

The true battlefield is within. 

Concentrate on your task. 

Even the most sublime ideas sound ridiculous if heard too often. Be the change that you want to see in the world. 

It is pleasant that there will be no religions in heaven. 

A friendship that exacts oneness of opinion and conduct is not worth much. 

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

Whatever does not exist in the body can’t be found in the universe, and whatever exists in the universe can be found in the body. 

Apparently, I’ve acted like a terrorist. But I’m not a terrorist. 

Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for non-violence. Violence does not mean the emancipation from fear, but discovering the means of combating the cause of fear. Nonviolence, on the other hand, has no cause for fear. The votary of nonviolence has to cultivate the capacity for sacrifice of the highest type in order to be free from fear. He recks not if he should lose his land, his wealth, his life. 

It is the best thing to blame ourselves when people cannot get on well with us. Boundless charity necessarily includes all or it ceases to be boundless. We must be strict with ourselves and lenient with our neighbors. For we know not their difficulties and what they overcome. 

The golden rule to apply in all such cases is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. 

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching. 

Live each day as if it were your last. Learn as if you would live forever. 

Those who think religion has nothing to do with politics understand neither religion or politics… The things that will destroy us are: politics without principles, pleasures without conscience, knowledge without character, business without morality. 

Make injustice visible. 

No effort is complete without prayer – without definite recognition that the best human endeavor is of no effect if it has not God’s blessing behind it. 

With every true friendship we build more firmly the foundations on which the peace of the whole world rests. Thought by thought and act by act, with every breath we build more firmly the kingdom of non-violence that is the true home of the spirit of humanity. 

Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle. 

Complete independence through truth and non-violence means the independence of every unit, be it the humblest of the nation, without distinction of race, colour or creed. 

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no dis-advantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. 

If India won her freedom through truth and non-violence, India would not only point the way to all the exploited Asiatic nations, she would become a torch-bearer for the Negro races. 

It is a mark of wisdom not to kick away the very step from which we have risen higher. The removal of one step from a staircase brings down the whole of it. 

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. 

We labor under the fatal delusion that no disease can be cured without medicine. This has been responsible for more mischief to mankind than any other evil. …Disease increases in proportion to the increase to the number of doctors in a place. 

Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used. 

I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day we should all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind. 

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know. 

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

A poet is one who can call forth the good latent in the human beast. 

For us, patriotism is the same as the love of humanity. 

Earth and heaven are in us 

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

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. . . . . . . Prayer is the first and the last lesson in learning the noble and brave art of sacrificing self in the various walks of life culminating in the defence of one’s nation’s liberty and honour. 

If that is the law of life we must work it out in daily exisitance. Wherever there are wars, wherever we are confronted with an opponent, conquer by love. I have found that the certain law of love has answered in my own life as the law of destruction has never done. 

Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world. 

Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible. 

Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British. 

I have even seen the writings suggesting that I am playing a deep game, that I am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on India, and am making religious experiments at India’s expense. I can only answer that Satyagraha is made of sterner stuff. There is nothing reserved and nothing secret in it. 

It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. 

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world’s progress toward peace. … Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man? 

We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith. 

The Sermon on the Mount…went straight to my heart. I compared it with the Gita. My young mind tried to unify the teaching of the Gita, the `Light of Asia’ and the Sermon on the Mount. That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly. 

My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. . . . In a gentle way you can shake the world. 

Truth is as hard as adamant and tender as a blossom. 

How do you know if the next act you are about to do is the right one or the wrong one? Consider the face of the poorest and most vulnerable human being that you have ever chanced upon, and ask yourself if the act that you contemplate will be of benefit to that person; and if it will be, it’s the right thing to do, and if not, rethink it. 

Violent means will give violent freedom. 

No people exists that would not think itself happier even under its own bad government than it might really be under the good governance of an alien power. 

It is wonderful, if we chose the right diet, what an extraordinarily small quantity would suffice. 

If I could wake all of the women of Asia, India could be won in a day. 

Nirvana is the utter extinction of all that is base in us, all that is vicious in us. Nirvana is not like the black, dead peace of the grave, but the living peace, the living happiness of a soul which is conscious of itself and conscious of having found its own abode in the heart of the Eternal. 

First they ignore you, then they denounce you, and then they say that they knew what you were saying all the time. 

I travel third-class because there is no fouth-class. 

Much that we hug today as knowledge is ignorance pure and simple. It makes the mind wander and even reduces it to a vacuity. 

As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding. 

The Attainment of freedom, whether for a person, a nation or a world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of nonviolence for each 

Let the villages of the future live in our imagination, so that we might one day come to live in them! 

Live every day like it is your last and learn everyday like you will live forever 

What better book can there be than the book of humanity. 

Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, no matter how inconsistent it may appear. My commitment is to Truth, not to consistency. 

Happiness eludes us if we run after it. 

When a man gives way to anger, he only harms himself. 

A man who behaves like a beast is worse than the beast. 

Deeds and seeds, take their own time to fructify. 

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

No man loses his freedom except through his own weakness. 

There is goodness as well as greatness in simplicity, not in wealth. 

The greatness of a person lies in his heart, not in his head; that is intellect. 

Violence is the weapon of weak, non-violence that of the strong. 

Sacrifice that causes pain is no sacrifice at all. True sacrifice is joy-giving and uplifting. 

Selfless action is a source of strength. 

Birth-control through self-restraint is the most desirable, sensible and totally harmless method. 

I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use, and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. … Nature produces enough for our wants from day to day, and if only every-body took enough for himself and nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world, there would be no man dying of starvation in this world. But so long as we have got this inequality, so long we are thieving. 

Without the study of Samskrit one cannot become a true Indian and a true learned man. 

The thing about you Christians, is that you are so unlike your Christ. 

There is enough for the need of everyone in this world, but not for the greed of everyone. 

The weak can never forgive. 

Be the change you’re trying to create 

Truth triumphs, even if there be no public support. 

People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don’t need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there. 

To see farther, you must climb higher…. 

To double your successes, you might have to double your failure rate. 

Hatred is never overcome by hatred but by love. 

To have a happy ending, choose a happy moment and call it ‘the ending’. Honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune. 

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

You never realize what the aftereffect of your activities, however in the event that you don’t do anything, obviously there will be no outcome. 

Means are ends in the making 

If you Christians acted more like your Christ, the world would be a better place. 

I considered becoming a Christian… until I met one. 

It is as much our obligation not to cooperate with evil as it is to cooperate with good 

I claim to be no more than an average man with below average capabilities. 

Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end. 

We no longer have a choice between violence and non-violence. The choice of today stands between nonviolence or non-existence. 

A person is bound to work in obedience to and in conformity to that person’s own nature. 

I honor the place within you where, when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us. 

Priorities lie in your actions 

Non-cooperation with tyrants is a duty. 

Kashmir is the real test of secularism in India. 

The Muslim is as much an Indian as I am and of the same blood. 

There is no fundamental cleavage between Hindus and Mussalmans. We have lived in the same land as brothers for generations and what has been possible all these years will certainly be possible in the future. 

In any case, the fear of subservience is quite imaginary. 

No one can dominate a population of 80,000,000. 

At the moment the British Common-wealth is a Commonwealth of White nation. 

Whoever is victor, there should be, after the war, a commonwealth of all nations. 

If Britain wins wholly, Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy and perhaps even Bolshevik Russia will disappear. 

If Britain were honest, which I dispute, she would then embrace all nations on terms of equality. 

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

A nonviolent man cannot desire embarrassment. 

I do not wish disaster to British arms. 

I cannot give active support in the war effort without denying a life-time of practice. 

I believe that a party wishing equality for India does exist in Britain. But it is an insignificant minority, and while I honour and like their opinion I cannot be enthused over it, for I know that those who shape policy and dominate are otherwise inclined. For me, therefore, it is only the Secretary of State who counts. 

You can only have lasting peace based on justice. 

No agreement between the British and Muslims can affect me. An agreement between Hindus and Muslims alone will affect me. 

I cannot be subservient anywhere. 

I look upon air-power for destruction as a terrible crime against humanity. 

Hitler is a scourge sent by God to punish men for their iniquities. 

You cannot cure a lesser evil by a greater evil. 

Britain’s success in the exploitation of non-European races raised the ambition of Bismarck and later Mussolini and others. 

Nothing is of a permanent nature. 

There is no distrust of men and mankind in me. They will answer before God, so why should I worry? 

Where my own mission is concerned, my thought is active, and I try to wish everyone well in spite of doubts and mistrust. 

I will suffer the agony if that is to be my lot. 

I may not unnerve myself while I can struggle against evil. 

I have shut my mind against nothing and I am a friend of Great Britain. I always have been. I have no axe to grind. 

Whatever I do is out of love. 

My idea of village SWARAJ is that is a complete republic, independent of its neighbors for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others which dependence is a necessity. 

When I don’t understand something, I reach up and hold God’s hand. And we walk together in silence. 

I once killed a man for snoring too loudly. 

My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all embracing. The conception of my patriotism is nothing if it is not always, in every case, without exception, consistent with the broadest good of humanity at large. 

When you practice a life of non-violence you no longer need seek the truth, the truth finds you. 

Faith alone is the sun of life. 

Animal experimentation is the blackest of all the black crimes that a man is at present committing… We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings… I abhor [animal] experimentation with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence… The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. 

Perfection is only an ideal for man; it cannot be attained, for man is made imperfect. 

Because no one sees the truth does not make it untrue. 

Nonviolence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice – nonviolence springs from love, cowardice from hate. 

If one person gains spiritually, the whole world gains 

Exploitation of the poor can be extinguished not by effecting the destruction of a few millionaires, but by removing the ignorance of the poor and teaching them to non-cooperate with their exploiters. 

Your readiness to suffer will light the torch of freedom which will never be put out. 

The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead one to pure democracy. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment. It is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence. A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy. 

Relationships are based on four principles: respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation. 

A great man may not do great things but they do ordinary things greatly. 

There is a power now slumbering within us, which is awakened would do to evil what light does to darkness. 

No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption. 

… when all violence subsides in the human heart, the state which remains is love. It is not something we have to acquire; it is always present, and needs only to be uncovered. This is our real nature, not merely to love one person here, another there, but to be love itself. 

3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, but 9 is not prime; -in this incarnation. 

Find yourself by losing yourself for others. 

Lady is the buddy of man, skilled with equivalent mental limit. 

Non -violence is infinitely superior to violence , forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness is the ornament. 

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes. 

Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress. 

Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. 

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it-always. 

You must be the change you want to see in the world. 

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind. 

Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking. 

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. All the scientific discoveries stained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence. 

To a man with an empty stomach food is God. 

They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them. 

When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. 

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. 

Satyagraha largely appears to the public as Civil Disobedience or Civil Resistance. It is civil in the sense that it is not criminal…. [The civil resister] considers certain laws to be so unjust as to render obedience to them a dishonor. He then openly and civilly breaks them and quietly suffers the penalty for their breach. 

Noncooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, noncooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evildoer. I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent noncooperation only multiplies evil and that evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. 

I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes. 

Hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practised, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. 

[When asked what he thought of modern civilization:] That would be a good idea. 

Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always. 

It is difficult but not impossible to conduct strictly honest business. What is true is that honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune. 

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. This can never happen except through non-violence. 

I have known many meat eaters to be far more non-violent than vegetarians. 

Must I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up. 

The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states. 

Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental nonviolence. It has potency which the world does not yet know. 

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident. 

It is nature’s kindness that we do not remember past births. Life would be a burden if we carried such a tremendous load of memories. 

A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir 

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary. 

I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India’s ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection. 

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still small voice within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority. 

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained. 

My ambition is much higher than independence. Through the deliverance of India, 

Young India, (12 January 1928). 

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs. 

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest. 

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least. 

We cannot evoke the true spirit of sacrifice and velour, so long as we are not free. I know the British Government will not be able to withhold freedom from us, when we have made enough self-sacrifice. We must, therefore, purge ourselves of hatred. 

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling? 

The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need but not for every man’s greed. 

Poverty is the worst kind of violence. 

We need to be the change we wish to see in the world. 

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul. 

Remember that there is always a limit to self-indulgence but none to self-restraint, and let us daily progress in that direction. 

In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals. 

It is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth…as my life consists of nothing but those experiments. 

I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well. 

I saw that bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education. 

Every Hindu boy and girl should possess sound Sanskrit learning. 

It is now my opinion that in all Indian curricula of higher education there should be a place for Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, besides of course the vernacular. 

Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training. 

One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the pledge by the party administering it. 

A convert’s enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born in it. 

Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal. 

I had learnt at the onset not to carry on public work with borrowed money. 

Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. 

My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth. 

Every affliction has its own rich lesson to teach, if we would learn it. 

Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly. 

Ahimsa is the eradication of the desire to injure or to kill. 

Ahimsa is not a matter of mere dietetics: it transcends it. 

Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. 

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

The highest religion has been defined by a negative word: ahimsa. 

Ahimsa is one of the world’s great principles, which no power on earth can wipe out. 

Dharma is one and one only. Ahimsa means moksha, and moksha is the realization of Truth. 

Love and ahimsa are matchless in their effect. 

Love in the sense of ahimsa has only a limited number of votaries in the world. 

Ahimsa is the strongest force known. 

Ahimsa is the height of Kshatriya dharma as it represents the climax of fearlessness. 

The fullest application of ahimsa does make life impossible. 

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

True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. 

Ahimsa and love are one and the same thing. 

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

Ahimsa is my God, and Truth is my God. 

Truth and ahimsa will never be destroyed. 

The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody. 

Ahimsa calls for the strength and courage to suffer without retaliation, to receive blows without returning any. 

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

Ahimsa was preached to man when he was in full vigor of life and able to look his adversaries straight in the face. 

The greater the realization of truth and ahimsa, the greater the illumination. 

The path of Truth is as narrow as it is straight. Even so is that of ahimsa. 

The removal of untouchability is one of the highest expressions of ahimsa. 

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

Ahimsa is a science. The word ‘failure’ has no place in the vocabulary of science. 

Ahimsa magnifies one’s own defects, and minimizes those of the opponent. It regards the mole in one’s own eye as a beam and the beam in the opponent’s eye as a mole. 

Ahimsa must be placed before everything else while it is professed. Then alone it becomes irresistible. 

Ahimsa must express itself through acts of selfless service of the masses. 

Ahimsa is no mere theory with me, but it is a fact of life based on extensive experience. 

My ahimsa is my own. I am not able to accept in its entirety the doctrine of non-killing of animals. 

What is it but my ahimsa that draws thousands of women to me in fearless confidence? 

Truth is my religion and ahimsa is the only way of its realization. 

One who hooks his fortune to ahimsa, the law of love, daily lessens the circle of destruction and to that extent promotes life and love. 

My anekantavada is the result of the twin doctrines of satya and ahimsa. 

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

My ahimsa would not tolerate the idea of giving a free meal to a healthy person who has not worked for it in some honest way. 

Ahimsa and Truth are my two lungs. I cannot live without them. 

My errors have been errors of calculation and judging men, not in appreciating the true nature of truth and ahimsa or in their application. 

Indeed, these errors and my prompt confessions have made me surer, if possible, of my insight into the implications of truth and ahimsa. 

All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body. 

Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been. 

True ahimsa should wear a smile even on a deathbed brought about by an assailant. It is only with that ahimsa that we can befriend our opponents and win their love. 

If our ahimsa is not of the brave but of the weak, and if it will bend the knee before himsa, Gandhism deserves to be destroyed. 

The alphabet of ahimsa is best learnt in domestic school and I can say from experience that if we secure success there, we are sure to do so everywhere else. 

A votary of ahimsa always prays for ultimate deliverance from the bondage of the flesh. 

I see a clear breach of ahimsa even in driving away monkeys; the breach would be proportionately greater if they have to be killed. 

A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal. 

Woman is more fitted than man to make explorations and take bolder action in ahimsa. 

Unless the charkha adds to your ahimsa and makes you stronger every day, your Gandhism is of little avail. 

Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity. 

In Swaraj, based on ahimsa, people need not know their rights, but it is also necessary for them to know their duties. 

The votary of ahimsa has only one fear, that is, of God. 

A votary of ahimsa must cultivate the habit of unremitting toil, sleepless vigilance, ceaseless self-control. 

It is against the spirit of ahimsa to overawe even one person into submission. 

The richest grace of ahimsa will descend easily upon the owner of hard discipline. 

Love, otherwise ahimsa, sustains this planet of ours. 

In an atmosphere of ahimsa, one has no scope to put his ahimsa to the test. It can be tested only in the face of himsa. 

A soldier fights with an irresistible strength when he has blown up his bridges and burnt his boats. Even so, it is with a soldier of ahimsa. 

If the lambs of the world had been willingly led, they would have long ago saved themselves from the butcher’s knife. 

If the circulation of blood theory could not have been discovered without vivisection, the human kind could well have done without it. 

The scriptures of Christians, Mussalmans and Hindus are all replete with the teaching of ahimsa. 

By ahimsa we will be able to save the cow and also win the friendship of the English. 

The Gita is not for those who have no faith. 

The Gita distinguishes between the powers of light and darkness and demonstrates their incompatibility. 

The Gita is not an aphoristic work, it is a great religious poem. 

Salvation of the Gita is perfect peace. 

A literal interpretation of the Gita lands one in a sea of contradictions. 

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

The sanyasa of the Gita is all work and yet no work. 

The sanyasa of the Gita will not tolerate complete cessation of activity. 

Devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness. 

Self-realization is the object of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures. 

The object of the Gita appears to me to be that of showing the most excellent way to attain self-realization. 

The message of the Gita is to be found in the second chapter of the Gita where Lord Krishna speaks of the balanced state of mind, of mental equipoise. 

Time is wealth, and the Gita says the Great Annihilator annihilates those who waste time. 

According to the letter of the Gita, it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit. 

The path of bhakti, karma and love as expounded in the Gita leaves no room for the despising of man by man. 

I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-to-day practice cannot be called religion. 

My Gita tells me that evil can never result from a good action. 

The Gita is not only my Bible and my Koran, it is more than that, it is my mother. 

I find a solace a in the Bhagavadgita and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. 

The Gita has become for me the key to the scriptures of the world. 

Let the Gita be to you a mine of diamonds, as it has been to me; let it be your constant guide and friend on life’s way. 

My life has been full of external tragedies and if they have not left any visible effect on me, I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavadgita. 

In the characteristics of the perfected man of the Gita, I do not see any to correspond to physical warfare. 

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

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

In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place. 

The lives of Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammed, as I have understood them, have illumined many a passage in the Gita. 

The Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified, but the picture is imaginary. 

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

The seeker is at liberty to extract from this treasure any meaning he likes, so as to enable him to enforce in his life the central teaching. 

To one who reads the spirit of the Gita, it teaches the secret of nonviolence, the secret of realizing self through the physical body. 

What the Sermon describes in a graphic manner, the Bhagavadgita reduces to a scientific formula. 

Charkha is an instrument of service. 

The Charkha in the hands of a poor widow brings a paltry price to her, in the hands of Jawaharlal; it is an instrument of India’s freedom. 

The Charkha is an outward symbol of truth and nonviolence. 

The Charkha is intended to realize the essential and living oneness of interest among India’s myriads. 

The Charkha is the symbol of nonviolence on which all life, if it is to be real life, must be based. 

The Charkha is the symbol of sacrifice, and sacrifice is essential for the establishment of the image of the deity. 

The Charkha supplemented the agriculture of the villagers and gave it dignity. 

Seek ye first the Charkha and its concomitants and everything else will be added unto you. 

The Charkha, which is the embodiment of willing obedience and calm persistence, must therefore succeed before there is civil disobedience. 

The turning of the charkha in a lifeless way will be like the turning of the beads of the rosary with a wandering mind turned away from God. 

I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. 

I have called spinning the yajna of this age of India. 

If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed. 

I have pinned my faith to the spinning wheel. On it, I believe, the salvation of this country depends. 

My heart is drawn backwards and forwards between the spinning wheel and books. 

For every minute that I spin, there is in me the consciousness that I am adding to the nation’s wealth. 

The spinning wheel and the spinning wheel alone will solve, if anything will solve, the problem of the deepening poverty of India. 

The spinning wheel means national consciousness and a contribution by every individual to a definite constructive national work. 

The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me. 

He who spins before the poor, inviting them to do likewise, serves God as no one else does. 

I would like to assure those who would serve Daridranarayana that there is music, art, economy and joy in the spinning wheel. 

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

The spinning wheel is as much a necessity of Indian life as air and water. 

The spinning wheel is the one thing to which all must turn to in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate and the vast majority must for all time. 

The spinning wheel is itself an exquisite piece of machinery. My head daily bows in reverence to its unknown inventor. 

The spinning wheel for us is the foundation for all public corporate life. 

The spinning wheel is the auspicious symbol of sharir yajna, body labour. 

There is no better way of industrializing the villages of India than the spinning wheel. 

If you will express the requisite purity of character in action, you cannot do it better than through the spinning wheel. 

Every woman will tell the curious that with the disappearance of the spinning wheel vanished India’s happiness and prosperity. 

There is no “playing with truth” in the Charkha programme, for satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth. 

The socialism that India can assimilate is the socialism of the spinning wheel. 

The study of Indian economics is the study of the spinning wheel. 

The yajna of our age and for us is the spinning wheel. 

The foundation of service and your real training lie in spinning khaddar. 

The restoration of spinning to its central place in India’s peaceful campaign for deliverance from the imperial yoke gives her women a special status. 

Without proper, careful organisation of the spinning wheel and khaddar, there is absolutely no civil disobedience. 

There is a vital connection between satyagraha and charkha, and the more I find that belief challenged, the more I am confirmed in it. 

The music of the spinning wheel will be as balm to your soul. 

Every widow I have met has recognized in the wheel a dear forgotten friend. 

It was our love of foreign cloth that ousted the wheel from its position of dignity. 

When the wheel was accepted as part of the national flag, it was surely implied that the spinning wheel would hum in every household. 

Hand-spinning is designed to put millions of rupees in the hands of the poor villagers. 

If hand-spinning is an effective method of making India self-supporting, it must be made part of the franchise. 

My Swaraj takes note of bhangis, dheds, dublas and the weakest of the weak, and except the spinning wheel I know no other thing which befriends all these. 

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

Hunger is the argument that is driving India to the spinning wheel. 

India as a nation can live and die only for the spinning wheel. 

Just as there are signs by which you can recognize violence with the naked eye, so is the spinning wheel to me a decisive sign of nonviolence. 

Nothing can so quickly put the masses on their legs as the spinning wheel and all it means. 

Restore the spinning wheel to its place and you will solve the problem of poverty. 

The cause of the spinning wheel is too great and too good to have to rest on mere hero-worship. 

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

If we are true servants of the masses, we would take pride in spinning for their sake. 

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

There is no yajna (sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student’s mind, to spiritualize his life. 

Englishmen must learn to be Brahmins, not banias. 

Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. 

Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land. 

Swaraj means, a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English. 

However virile the English language may be, it can never become the language of the masses of India. 

The English language is so elastic that you can find another word to say the same thing. 

If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide. 

We, the English educated Indians, often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indians is the whole of India. 

I am not anti-English, I am not anti-British, I am not anti-any Government, but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-injustice. 

I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage. 

My love of the British is equal to that of my own people. 

My mission is to convert every Indian, every Englishman and finally the world to nonviolence for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic, social or religious. 

My personal religion enables me to serve my countrymen without hurting the English or, for that matter, anybody else. 

My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper. 

If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian. 

Personally I crave not for ‘independence’, which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke. 

Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner. 

To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj. 

A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women. 

Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English. 

This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has unfitted us for true national service. 

Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought. 

The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English. 

We Hindus and Mohamedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed them to put us asunder. 

It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment. 

My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica. 

Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule. 

No matter what the cause was and wherever it was, Indian governments must never requisition the services of British soldiers to deal with civil disturbances. 

There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before a proper settlement is arrived at. 

Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds. 

The Britisher is the top dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country. 

That I want to destroy British imperialism is another matter, but I want to do so by converting those who are associated with it. 

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

The British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe. 

My conception of dominion status implies present ability to severe the British connection if I wish to. 

The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers. 

My motto is “Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention.” 

Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy? 

Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as such boycott brought about by hand-spinning and khaddar. 

I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India. 

The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners. 

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

Our nonviolence vis-?-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak. 

I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers. 

The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions. 

The collectors of revenue and the policeman are the only symbols by which millions in India’s villages know British rule. 

It was not through democratic methods that Britain bagged India. 

For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of English or the disappearance of Englishmen. 

It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity of India, to entertain for one single moment hatred towards Englishmen. 

If you must kill English officials, why not kill me instead? 

I am just not thinking of India’s deliverance. It will come, but will it be worth if England and France fall, or if they come out victorious over Germany ruined and humbled? 

I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people. 

My attitude towards the British is one of utter friendliness and respect. 

I may fight the British ruler, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary treasures. 

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

Faith is like the Himalaya mountains which cannot possibly change. 

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

If you have faith in the cause and the means and in God, the hot sun will be cool for you. 

It is poor faith that needs fair weather for standing firm. That alone is true faith that stands the foulest weather. 

Nothing can be more hurtful to an honourable man than that he should be accused of bad faith. 

Work without faith is like an attempt to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit. 

A satyagrahi should have a living faith in God. 

I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith. 

I have made the world’s faith in God my own and as my faith is effaceable, I regard that faith as amounting to experience. 

It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with which Hitler has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration. 

My faith in non-co-operation is as bright as ever. 

My implicit faith in nonviolence does mean yielding to minorities when they are really weak. 

With me the connection between the cosmic phenomena and human behaviour is a living faith that draws me nearer to God, humbles me and makes me readier for facing Him. 

Without a belief in my programme and without an acceptance of my condition, you will ruin me, ruin yourselves and ruin the cause. 

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

What faith can you place in a general or a soldier who lacks resolution and determination, who says, ‘I shall keep guard as long as I can’? 

Can a general fight on the strength of soldiers, who, he knows, have no faith in him? 

Decency requires that when a programme is approved by the majority, all should carry it out faithfully. 

He who would in his own person test the fact of God’s presence can do so by a living faith. 

Khaddar is an activity that can absorb all the time of all available men and women and grown-up children, if they have faith. 

Legal imposition avoids the necessity of honour or good faith. 

Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within. 

Those who are lacking in bhakti (devotion), lacking in faith, are ill qualified to interpret the scriptures. 

God accepts the sacrifice of the pure in heart. 

God always saves the world from the consequences of unintended errors of men who live in fear of Him. 

God alone is immortal, imperishable. 

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

God alone knows absolute Truth. 

God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. 

God cannot be so cruel and unjust as to make the distinctions of high and low between man and man, and woman and woman. 

God cannot be realized through intellect. 

God chooses as His instrument the humblest and weakest of His creatures to fulfill Himself. 

God created man to work for his food and said that those who ate without work were thieves. 

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

God does not punish directly. His ways are inscrutable. 

God gifted man with intellect so that he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might forget his Maker. 

God has a thousand names, or rather He is Nameless. 

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

God has blessed man with seed that has the highest potency and woman with a field richer than the richest earth to be found anywhere on his globe. 

God has blessed me with the mission to place nonviolence before the nation for adoption. 

God has enabled man to distinguish between his sister, his mother, his daughter and his wife. 

God has enabled me to affect the life of the country since 1920 without the necessity of office. 

God has given us only a limited sphere of action and a limited vision. 

God has His own way of choosing His instruments. 

God has made of man and woman one complete whole. In the scheme of nature, both of them are equal. 

God has so ordered this world that no one can keep his goodness or badness exclusively to himself. 

God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision. 

God is the hardest taskmaster I have known on this earth and He tries you through and through. 

God is the source of Light and Life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. 

God is the vital force or spirit which is all-pervading, all-embracing and, therefore, beyond human ken. 

God is the shield of the nonviolent. 

God in his wisdom circumscribed man’s vision, and rightly too, for otherwise man’s conceit would know no bounds. 

God is always the upholder of justice. 

God is certainly one. He has no second. He is unfathomable, unknowable and unknown to the vast majority of mankind. 

God is continuously in action, without resting for a single moment. 

God is Light, not darkness. God is Love, not hate. God is truth, not untruth. God alone is great. 

God is not a person. God is an eternal principle. 

God is not a Power residing in the clouds. He is an unseen Power residing within us and nearer to us than finger nails to the flesh. 

God is not in Kaaba or in Kashi. He is within everyone of us. 

God is not outside this earthly case of ours. 

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

God makes crooked straight for us and sets things right when they seem to go dead wrong. 

God never made man that he may consider another man as untouchable. 

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

God resides in every human form, indeed in every particle of His creations, in everything that is on his earth. 

God rules even where Satan seems to hold sway, because the latter exists only on God’s sufferance. 

God’s laws are eternal and unalterable and not separable from God Himself. 

God’s time never stops. 

God’s ways are more than Man’s arithmetic. 

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

God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. 

God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days’ wonder. 

God took and needed no personal service. He served His creatures without demanding any service for Himself in return. 

God is known by many names. And in the last analysis God’s names were as many as human beings. 

God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one – fifth of our vast population as untouchables. 

God will cease to be God, if he brought into being a single person with the hall-mark of inferiority. 

God will not be God, if He allowed Himself to be the object of proof by His creatures. 

God will rule the lives of all those who will surrender themselves without reservation to Him. 

I am endeavouring to see God through service of humanity; for I know that God is neither in heaven, nor down below, but in everyone. 

I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan. 

I believe in God, not as a theory but as a fact more real than life itself. 

I call God long-suffering and patient precisely because He permits evil in the world. I know that He has no evil in Him and yet if there is evil, He is the author of it and yet untouched by it. 

I can neither serve God nor humanity if as an Indian I do not serve India, and as a Hindu I do not serve Indian Mussalmans. 

I claim to know my millions. All the hours of the day I am with them. They are my first care and God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. 

I do not accept the orthodox teaching that Jesus was or is God incarnate in the accepted sense or that he was or is the only Son of God. 

I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded. 

If God is not a personal being for me like my earthly father, He is infinitely more. 

If God is vast and boundless as the ocean, how can a tiny drop like man imagine what He is? 

If God holds me to be a pure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. 

If I could persuade myself that I could find Him in a Himalayan cave I would proceed there immediately. 

If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. 

If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the Granth Sahib or the Koran? 

If we could all give our own definitions of God, there would be as many definitions as there are men and women. 

If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. 

I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without a house of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a synagogue or agiary. 

I know that I can never be alone as God is there with me. 

I recognise no God except the God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. 

I shall despair when I despair of myself, of God and humanity. 

I trust men only because I trust God. 

I worship the God that is Truth or Truth which is God through the service of these millions. 

By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God. 

For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness. 

For me the Voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or the still small Voice mean one and the same thing. 

If I arrogate to myself the exclusive title of being in the right, I usurp the function of the Deity. 

I will not be a traitor of God to please the whole world. 

It is my conviction that the root of evil is the want of a living God. 

It is my unmistakable belief that not a blade of grass moves but by the divine will. 

Let me say that God will send me the plan when He gives the word as He has done before now. 

Mine is not a religion of the prison-house. It has room for the least among God’s creation. 

My religion says that only he who is prepared to suffer can pray to God. 

My varnashram refuses to bow the head before the greatest potentate on earth, but my varnashram compels me to bow down my head in all humility before knowledge, purity, before every person where I see God face to face. 

My fast is a matter between God and myself. 

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

Since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is. 

The life of millions is my politics, from which I dare not free myself without denying my life-work and God. 

The purer I try to become, the nearer I feel to be to God. 

To me Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except the way of nonviolence. 

To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. 

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

What I want to achieve, what I have been striving and pining for these thirty years, is self-realization, that is, to see God face to face. 

You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, and I am dead. 

A fear-stricken person can never know God, and one who knows God will never fear a mortal man. 

A mind not set on God is given to wandering and lacks the quality of a temple of worship. 

All of us with one voice call one God differently as Parmatma, Ishwara, Shiva, Vishnu, Rama, Allah, Khuda, Dada-Hormuzda, Jehova, God and an infinite variety of names. 

A personal selfish prayer is bad whether made before an image or an unseen God. 

All religions enjoined worship of the One God who is all-pervasive. He is present even in a drop of water or in a tiny speck of dust. 

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

All the religions of the world describe God pre-eminently as the Friend of the friendless, Help of the helpless, and Protector of the weak. 

As soon as we become one with the ocean in the shape of God, there is no more rest for us, nor indeed do we need rest any longer. 

Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. 

Buddha emphasized and re-declared the eternal and unalterable existence of the moral government of this universe. He unhesitatingly said that the law was God Himself. 

Calling them devadasis we insult God Himself in the name of religion. 

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

Conversion without a clean heart is a denial of God and religion. 

Cowardice is not a sign of belief in God. 

“Do not worry in the least about yourself, leave all worry to God” this appears to be the commandment in all religions. 

Even the atheists, who have pretended to disbelieve in God, have believed in Truth. 

Fight if you must on the path of righteousness and God will be with you. 

He is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. 

He who has a living faith in God will not do evil deeds with name of God on his lips. 

If we will take care of today, God will take care of the morrow. 

In a strictly scientific sense God is at the bottom of both good and evil. 

In His boundless love God permits the atheist to live. 

In the Gita continuous concentration on God is the king of sacrifices. 

Its unadulterated belief in the oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those who are nominally within its fold are two distinctive contributions of Islam. 

It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and sin against God. 

It is impossible that God, who is the God of Justice, could have made the distinctions that men observe today in the name of religion. 

It is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited extent. 

It was manly and dignified to rely upon God for the dissolution of all troubles. He was the only infallible help, guide and friend. 

Let us fear God and we shall cease to fear man. 

A living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind. 

Meditation is waiting on God. 

Nonviolence is an attribute of the Almighty whose ways of fulfilling Himself are inscrutable. 

Man alone is made in the image of God. 

Man can only conceive God within the limitation of his own mind. 

Man can only describe God in his own poor language. 

Man in the flesh is essentially imperfect. He may be described as being made in the image of God but is far from being God. 

Man should earnestly desire the well – being of all God’s creations and pray that we may have the strength to do so. 

No man has ever been able to describe God fully. The same holds true of ahimsa. 

The man who eats to live, who is friends with the five powers – earth, water, ether, sun and air – who is a servant of God, the Creator of all these, ought not to fall ill. 

The man who fears man falls from the estate of man. Fear God alone. 

When a man fasts, it is not the gallons of water he drinks that sustains him, but God. 

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

A man cannot serve God and Mammon, nor be “temperate and furious” at the same time. 

A man of God never strives after untruth and therefore he can never lose hope. 

A man who is intentionally unarmed relies upon the Unseen Force called God by poets, but called the Unknown by scientists. 

A person who believes in nonviolence believes in a living God. He cannot accept defeat. 

Of all the myriads of God, Daridranarayana is the most sacred inasmuch as it represents the untold millions of the poor people as distinguished from the few rich people. 

One is ever young in the presence of the God of Truth, or Truth which is God. 

Often does good come out of evil. But that is God’s, not man’s plan. 

Our prayer is a heart search. It is a reminder to ourselves that we are helpless without His support. 

Outward appearance is nothing to Him if it is not an expression of the inner. 

Punishment is God’s. He alone is the infallible Judge. 

Rama, Allah and God are to me convertible terms. 

Religion all the world over offeres God as the solace and comfort for all in agony. 

Religion is entirely a personal matter. Each one could approach his Creator as he liked. 

Satyagraha is search for Truth, and God is Truth. 

Seeing God face to face is to feel that He is enthroned in our hearts even as a child feels a mother’s affection without needing any demonstration. 

Shraddha means self-confidence and self-confidence means faith in God. 

Surely, conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows His creatures’ hearts. 

Imperialism is a negation of God. It does ungodly acts in the name of God. 

That which impels man to do the right thing is God. 

Undoubtedly, prayer requires a living faith in God. Successful satyagraha is inconceivable without that faith. 

The art of dying bravely and with honour does not need any special training, save a living faith in God. 

The eternal duel between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Satan, is raging in my breast, which is one among their billion battlefields. 

The idol in the temple is not God. But since God resides in every atom, He resides in that idol too. 

The knowledge of the omnipresence of God also means respect for the lives even of those who may be called opponents. 

The Law and the Lawgiver are one. 

The Law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name. 

The Law which governs all life is God. 

The nonviolent man automatically becomes a servant of God. 

The power we call God defies description. 

There can be in the eyes of God no distinction between man and man, even as there is no distinction between animal and animal. 

There is only one God for us all, whether we find him through the Koran, the Zend-Avesta, The Tolmud, or the Gita. 

There is no greater spellbinder of peace than the name of God. 

The sky may be overcast today with clouds, but a fervent prayer to God is enough to dispel them. 

The sum of all that lives is God. 

The sum total of karma is God. 

The Vedas are as indefinable as God and Hinduism. 

This belief in God has to be based on faith which transcends reason. 

This feeling of helplessness in us has arisen from our deliberate dismissal of God from our common affairs. 

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

Though philosophical Hinduism has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising as Islam. 

To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. 

To bear all kinds of tortures without a murmur of resentment is not possible for a human being without the strength that comes from God. 

To reject the necessity of temples is to reject the necessity of God, religion and earthly existence. 

To say that a single human being, because of his birth, becomes an untouchable, unapproachable or invisible is to deny God. 

Truth is God, and Truth overrides all our plans. The whole Truth is only embodied within the heart of Great Power-Truth. 

Truth is the right designation of God. 

Waiting on God means increasing purity. 

We do not know the laws of God, nor their working. 

What is impossible with man is child’s play with God. 

When we fear God, then we shall fear no man, however high-placed he may be. 

Who is there in the world who can insult the God in the image? 

Without living Truth, God is nowhere. 

Without an unreserved surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thoughts is impossible. 

You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer unless you reduce yourself to a cipher. 

You will find that God is always by the side of the fearless. 

You will not pit one word of God against another word of God. 

Hinduism dies if untouchability lives, and untouchability has to die if Hinduism is to live. 

Hinduism does not rest on the authority of one book or one prophet, nor does it posses a common creed like the Kalma. 

Hinduism has absorbed the best of all the faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. 

Hinduism has become a conservative religion and, therefore, a mighty force because of the swadeshi spirit underlying it. 

Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability. 

Hinduism is not a codified religion. 

Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal if it closes its temples to Harijans. 

Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me the most glorious religion in the world. 

Hinduism would not have been much of a religion if Rama had not steeled his heart against every temptation. 

Buddha never rejected Hinduism, but he broadened its base. He gave it a new life and a new interpretation. 

Cow preservation is an article of faith in Hinduism. 

Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world. 

If God gives me the privilege of dying for the Hinduism of my conception, I shall have sufficiently died for the unity of all and even for Swaraj. 

If I know Hinduism at all, it is essentially inclusive and ever-growing, ever-responsive. It gives the freest scope for imagination, speculation and reason. 

I have nothing of the communalist in me because my Hinduism is all inclusive. 

I know of no system other than Hinduism under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty. 

I know that Buddhism is to Hinduism what Protestantism is to Roman Catholicism, only in a much stronger light, to a much greater degree. 

I must rebel against the idea that millions of Indians, who were Hindus, the other day, changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion. 

I would far rather that Hinduism died than that untouchability lived. 

My Hindu instinct tells me that all religions are more or less true. 

My Hinduism must be a very poor thing if it cannot flourish even under the most adverse influence. 

My life is dedicated to the service of Indians through the religion of nonviolence which I believe to be the root of Hinduism. 

My respectful study of other religions has not abated my reverence for or my faith in the Hindu scriptures. 

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. 

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

Only my death will determine whether I am ‘Mohamed Gandhi’, Jinnah’s slave, destroyer of the Hindu religion or its servant and protector. 

The more I study Hindu scriptures, and the more I discuss them with Brahmins, the more I feel convinced that untouchability is the greatest blot upon Hinduism. 

Idolatry is permissible in Hinduism when it sub serves an ideal. 

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

If Hinduism teaches hatred of Islam or of non-Hindus, it is doomed to destruction. 

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

The untouchability of Hinduism is probably worse than that of the modern imperialists. 

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

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

Harijan service is a duty the caste Hindus owe to themselves. 

For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world. 

So long as untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility. 

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

In Hinduism we have got an admirable foot-rule to measure every shastra and every rule of conduct, and that is truth. 

It is impossible to wait and weigh, in golden scales, the sentiments of prejudice and superstition that have gathered round the priests who are considered to be the custodians of Hinduism. 

All the four stages in a man’s life are devised by the seers in Hinduism for imposing discipline and self-restraint. 

Being dissatisfied and properly dissatisfied with the husk of Hinduism, you are in danger of losing even the kernel, life itself. 

Nonviolence which to me is the glory of Hinduism, has been sought to be explained away by our people as being meant for the sanyasis only. 

No stone should be left unturned to bring home to the family members that untouchability is a sin and a blot on Hinduism. 

The only way Hinduism can convert the whole world to cow-protection is by giving an object-lesson in cow-protection and all it means. 

Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth. 

Hindus, if they want unity among different races, must have the courage to trust the minorities. 

Dining and marriage restrictions stunt Hindu society. 

The only way by which you and I can wean orthodox Hindus from their bigotry is by patient argument and correct conduct. 

The sacred thread and the tuft of hair without a pure heart and a spirit of toleration do not make a Hindu. 

Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion. 

A Swaraj government means a government established by the free joint will of Hindus, Mussalmans and others. 

India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for humanity. 

India is essentially a karmabhumi (land of duty) in contradistinction to bhogabhumi (land of enjoyment). 

India has the right, if she only knew, of becoming the predominant partner by reason of her numbers, geographical position and culture inherited for ages. 

India has an unbroken tradition of nonviolence from times immemorial. 

India must protect her primary industries even as a mother protects her children against the whole world without being hostile to it. 

India will not be a helpless partner in her own exploitation and foreign domination. 

India unarmed would not require to be destroyed through poison gas or bombardment. 

India is one vast prison with high walls of suppression clothing her mind and her body. 

If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last. 

An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to a groaning world. 

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

An India free from exploitation from within and without must prosper with astonishing rapidity. 

For India to enter into the race for armaments is to court suicide. 

If India is not to declare spiritual bankruptcy, religious instruction of its youth must be held to be at least as necessary as secular instruction. 

On India rests the burden of pointing the way to all the exploited races of the earth. 

If India becomes the slave of the machine, then, I say, heaven save the world. 

India’s freedom must revolutionize the world’s outlook upon Peace and War. 

India’s freedom will not be won by violence but only by the purest suffering without retaliation. 

In India there is a common saying that the way to Swaraj is through Mandalay. 

India’s coming into her own will mean every nation doing likewise. 

India’s way is not Europe’s. India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages. 

Whatever else India may not be, she is at least one thing, She is the greatest storehouse of spiritual knowledge. 

For a fallen India to aspire to move the world and protect the weaker races is seemingly an impertinence. 

Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind. 

In a self-respecting India, is not every woman’s virtue as much every man’s concern as his own sister’s? 

In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village. 

I do not want India to rise on the ruin of other nations. 

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

I would rather have India without education, if that is the price to be paid for making it dry. 

I would far rather that India perished than that she won Her freedom at the sacrifice of truth. 

I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonor. 

I would rather have India reduced to a state of pauperism than have thousands of drunkards in our midst. 

I would not flinch from sacrificing even a million lives for India’s liberty. 

Through realization of freedom of India, I hope to realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of man. 

I want India to come into her own and that state cannot be better defined by any single word than Swaraj. 

Freedom of India will demonstrate to all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is very near. 

To gain India’s freedom, the capacity for suffering must go hand in hand with the capacity for ceaseless labour. 

I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term. 

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

I would bend the knee before the poorest scavenger, the poorest untouchable in India for having participated in crushing him for centuries; I would even take the dust off his feet. 

My varnashram dharma teaches me that there must be some significance in the fact of my being born in India instead of in Europe. 

I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. 

Even if the whole of India, ranged on one side, were to declare that Hindu-Muslim unity is impossible, I will declare that it is perfectly possible. 

I hold too that whatever may be true of other countries, a bloody revolution will not succeed in India. 

I call the Lancashire trade immoral, because it was raised and is sustained on the ruin of millions of India’s peasants. 

If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task. 

My nationalism is as broad as my swadeshi, I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit. 

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

My swadeshi chiefly centers round the handspun khaddar and extends to everything that can be and is produced in India. 

My interest in India’s freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise. 

Disorder and violence are, in fact, things that might check the pace of India’s progress. 

All I want to say, with the utmost emphasis at my command, is that the description of India as a military country is wrong. 

I must declare that it is better for India do discard violence altogether even for defending her borders. 

Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. 

Urbanization in India is a slow but sure death for her villages and villagers. 

A free India will throw all her weight in favour of world disarmament and should herself be prepared to give a lead in this. 

God forbid that India should ever become a military nation, which would be a menace to the peace of the world, and yet if things went on as they were doing, what hope was there for India and, therefore, for the world? 

If the Commander-in-Chief will look beyond the defence forces, he will discover that the real India is not military but peace-loving. 

In the case of the Indian villager, an age-old culture is hidden under entrustment of crudeness. 

Before we can aspire to guide the destinies of India, we shall have to adopt the habit of fearlessness. 

The cottage industry of India had to perish in order that Lancashire might flourish. 

Drink is not a fashion in India, as it is in the West. 

The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between modern civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God. 

The unparalleled extravagance of English rule has demented the rajas and the maharajas who, unmindful of consequences, ape it and grind their subjects to dust. 

It would be a blunder of the first magnitude for the British to be a party, in any way whatsoever, to the division of India. 

Half-a-dozen or twenty cities of India alone working together cannot bring Swaraj. 

Nonviolent non-co-operators can only succeed when they have succeeded in attaining control over the hooligans of India. 

Nowhere in the world would you find such skeletons of cows and bullocks as you do in our cow-worshipping India. 

The Khaddar of my conception is that handspun cloth entirely takes the place of mill cloth in India. 

Khaddar has the greatest organizing power in it because it has itself to be organized and because it affects all India. 

Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, of its economic freedom and equality and, therefore, ultimately, in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘the livery of India’s freedom’. 

The fragrance of nonviolence was never sweeter than it was today amidst the stink of violence of the most cowardly type that was being displayed in the cities of India. 

Jail-going is only the beginning, not the end of satyagraha. The acme of satyagraha for us would be to lay down our lives for the defence of India’s just cause. 

The mentality which made one section of the Indians look upon another as enemies was suicidal; it could only serve to perpetuate their slavery. 

Our non-co-operation is with the system the English have established in India, with the material civilization and its attendant greed and exploitation of the weak. 

Nothing depends upon the death of an individual, be he ever so great, but much depends upon the freedom of India. 

The whole of India was the home of every Indian who considered himself as one and behaved as such, no matter to what faith he belonged. 

Many persons claiming different faiths make us one and an indivisible nation. All these have an equal claim to be the nationals of India. 

The states can make the finest contribution to the building of India’s future independence if they set the right example in their own territories. 

It is the absolute right of India to misgovern herself. 

The ideal is a synthesis of the different cultures that have come to stay in India, that have influenced Indian life, and that, in their turn, have themselves been influenced by the spirit of the soil. 

Unity among the different races and the different religions of India is indispensable to the birth of national life. 

Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister. 

Let us remember that we are all Indians eating Indian grain and salt, and living on the dumb Indian masses. 

Final Satyagraha is inconceivable without an honorable peace between the several communities composing the Indian nation. 

The West has yet to discover anything so hygienic as the Indian toothstick. 

Idleness is the great plague of India. 

Mass illiteracy is India’s sin and shame and must be liquidated. 

There is every reason for being cautious about founding new universities till India has digested Her newly acquired freedom. 

If there was any teacher in the world who insisted upon the inexorable law of cause and effect, it was Gautam, and yet my friends, the Buddhists outside India, would, if they could, avoid the effects of their own acts. 

In this, of all the countries in the world, possession of inordinate wealth by individuals should be held as a crime against Indian humanity. 

We must break through the provincial crust if we are to reach the core of all-India nationalism. 

The commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of the manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of the Western exploiters. 

If untouchability lives, Hinduism perishes and even India perishes, but if untouchability is eradicated from the Hindu heart, root and branch, then Hinduism has a definite message for the world. 

We Indians are one as no two Englishmen are. 

Khadi is the sun of the village solar system. 

Khaddar was conceived with a much more ambitious object, that is, to make our villages starvation-proof. 

The khadi spirit means fellow-feeling with every human being on earth. 

The khadi spirit means also an infinite patience. 

Khaddar delivers the poor from the bonds of the rich and creates a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and the masses. 

Khaddar does not displace a single cottage industry. 

Khaddar brings a ray of hope to the widow’s broken-up home. 

Khadi service, village service and Harijan service are one in reality, though three in name. 

Khadi will be the sun of the whole industrial solar system. 

Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life. 

I would ask you to come in Khadi, for Khadi links you with the fallen and the down-trodden. 

Even if masses of people were to burn khadi publicly and say that it is an insane programme, I will declare that those people have gone mad. 

Khadi will cease to have any value in my eyes if it does not usefully employ the millions. 

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

Coal is not dear for the coal-miner who can use it there and then, nor is khadi dear for the villager who manufactures his own khadi. 

Even as satyagraha is a weapon unique of its kind and not one of the ordinary weapons used by people, so is Khadi, a unique article of commerce which will not, cannot, succeed on terms common to other articles. 

For a firm believer in swadeshi, there need be no Pharisaical self-satisfaction in wearing khadi. 

If we have the khadi spirit in us, then we should surround ourselves with simplicity in every walk of life. 

Organization of khaddar is infinitely better than co-operative societies or any other form of village organization. 

The art that is in the machine-made article, appeals only to the eye; the art in Khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye. 

Khadi work without the mastery of the science of khadi will be love’s labour lost in terms of Swaraj. 

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

The only real and reliable guarantee for khadi would be honesty, truthfulness and sincerity of khadi workers. 

The singular secret of khaddar lies in its saleability in the place of its production and use by the manufacturers themselves. 

Through Khadi we teach the people the art of civil obedience to an institution which they have built up for themselves. 

Capital exploits the labour of a few to multiply itself. 

Every labourer is worthy of his hire. No country can produce thousands of unpaid whole-time workers. 

Is not labour, like learning, its own reward? 

Labour has its unique place in a cultured human family. 

Labour is priceless, not gold. 

Labour is a great leveler of all distinctions. 

No labour is too mean for one who wants to earn an honest penny. 

There is a world-wide conflict between capital and labour, and the poor envy the rich. 

The saving of labour of the individual should be the object and honest humanitarian considerations, and not greed, the motive. 

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

Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect. 

I do not regard capital to be the enemy of labour. 

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

A labourer cannot sit at the table and write, but a man who has worked at the table all his life can certainly take to physical labour. 

A scavenger who works in His service shares equal distinction with a king who uses his gifts in His name and is a mere trustee. 

A true and nonviolent combination of labour would act like a magnet attracting to it all the needed capital. 

A worker’s capital is inexhaustible, incapable of being stolen, and bound to pay him a generous dividend all the time. 

Each and every one of you should consider himself to be a trustee for the welfare of the rest of his fellow labourers and not be self-seeking. 

If everybody lives by the sweat of his brow, the earth will become a paradise. 

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

Labour, because it chose to remain unintelligent, either became subservient, or insolently believed in damaging the capitalists’ goods and machinery or even in killing the capitalists. 

Mere mental, that is, intellectual labour, is for the soul and has its own satisfaction. 

Nothing will demoralize the nation so much as that we should learn to despise labour. 

Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. 

Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society. 

Employers ganging up against workers is like raising an army of elephants against ants. 

The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society. 

This mad rush for wealth must cease and the labourer must be assured not only of a living wage but, also a daily task that is not mere drudgery. 

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

Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is no use thinking of labour-saving devices. 

A life without vows is like a ship without an anchor or like an edifice that is built on sand instead of a solid rock. 

Life is greater than all art. 

Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory. 

A true life lived amongst the people is in itself an object-lesson that must produce its own effect upon immediate surroundings. 

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

The Enlightened one has told you in never-to-be-forgotten words that this little span of life is but a passing shadow, a fleeting thing. 

If I were over full of pity for the cow, I should sacrifice my life to save her but not take my brother’s. 

My dharma teaches me to give my life for the sake of others without even attempting to kill. 

My faith in truth and nonviolence is ever growing, and as I am ever trying to follow them in my life, I too am growing every moment. 

My religion and my patriotism derived from my religion, embrace all life. 

Domestic matters are trifles for us. But they occupy the principal part of my life. They teach me to know my limitations. 

The only praise I would like and treasure is the promotion of the activities to which my life is dedicated. 

The first condition of nonviolence is justice all round, in every department of life. 

Absolute calm is not the law of ocean. And it is the same with the ocean of life. 

Healthy, well-informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life. 

Every single act of one who would lead a life of purity should be in the nature of yajna. 

The secret of a happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation is life. 

Man is sent into the world to perform his duty even at the cost of his life. 

To know music is to transfer it to life. 

The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death. 

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

This earthly existence of ours is more brittle that the glass bangles that ladies wear. 

Let us give today first the vital things of life and all the grace and ornaments of life will follow. 

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

Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. 

Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life. 

Love and exclusive possession can never go together. 

Love based upon indulgence of animal passion, is at best a selfish affair, and likely to snap under the slightest strain. 

Love can never express itself by imposing sufferings on others. It can only express itself by self-suffering, by self-purification. 

Love is a rare herb that makes a friend even of a sworn enemy and this herb grows out of nonviolence. 

Love is no love which asks for a return. 

Love is the basis of our friendship as it is of religion. 

The law of love knows no bounds of space or time. 

Love is needed to strengthen the weak; love becomes tyrannical when it exacts obedience from an unbeliever. 

If light can come out of darkness, then alone can love emerge from hatred. 

My fast is, among other things, meant to qualify me for achieving that equal and selfless love. 

My freedom from hatred – I would even claim for myself individually, my love – for those who consider themselves to be my enemies, does not make me blind to their faults. 

My love of nationalism is that my country may become free, and if need be, the whole of the country die, so that the human race may live. 

My nonviolence demands universal love, and you are not a small part of it. 

My only sanction is the love and affection in which you hold me. But it has its weaknesses, as it has its strengths. 

My religion teaches me to love all equally. 

I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man. 

It is my great misfortune that I have to measure your love by the money gifts you give for Daridranarayana. 

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

Of what avail is my love if it be only so long as I trust my friend? 

It is a heavy downpour of rain which drenches the soil to fullness; likewise only a profuse shower of love can overcome hatred. 

Our peaceful non-co-operation must be constructive, non-destructive. Poison should not emerge from the throes of love. 

A seeker after truth, a follower of the law of Love, cannot hold anything against tomorrow. 

The call of the spinning wheel is the noblest of all. Because it is the call of love. And love is Swaraj. 

Man believes and lives. 

The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world. 

Man will ever remain imperfect, and it will always be his part to try to be perfect. 

Man’s triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by a struggle for mutual service. 

Men aspiring to be free can hardly think of enslaving others. 

Man does not live by destruction. 

Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. 

A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. 

Man is neither mere intellect not the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. 

Man cannot breathe with borrowed lungs. 

Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them. 

Man becomes not the lord and master of all creation but he is its servant. 

Man is the maker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny. 

Man has always desired power. Ownership of property gives this power. Man hankers also after posthumous fame based on power. 

Man the law-giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he has imposed upon the so called weaker sex. 

The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it. 

A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect. 

Nonviolence is the virtue of the manly. The coward is innocent of it. 

Bravery is not man’s monopoly. 

A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction. 

Man is not to drown himself in the well of the Shastras, but he is to dive in their broad ocean and bring out pearls. 

Man is oftentimes weak-minded enough to be caught in the snare of greed and honeyed words. 

A man or a woman who serves the country with all his or her heart stands on par with the tallest Congress-man. 

Man is born of woman, he is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. 

Men to be men must be able to trust their womenfolk, even as the latter are compelled to trust them. 

Man has regarded woman as his tool. She has learnt to be his tool and in the end found it is easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall, the descent is easy. 

No man could look upon another as his enemy, unless he first became his own enemy. 

Man cannot be transformed from bad to good overnight. 

It is for you and me to show that no vice is inherent in man. 

I must refuse to believe that the Germans contemplate with equanimity the evacuation of cities like London for fear of destruction to be wrought by man’s inhuman ingenuity. 

My own opinion is that just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problems must be one in essence. 

The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s Swaraj. 

It is my firm faith that man is by nature going higher. 

I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives. 

If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by any human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. 

I believe in conversion of mankind, not its destruction. 

I hold no man to be indispensable for the welfare of the country. 

I cannot picture to myself a time when all mankind will have one religion. 

I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. 

I have discovered that man is superior to the system he propounds. 

If I am true to myself, if I am true to mankind, if I am true to humanity, I must understand all the faults that human flesh is heir to. 

I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward. 

A man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins. 

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

Some form of common worship and a common place of worship appear to be a human necessity. 

Man’s upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed. 

Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have. 

A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution. 

All the great religions of the world inculcate equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of toleration. 

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

No two men are absolutely alike, not even twins, yet there is much that is indispensably common to all mankind. 

Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. 

Human dignity demands courage to defend oneself. 

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

The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal. 

That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God. 

What distinguishes man from the brute is his conscious striving to realise the spirit within. 

If it is man’s privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter – dependent. 

A man of truth must ever be confident, if he has also equal need to be diffident. 

Study men following the law of their higher nature, the law of love, so that when you grow to manhood, you will have improved your heritage. 

Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men. 

Man, through the cow, is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. 

Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways. 

That which is inherent in man is his virtue. 

Men are good. But they are poor victims making themselves miserable under the false belief that they are doing good. 

Imperfect men have no right to judge other imperfect men. 

The woman has circumvented man in a variety of ways in her unconsciously subtle ways, as the man has vainly and equally consciously struggled to thwart the woman in gaining ascendancy over him. 

It is degrading both for man and woman that woman should be called upon or induced to forsake the hearth and shoulder the rifle for the protection of that hearth. 

The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary. 

Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced, exquisite consideration for one’s neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration. 

Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion two sides of the same coin. 

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

Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian. 

If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm? 

All great religions have rightly regarded kama as the arch-enemy of man, anger or hatred coming only in the second place. 

Unlike the animal, God has given man the faculty of reason. 

Study not man in his animal nature – man following the laws of the jungle – but study man in all his glory. 

He who runs may see that opium and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man’s soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts. 

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

We are all very imperfect and weak things, and if we are to destroy all whose ways we do not like, there will be not a man left alive. 

The field of research in the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man’s life must not be frequent. 

Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow. 

No one should dogmatize about the capacity of human nature for degradation or exaltation. 

Study men laying down their lives without hurting anyone else in the cause of their country’s freedom. 

We burn the evil men do with their mortal remains. We treasure the memory of the good they do, and distance magnifies it. 

No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation. 

That nation is great which rests its head upon death as its pillow. 

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

Nations are not formed in a day, the formation requires years. 

No country can become a nation by producing a race of imitators. 

Freedom of a nation cannot be won by solitary acts of heroism though they may be of the true type, never by heroism so called. 

A nation that is unfit to fight cannot, from experience, prove the virtue of not fighting. 

I have recognized that the nation has the right, if it so wills, to vindicate her freedom even by actual violence. 

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

A society or a nation constructed nonviolently must be able to withstand attack upon its structure from without or within. 

If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence. 

We are too near the scene of tragedy to realize that this canker or untouchability has traveled far beyond its prescribed limits and has sapped the very foundation of the whole nation. 

My national service is part of my training for freeing my soul from the bondage of the flesh. 

A national spirit is necessary for national existence. A flag is a material aid to the development of such a spirit. 

Between the two, the nationalist and the imperialist, there is no meeting ground. 

Nationalism, like virtue, has its own reward. 

National education to be truly national must reflect the national condition for the time being. 

I do regard spinning and weaving as a necessary part of any national system of education. 

My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual. 

Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life. 

Violent nationalism, otherwise known as imperialism, is a curse. 

Hatred is not essential for nationalism. Race hatred will kill the real national spirit. 

Non-co-operation is the quickest method of creating public opinion. 

Non-co-operation means refusal both to help the sinner in his sin and not to accept any help or gift from him till he has repented. 

Non-co-operation is protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil. 

Non-co-operation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power. 

Non-co-operation is a nation’s determination to improve. 

Nonviolent non-co-operation with evil means co-operation with all that is good. 

Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice. 

Non-co-operation in itself is unnatural, vicious and sinful. 

Non-co-operation intended to pave the way to real honourable and voluntary co-operation based on mutual respect and trust. 

Non-co-operation in the political field is an extension of the doctrine as it is practised in the domestic field. 

Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government. 

When freedom is in jeopardy, non-co-operation may be a duty and prison may be a palace. 

It is nonviolent non-co-operation which evokes the highest spirit of self-sacrifice that will wean one from the error of one’s ways. 

The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification. 

The Bhagavadgita is a gospel of non-co-operation between the forces of darkness and those of light. 

The avowed policy of non-co-operation has been not to make political use of the disputes between labour and capital. 

Real non-co-operation is non-co-operation with evil and not with the evil-doer. 

At times, non-co-operation becomes as much a duty as co-operation. 

The nation’s non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to co-operate with it on its own terms, as is every nation’s right and every good government’s duty. 

I isolate this non-co-operation from Sinn Feinism, for it is so conceived as to be incapable of being offered side by side with violence. 

Non-co-operation is not a movement of drag, bluster or bluff. 

Non-co-operation in an angry atmosphere is an impossibility. 

I was a co-operator too in the sense that I non-co-operated for co-operation, and even then I said that if I could carry the country forward by co-operation I should co-operate. 

In the very act of my non-co-operation, I am seeking their co-operation in my campaign. 

My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. 

My non-co-operation is a token of my earnest longing for real heart co-operation in the place of co-operation falsely so called. 

Reasoned and willing obedience to the laws of the State is the first lesson in non-co-operation. 

I retain the opinion that council entry is inconsistent with non-co-operation as I conceive it. 

I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial. 

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times. 

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

It is the duty of a non-co-operator to preach disaffection towards the existing order of things. Non-co-operators are but giving disciplined expression to a nation’s outraged feelings. 

We must treat arrest as the normal condition of the life of a non-co-operator. 

Though a non-co-operator, I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me mahatma and to touch my feet. 

Nonviolent non-co-operation is the only alternative to anarchy and worse. 

Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built. 

Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. 

For satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. 

Non-co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha. 

Nonviolence is a universal law acting under all circumstances. 

Nonviolence is impossible without humility. 

Nonviolence is a quality not of the body but of the soul. 

Nonviolence or soul force does not need physical aids for its propagation of effect. 

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

Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. 

Nonviolence abhors fear and therefore, secrecy. 

True nonviolence is mightier than the mightiest violence. 

Nonviolence and cowardice go ill together. True nonviolence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness. 

Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. 

Perfect nonviolence is difficult. It admits to no weakness. 

Nonviolence of the strong is infinitely braver than their violence. 

Nonviolence requires great patience. 

The common factor of all religions is nonviolence. 

The science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy. 

There can be no nonviolence offered by the militarily strong. 

At the centre of nonviolence is a force which is self-acting. 

Ours has not been unadulterated nonviolence in thought, word and deed. 

Without real nonviolence, there would be perfect anarchy. 

Nonviolence in the sense of mere non-killing does not appear to me, therefore, to be of any improvement on the technique of violence. 

Nonviolence is not a cloistered virtue, confined only to the rishi and the cave-dweller. 

Nonviolence becomes meaningless if violence is permitted for self-defence. 

In a plan of life based on nonviolence, woman has as much right to shape her own destiny as man has to shape his. 

In a society based on nonviolence, the smallest nation will feel as tall as the tallest. 

Jesus was the most active resister known to history. His was nonviolence par excellence. 

Unexampled bravery, born of nonviolence, coupled with strict honesty shown by a fair number of Muslims, is sure to infect the whole of India. 

You can return blow for blow if you are not brave enough to follow the path of nonviolence. 

Nonviolence to be a creed has to be all-pervasive. 

Nonviolence requires more courage than the soldier of war. 

Nonviolence is the means, the end for everyone is complete independence. 

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence. 

Truth (satya) is positive, nonviolence is negative. 

Truth stands for the fact, nonviolence negates the fact. 

It is much more difficult to live for nonviolence than to die for it. 

The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence. 

The force of nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the material forces of nature, like electricity. 

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

Nonviolence, in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. 

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

Nonviolence of the strong cannot be a mere policy. It must be a creed, or a passion, if ‘creed’ is objected to. 

Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces. 

Nonviolence, when it becomes active, travels with extraordinary velocity, and then it becomes a miracle. 

Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. 

Nonviolence is a universal principle and its operation is not limited by a hostile environment. 

The bravery of the nonviolent is vastly superior to that of the violent. 

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

You cannot build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. 

The patriotic spirit demands loyal and strict adherence to nonviolence and truth. 

If it is by force that we wish to achieve Swaraj, let us drop nonviolence and offer such violence as we may. 

Self-suppression is often necessary in the interest of truth and nonviolence. 

What can be richer and more fruitful than a greater fulfillment of the vow of nonviolence in thought, word and deed or the spread of that spirit? 

Unless discipline is rooted in nonviolence, it might prove to be a source of infinite mischief. 

The votaries of nonviolence cannot harbour violence even in thought, let alone the question of doing it. 

There is no such thing as compulsion in the scheme of nonviolence. 

A civilization based on nonviolence must be different from that organized for violence. 

The rishis, who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence, were greater geniuses than Newton. 

A country whose culture is based on nonviolence will find it necessary to have every home as much self-contained as possible. 

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

The man or the woman who can display the nonviolence of the brave can easily stand against as external invasion. 

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent. 

If people knew the working of the law of truth and nonviolence, then they would themselves regulate the matter of its shortage. 

Complete independence will be complete only to the extent of our approach in practice to truth and nonviolence. 

Our struggle consists in showing that our nonviolence is neither a cloak to hide our violence or hatred, nor a preparation for violence in the near or distant future. 

The meticulous care for the rights of the least among us is the sin qua non of nonviolence. 

Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. 

Nonviolence is not an easy thing to understand, still less to practice, weak as we are. 

Appreciation of nonviolence means patient research and still more patient and difficult practice. 

Nonviolence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue to be cultivated like other virtues. 

The weapon of nonviolence does not need supermen or superwomen to wield it; even beings of common clay can use it and have used it before this with success. 

We become Godlike to the extent we realize nonviolence, but we can never become wholly God. 

History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance. 

Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, the legislatures can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence. 

A little of true nonviolence acts in a silent, subtle, unseen way and leavens the whole society. 

Truth and nonviolence are perhaps the activest forces you have in the world. 

We may not go about parroting truth and nonviolence and steering clear of them in our daily life. 

The practice of truth and nonviolence melted religious differences, and we learnt to see beauty in each religion. 

Active nonviolence is necessary for those who will offer civil disobedience but the will and proper training are enough for the people to co-operate with those who are chosen for civil disobedience. 

If fighting for the legislatures meant a sacrifice of truth and nonviolence, democracy would not be worth a moment’s purchase. 

If what passed as nonviolence does not enable people to protect the honour of women, or if it does not enable women to protect their own honour, it is not nonviolence. 

An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers. 

Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence. 

A rabbit that runs away from the bull-terrier is not particularly non-violent. 

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

Tolstoy was the greatest apostle of nonviolence that the present age has produced. 

The panoplied warrior of truth and nonviolence is ever and incessantly active. 

Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life. 

All society is held together by nonviolence even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation. 

We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere life-homage to truth and nonviolence. 

Nonviolence does not require any outside or outward training. 

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

Nonviolence cannot be learnt by staying at home. 

That nonviolence which only an individual can use is not of much use in terms of society. 

Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, demands the greatest exercise of faith. 

When a man vowed to nonviolence as the law governing human beings dares to refer to war, he can only do it so as to strain every nerve to avoid it. 

Unless you go on discovering new applications of the law of nonviolence, you do not profit by it. 

Unless we learn the lesson of nonviolence fully, we shall never do away with the deadly feuds which have been the curse of the Frontier people. 

My nonviolence is made of stern stuff. It is firmer than the firmest metal known to scientists. 

My nonviolence does recognize different species of violence, defensive and offensive. 

My love for nonviolence is superior to every other thing, mundane or super mundane. 

My creed of nonviolence does not favour the punishment of thieves and dacoits and even murderers. 

To my mind, Swaraj based on nonviolence is the fulfillment of the constructive programme. 

Truth is my God. I can only search Him through nonviolence and in on other way. 

Since the propagation of nonviolence is the mission of my life, I must pursue it in all weathers. 

The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for therishis and saints. 

My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. 

For me nonviolence is a creed. I must act up to it, whether I am alone or have companions. 

If my nonviolence is to be contagious and infectious, I must acquire greater control over my thoughts. 

Every moment of my existence is dedicated to the winning of Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence. 

The only virtue I want to claim is truth and nonviolence. 

I have no weapon but nonviolence. 

I shall, of course, die with nonviolence on my lips. 

I will not have the power of nonviolence to be underestimated in order to cover my limitations or weaknesses. 

I can no more preach nonviolence to a cowardly man than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. 

I have been practicing, with scientific precision, nonviolence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. 

The nonviolence I teach is active nonviolence of the strongest. But the weakest can partake in it without becoming weaker. 

If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of nonviolence. 

The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence. 

The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme. 

Nonviolent defence presupposes recklessness about one’s life and property. 

Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour. 

Nonviolent action without the co-operation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended result. 

Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country. 

A nonviolent person’s life is always at the disposal of him who would take it. 

A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia. 

A nonviolent occupation is that occupation which is fundamentally free from violence and which involves no exploitation or envy of others. 

A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. 

The end of nonviolent ‘war’ is always an agreement, never dictation, much less humiliation of the opponent. 

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

In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file. 

If all were nonviolent, there would be no anarchy and there would be no question of anybody being armed for meeting aggression from without. 

If we are nonviolent through and through, our nonviolence would have been self-evident. 

Those who are truthful, nonviolent and brave do not cease to be so because of the stupidity of their leader. 

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

Boycott of foreign cloth through picketing may easily be violent; through the use of khadi it is most natural and absolutely nonviolent. 

Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent. 

The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be. 

A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance. 

Those who have their hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a nonviolent order for the world. 

A nonviolent action accompanied by nonviolence in thought and word should never produce enduring violent reaction upon the opponent. 

A nonviolent warrior knows no leaving the battle. He rushes into the mouth of himsa, never even once harbouring an evil thought. 

Total nonviolent non-cooperation has no place in popular Raj, whatever its level may be. 

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. 

For a nonviolent struggle, there is no age limit. The blind, the maimed and the bed-ridden may serve, and not only men but women also. 

Unless nonviolence of the strong is really developed among us, there should be no thought of civil disobedience for Swaraj, whether within the states or in British India. 

Moral result can only be produced by moral restraints. 

Moral restrictions tend to become lax in a foreign country, since the fear of social opinion disappears. 

To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. 

That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values. 

The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private. 

Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and, therefore, sinful. 

Satan mostly employs comparatively moral instruments and the language of ethics to give his aims an air of respectability. 

The object of basic education is the physical, intellectual and moral development of children through the medium of handicraft. 

A country that is governed by its national army can never be morally free and, therefore, its so-called weakest member can never rise to his full moral height. 

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

Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country. 

A democrat should not rely upon the force of the arms his state could flaunt in the face of the world, but on the moral force his state could put at the disposal of the world. 

A popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to its assistance. 

Prayer can come in only when fasting has done its work. It can make fasting easy and bearable. 

Prayer is a sign of repentance, a desire to become better, purer. 

Prayer is either petitional or, in its wider sense, inward communion. 

Prayer is no mere exercise of words or of the ears, it is no mere repetition of empty formula. 

Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness and peace and repose in our daily acts. 

Prayer presupposes faith. No prayer is in vain. Prayer is like any other action. 

A prayerful study and experience are essential for a correct interpretation of the scriptures. 

True prayer is not a prelude to inaction. 

Virtue lies in being absorbed in one’s prayers in the presence of din and noise. 

Worship or prayer is not to be performed with the lips, but with the heart. 

My attempt and prayer are and will be for an honorable peace between belligerent nations in the least possible time. 

My austerities, fasting and prayers are, I know, of no value if I rely upon them for reforming me. My penance is the prayer of a bleeding heart for forgiveness for sins unwittingly committed. 

The meaning of prayer is that I want to evoke that Divinity within me. 

Prayer has been the saviour of my life. Without it I should have been a lunatic long ago. 

Prayer has not been a part of my life in the sense that truth has been. 

Fasting and prayer are common injunctions in my religion. 

A man of prayer regards what are known as physical calamities as divine chastisement. 

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

Close the day with prayer so that you may have a peaceful night free from dreams and nightmares. 

A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer. 

Buddhism in one long prayer. 

Just as a prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation as of a bird, so may a fast be a mere mechanical torture of the flesh. 

Let us, by praying, purify ourselves and we shall not only remove untouchability but shall also hasten the advent of Swaraj. 

A congregational prayer is a means for establishing essential human unity though common worship. 

The mundane use of the Gayatri, its repetition for healing the sick, illustrates the meaning we have given to prayer. 

Pure motives can never justify impure or violent action. 

Never own defeat in a sacred cause and make up your minds henceforth that you will be pure and that you will find a response from God. 

Purification is never for the selfishly idle, it accrues only to the selflessly industrious. 

To a pure heart all hearts are pure. 

Temple going is for the purification of the soul. 

A spirit is not necessarily purer, because it is disembodied. 

Confession of one’s guilt purifies and uplifts. Its suppression is degrading and should always be avoided. 

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

Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and purity. 

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

Like the watch, the heart needs the winding of purity, or the Dweller ceases to speak. 

Ramanama is for the pure at heart and for those who want to attain purity and remain pure. 

Tulsidas’s Ramayana is a notable book because it is informed with the spirit of purity, pity and piety. 

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

I would beseech you not only to be pure beyond suspicion but I would ask you to combine with stainless purity, great wisdom and great ability. 

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

Religion is one tree with many branches. As branches, you may say, religions are many, but as a tree, religion is only one. 

All religions were, at bottom, one, though they differed in detail and outward form like the leaves on a tree. 

The essence of true religious teaching is that one should serve and befriend all. 

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. 

Religion is the tie that binds one to one’s Creator, and whilst the body perishes, as it has to, religion persists even after death. 

Religion should be dearer than life itself. 

Religion taught us to return good for evil. 

Religion to be true must satisfy what may be termed humanitarian economics, that is, where the income and the expenditure balance each other. 

A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. 

Religion is not like a house or a cloak which can be changed at will. 

All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal rejections and acceptances. 

Purest religion is highest expediency. Many things are lawful but they are not all expedient. 

Religion is no test of nationality, but a personal matter between man and his God. 

Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them. 

All religions are branches of the same mighty tree, but I must not change over from one branch to another for the sake of expediency. 

No religion taught man to kill fellowmen because he held different opinions or was of another religion. 

That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith on injustice, untruth or violence. 

It is a tragedy that religion for us means, today, nothing more than restrictions on food and drink, nothing more than adherence to absence of superiority and inferiority. 

A religion cannot be sustained by the number of its lip-followers denying in their lives its tenets. 

The highest fulfillment of religion requires a giving up of all possessions. 

The external is in no way the essence of religion, but the external often proclaims the internal. 

True material welfare is never inconsistent with performance of religious obligations. 

To change one’s religion under the threat of force is no conversion but rather cowardice. 

It is not part of religion to breed buffaloes or, for that matter, cows. 

‘Physician, heal thyself’ is more true in matters religious than mundane. 

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

I believe that religious education must be the sole concern of religious associations. 

I desire no honour if I have to conceal my religious beliefs in order to have it. 

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

I claim to represent all the cultures, for my religion, whatever it may be called, demands the fulfillment of all the cultures. 

I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are. 

It was through the Hindu religion that I learnt to respect Christianity and Islam. 

My religion is a matter solely between my Maker and myself. 

My religion has no geographical limits. 

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

My religion teaches me that a promise once made or a vow once taken for a worthy object may not be broken. 

My personal religion peremptorily forbids me to hate anybody. 

My religion forbids me to belittle or disregard other cultures, as it insists, under pain of civil suicide, upon imbibing and living my own. 

My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray. 

My religion teaches me that I should, by my personal conduct, instill into the minds of those who might hold different views the conviction that cow killing is a sin. 

To me the Mahabharata is a profoundly religious book, largely allegorical, in a way meant to be a historical record. 

We cry for cow protection in the name of religion, but we refuse protection to the human cow in the shape of the girl-widow. 

In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony. 

It is no religion to have for one’s wife a girl who is fit only to sit in one’s lap, it is the height of irreligion. 

The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler than that of the rose. 

Religion of our conception, thus imperfect, is always subject to a process of evolution and re-interpretation. 

If we import compulsion in matters of religion, there is no doubt that we shall be committing suicide. 

Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions. 

Dharma is that which is enjoined by the holy books, followed by the sages, interpreted by the learned and which appeals to the heart. 

Even a little of dharma saves one from many a pitfall. 

Politics bereft of religion is absolute dirt, ever to be shunned. 

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

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

To benefit by others’ killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception. 

Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test all our actions in the light of ethical principles. 

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

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

Every person, as every institution, and, above all, every religion is to be judged not by the amount of atrocities or the wrong committed but by the right conduct. 

Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and in the end makes itself irresistible. 

Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth. 

Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. 

Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence. 

All satyagraha and fasting is a species of tyaga. It depends for its effects upon an expression of wholesome public opinion shorn of all bitterness. 

The fight of satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying. 

The satyagrahi general has to obey his inner voice, for over and above the situation outside he examines himself constantly and listens to the dictates of the inner self. 

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

Satyagraha is itself an unmistakable mute prayer of an agonized soul. 

Satyagraha is a law for universal application. Beginning with the family, its use can be extended to every other circle. 

Satyagraha can rid society of all evils, political, economic and moral. 

Satyagraha and civil disobedience and fasts have nothing in common with the use of force, veiled or open. 

Satyagraha is a purely spiritual weapon. 

A genuine satyagraha should never excite contempt in the opponent even when it fails to command regard or respect. 

Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor is tired of it and the object of satyagraha is gained. 

In satyagraha, a courted imprisonment carries its own praise. 

Satyagraha does not depend on outside help, it derives all its strength from within. 

My purpose is to describe experiments in the science ofsatyagraha and not at all to describe how good I am. 

The method of satyagraha requires that the satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it. 

Since satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction, it seeks never to use the slightest coercion. 

Satyagraha as conceived by me is a science in the making. 

It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war. 

For a satyagrahi brigade only those are eligible who believe in ahimsa and satya. 

Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it. 

Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience. 

A clear victory of satyagraha is impossible so long as there is ill will. 

I regard the constituent assembly as the substitute ofsatyagraha. It is constructive satyagraha. 

Whatever may be true of the other modes of warfare, insatyagraha it has been held that the causes for failure are to be sought within. 

Seeming failure is not of the law of satyagrahabut of incompetence of the satyagrahi by whatever cause induced. 

Without satyagraha carried out in the proper spirit, there is no victory, no Swaraj. 

The word ‘defeat’ is not to be found in my dictionary, and everyone who is selected as a recruit in my army may be certain that there is no defeat for a satyagrahi. 

What I call the law of satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation of duties and rights flowing therefrom. 

Force that the performance of duty naturally generates is the non-violent and invincible force that satyagraha brings into being. 

Not those who shout ‘satyagraha’, ‘satyagraha’ will do satyagraha, but those who will work for it. 

There must be power in the word of a satyagraha general, not the power that the possession of limitless arms gives, but the power that purifies life which strict vigilance and a ceaseless application produce. 

A satyagrahi is sometimes bound to use language which is capable of two meanings, provided both the meanings are obvious and necessary and there is no intention to deceive anyone. 

My satyagrahi spirit tells me that I may not retaliate. 

A satyagrahi turns the searchlight inward relentlessly to weed out all the defects that may be lying hidden there still. 

A satyagrahi has infinite patience, abundant faith in others, and ample hope. 

A satyagrahi has no other stay but God, and he who has any other stay or depends on any other help cannot offer satyagraha. 

A satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong. 

A satyagrahi loves his so-called enemy even as he loves his friend. He has no enemy. 

A satyagrahi must ceaselessly strive to realize and live truth. And he must never contemplate hurting anyone by thought, word or deed. 

I have repeatedly stated that satyagraha never fails and that one perfect satyagrahi is enough to vindicate Truth. 

The satyagrahi strives to reach reason through the heart. The method of reaching the heart is to awaken public opinion. 

A satyagrahi has always his minimum and it is this minimum that is wanted in connection with this struggle. 

The satyagrahi should not have any hatred in his heart against the opponent. 

There is no time limit for a satyagrahi nor is there a limit to his capacity for suffering. 

A satyagrahi is dead to his body even before the enemy attempts to kill him. 

A satyagrahi would neither retaliate nor would he submit to the criminal, but seek to cure him by curing himself. 

No confirmed satyagrahi is dismayed by dangers, seen or unseen, from his opponent’s side. 

To die without killing is the badge of a satyagrahi. 

A satyagrahi is nothing if not instinctively law-abiding. 

A satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to satyagraha. 

A satyagrahi, whilst he is ever ready to fight, must be equally eager for peace. 

In the code of the satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force. 

You are no Satyagrahi if you remain silent or passive spectators while your enemy is being done to death. 

A satyagrahi lays down his life, but never gives up. That is the meaning of the ‘do or die’ slogan. 

A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism. 

No police officer could compel a satyagrahi to give evidence against a person who has confessed to him. A satyagrahi would never be guilty of a betrayal of trust. 

Swaraj is a hardy tree of patient growth. 

Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals. 

The pilgrimage to Swaraj is a painful climb. 

For winning Swaraj one requires iron discipline. 

Swaraj will favour Hinduism no more than Islam, nor Islam more than Hinduism. 

It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. 

Conservation of national sanitation is Swaraj work and it may not be postponed for a single day on any consideration whatsoever. 

Swaraj can only be achieved through an all-round consciousness of the masses. 

Swaraj is not meant for cowards, but for those who would mount smilingly to the gallows and refuse even to allow their eyes to be bandaged. 

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

To get Swaraj is to get rid of our helplessness. 

Swaraj means even under dominion status a capacity to declare independence at will. 

Swaraj is not a product of excitement or intoxication. Swaraj will be the natural and inevitable result of business like habits. 

Let the content of Swaraj grow with the growth of national consciousness and aspirations. 

Swaraj does not depend on jail going. If it did, there are thousands of prisoners in jail today. It depends on everyone doing his or her own task. 

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

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

No Swaraj government with any pretension to being a popular government can possibly be organised and maintained on a war-footing. 

Lovers of Swaraj cannot rest till a solution is found which would allay Mussalman apprehensions and yet not endanger Swaraj. 

If Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods, it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life. 

We are aware that the business of Swaraj will thrive only if the boycott of foreign cloth is successful. 

To ignore the Mussalman grievance as if it was not felt is to postpone Swaraj. 

It only confirms me in my belief that there is no Swaraj without a settlement with the Mussalmans. 

If we want Swaraj to be built on non-violence, we will have to give the villages their proper place. 

Work for Swaraj fails to appeal to us because we have no music in us. 

There can be no Swaraj where there is no harmony, no music. 

Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of countrymen. 

My Swaraj will be not be a result of murder of others but a voluntary act of continuous self-sacrifice. 

My Swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization. 

Swaraj as conceived by me does not mean the end of kingship. 

The Swaraj of my dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions. 

Swaraj is our birthright. No one can deprive us of it unless we forfeit it ourselves. 

I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it. 

I have had the hardihood to say that Swaraj could not be granted even by God. 

With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster. 

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

We shall make progress towards Swaraj only if we do everything thoughtfully and with understanding. 

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

The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj. 

Destruction of the churches and the like is not the way to Swaraj as defined by the Congress. 

Non-co-operation and civil disobedience in terms of Swaraj are not to be thought of without substantial constructive effort. 

A bogus Congress register can never lead you to Swaraj any more than a paper boat can help you to sail across the Padma. 

Religious truth, or for that matter any truth, requires a calm and meditative atmosphere for its percolation. 

Truth is self-evident, nonviolence is its maturest fruit. It is contained in truth, but is not self-evident. 

Every truth is self-acting and possesses inherent strength. 

Truth, which is permanent, eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history. 

Truth is God, and truth overrides all our plans. 

Truth is not truth merely because it is ancient. Nor is truth necessarily to be regarded with suspicion because it is ancient. 

Truth should so humble that even dust could crush it. 

Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature. 

The quest of Truth involves tapas-self-suffering-sometimes even unto death. 

Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence. 

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

If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth, you must reduce yourself to a zero. 

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. 

Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being. 

One cannot reach Truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach truth. 

Where there is truth, there also is knowledge which is true. 

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

A successful search for truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng, such as of love and hate, happiness and misery. 

The deepest spiritual truths are always unutterable. 

The highest truth needs no communicating, for it is by its very nature self-propelling. It radiates its influence silently as the rose its fragrance without the intervention of a medium. 

The instruments for the quest for Truth are as simple as they are difficult. 

Nothing in the Shastra, which is manifestly contrary to universal truths and morals, can stand. 

I know that man who forsakes Truth can forsake his country and his nearest and dearest ones. 

I will say that if there is anything like God Or Truth on earth, Hindu-Muslim unity is also possible. 

My experience teaches me that truth can never be propagated by doing violence. 

Truth to me is infinitely dearer than the ‘mahatmaship’ which is purely a burden. 

It is an ever-growing belief with me that truth cannot be found by violent means. 

Let hundreds like me perish, but let truth triumph. 

Silence is a great help to a seeker after truth like myself. 

The attainment of national independence is to me a search for truth. 

What has appealed to me most in Tolstoy’s life is that he practiced what he preached and reckoned no cost too great in his pursuit of truth. 

Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self-controlled. 

Tolstoy’s so-called inconsistencies were a sign of his development and his passionate regard for truth. 

Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth. 

A seeker of truth will never begin by discounting his opponent’s statement as unworthy of trust. 

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

Openness of mind strengthens the truth in us and removes the dross from it, if there is any. 

To find truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, i.e. to become perfect. 

Death is at any time blessed but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause, that is, truth. 

Untouchability is a hydra-headed monster. 

Untouchability is an error of long standing. 

Untouchability of foreign cloth is as much a virtue with all of us as untouchability of the suppressed classes must be a sin with every devout Hindu. 

Untouchability is a terrible reality. 

I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement. 

In battling against untouchability, and in dedicating myself to that battle, I have no less an ambition than to see a full regeneration of humanity. 

If untouchability lives, humanity must die. 

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

We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability. 

My mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Mussalman passing by. 

When untouchability is rooted out, these distinctions will vanish and no one will consider himself superior to any other. 

There is no ‘as far as possible’ on the question of untouchability. If it is to go, it must go in its entirety from the temples as from everywhere else. 

Untouchability is a many-headed monster and forms, some of them so subtle as not to be easily detected. 

Ravana was a rakshasa but this rakshasi of untouchability is even more terrible than Ravana. 

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

Hindu-Muslim unity, khaddar and removal of untouchability are to me the foundation of Swaraj. 

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

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

What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren? 

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

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

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

We cannot have real independence unless the people banish the touch-me-not spirit from their hearts. 

Whilst the Bihar calamity damages the body, the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul. 

For me there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouchability campaign. 

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

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

A samagra gramsevak must know everybody living in the village and render them such service as he possibly can. 

Healthy and nourishing food was the only alpha and omega of rural economy. 

If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker. 

If we want to impart education best suited to the needs of the villagers, we should take the vidyapith to the villages. 

I would like to bury myself in an Indian village, preferably in a Frontier village. 

Khaddar is an attempt to revise and reverse the process and establish a better relationship between the cities and villages. 

No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. 

Return to the villages means a definite, voluntary recognition of the duty of bread labour and all its connotes. 

The snakes have their place in the agricultural economy of the village, but our villagers do not seem realize it. 

The villagers want bread-not butter-and disciplined work, some work that will supplement their agricultural avocations which do not go on for all the 12 months. 

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

Give the villagers village arithmetic, village geography, village history and the literary knowledge that they must use daily, i.e. reading and writing letters, etc. 

We have to tackle the triple malady which holds our villages fast in its grip; want of corporate sanitation, deficient diet and inertia. 

I hold that the world is sick of armed rebellions. 

My dictionary has no such expression as a violent fight. 

Violence can only be effectively met by nonviolence. This is an old established truth. 

I do believe that ideas ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs. 

I condemn, for all climes and for all times, secret murders and unfair methods even for a fair cause. 

My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform. 

I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of the whole race. 

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

To kill these (rabid) dogs, in my opinion, amount to himsa, but I believe it to be inevitable if we are to escape much greater himsa. 

I suffer snakes to be killed in the ashram when it is impossible to catch them and put them out of harm’s way. 

I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death rather than kill him. 

I do not regard killing or assassination or terrorism as good in any circumstances whatsoever. 

Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties. 

What is gained by violence must be lost before superior violence. 

Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation. 

Civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence directly or indirectly. 

Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion. 

Violence always thrived on counter violence. 

Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents. 

Naked violence repels like the naked skeleton shorn of flesh, blood and the velvety skin. 

Violence is bound sooner or later to exhaust itself but peace cannot issue out of such exhaustion. 

If there is violence, it will certainly be crushed because violence can only end in a disgraceful rout. 

A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses. 

Armed conspiracies against something satanic is like matching Satans against Satan. 

Peace through superior violence inevitably leads to the atom bomb and all that it stands for. 

We do want to drive out the beast in man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him. 

The state represents violence in a concentrated and organize form. 

To prevent the workers from going to their work by standing in front of them is pure violence and must be given up. 

By using violence to subjugate one another we are using violence against our own souls. 

The socialistic conception of the West was born in an environment reeking with violence. 

It is difficult to judge, when both sides are employing weapons of violence, which side ‘deserves’ to succeed. 

The consumption of vegetables involves himsa, but I cannot give them up. 

To yield to the threat or actual use of violence is a surrender of one’s self respect and religious conviction. 

None, while in flesh, can be entirely free from himsa, because one never completely renounces the will to live. 

Any act of injury done from self-interest, whether amounting to killing or not, is doubtless himsa. 

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification. 

For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from. 

The bomb-throwers have discredited the cause of freedom, in whose name they threw the bombs. 

The present war is the saturation point in violence. It spells, to my mind, also its doom. 

The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter bombs even as violence cannot be by counter-violence. 

True ahimsa lay in running into the mouth of himsa. 

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

Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence. 

The Koran says that there can be no heaven for one who sheds the blood of an innocent neighbour. 

The reaction that a ruthless dictator sets up in us either that of awe or pity according respectively as we react to him violently on nonviolently. 

Is it not possible for us all to realize that the masses will never mount to freedom through murder? 

The difficulty one experiences in meeting himsa arises from weakness of mind. 

When the panchayat raj is established, public opinion will do what violence can never do. 

When there is no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or himsa. 

War knows no law except that of might. 

History is a record of perpetual wars, but we are now trying to make new history. 

People engaged in a war do not lose temper over matters which affect the fortunes of war. 

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

The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare; on the contrary he has proved its futility. 

I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country’s honour. 

A warrior lives on his wars, whether offensive or defensive. And he suffers a collapse if he finds that his warring capacity is unwanted. 

Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war. 

Woman is, by habit or nature, queen of the household. She is not designed to organize on a large scale. 

Woman is the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering and her advent to public life should, therefore, result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and accumulation of property. 

Women are special custodians of all that is pure and religious in life. 

The woman who knows and fulfils her duty realizes her dignified status. 

The duty of motherhood, which the vast majority of woman will always undertake, requires the qualities which men need not possess. 

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

Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? 

Marriage is not an act of services. It is a comfort man or woman seeks for himself or herself. 

Marriage must cease to be a matter of arrangement made by parents for money. 

Languages proclaim that woman is half of man, and by parity of reasoning, man is half of woman. 

I am the only one, whom you may find it hard to get rid of, for I have always counted myself as a woman. 

I have mentally become a woman in order to steal into her heart. 

My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control. 

For the courage of self-sacrifice, woman is any time superior to man, as I believe man is to woman for the courage of the brute. 

Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately today she does not realise what a tremendous advantage she has over man. 

Any young man, who makes dowry a condition to marriage, discredits his education and his country and dishonours womanhood. 

Contraceptives are an insult to womanhood. 

If you want to play your part in the world’s affairs, you must refuse to deck yourselves for pleasing man. 

Why should men arrogate to themselves the right to regulate female purity? 

The world easily finds an honourable place for the magician who produces new and dazzling things. 

The world is weary of hate. We see the fatigue overcoming the Western nations. 

The whole world is in the throes of a new birth. Anything done for a temporary gain would be tantamount to an abortion. 

The whole world is like the human body with its various members. Pain in one member is felt in the whole body. 

The greatest menace to the world today is the growing, exploiting, irresponsible imperialism. 

I own no property and yet I feel that I am perhaps the richest man in the world. 

When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat, it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world. 

The world is changing every moment, and is therefore unreal. It has non permanent existence. 

That which you look upon as your own you may keep only so long as the world allows you to own it. 

The world cannot be successfully fooled for all time. 

It is indeed a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves. 

Art to be art must soothe. 

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

True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors. 

The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely. 

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

I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little children and making it the beginning of learning. 

A semi-starved nation can have neither religion nor art nor organization. 

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

Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective. 

Bravery on the battlefield is impossible for us. Bravery of the soul still remains open to us. 

Mere brave speech without action is letting off useless steam. 

True paurusha, true bravery, consists in driving out the brute in us. 

For thousands to do to death a few hundreds is no bravery. It is worse than cowardice. It is unworthy of nationalism, of any religion. 

Active nonviolence of the brave puts to flight thieves, dacoits, murderers, and prepares an army of volunteers ready to sacrifice themselves in quelling riots, in extinguishing fires and feuds, and so on. 

There can be no friendship between cowards, or cowards and brave men. 

A straight fight in an equal battle takes some bravery, but braver is he who, knowing that he would have to sacrifice ninety-five as against five of the enemy, faces death. 

Character alone will have real effect on the masses. 

What will tell in the end will be character and not a knowledge of letters. 

Sorrow and suffering make for character if they are voluntarily borne, but not if they are imposed. 

The real property that a parent can transmit to all equally is his or her character and educational facilities. 

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

In times to come people will not judge us by the creed we profess or the label we wear or the slogans we shout, but, by our work, industry, sacrifice, honesty and purity of character. 

Once Jesus had blazed the trail, his twelve disciples could carry on his mission without his presence. 

Jesus never uttered a loftier or a grander truth than when he said that wisdom cometh out of the mouths of babes. 

Jesus, to me, is a great world teacher among others. 

The message of Jesus has proved ineffective because the environment was unready to receive it. 

It is a first class human tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice. 

If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, ‘O yes, I am a Christian.’ 

I love Christianity, Islam and many other faiths – through Hinduism. 

The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwar of Hindus. 

Civil disobedience can never be in general terms, such as for independence. 

Civil disobedience is a stimulation for the fighters and a challenge to the opponent, in the present instance, authority. 

Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke. 

Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen. 

Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering. 

Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing. 

Civil disobedience and excitement and intoxication go ill together. 

Individual civil disobedience was everybody’s inherent right, like the right of self-defence in normal life. 

Mass civil disobedience was for the attainment of independence. 

Mass civil disobedience is like an earthquake, a sort of general upheaval on the political plane. 

Complete civil disobedience is a state of peaceful rebellion, a refusal to obey every single state-made law. 

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

In placing civil disobedience before constructive work I was wrong and I did not profit by the Himalayan blunder that I had committed. 

Disobedience, to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention. 

Disobedience that is wholly civil should never provoke retaliation. 

Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience. 

Indeed, a civil resister offers resistance only when peace becomes impossible. 

Ours is a civil fight, and imprisonment as a civil prisoner has got to be earned by the strict observance of the programme. 

If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done. 

The privilege of resisting or disobeying a particular law or order accrues only to him who gives willing and unswerving obedience to the laws laid down for him. 

Civilizations have come and gone and, in spite of our vaunted progress, I am tempted to ask again and again, ‘To what purpose?’ 

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. 

This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed. 

Is a civilization worth the name, which requires, for its existence the very doubtful prop of a racial legislation and a lynch law? 

Modern civilization has taught us to convert night into day and golden silence into brazen din and noise. 

The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing. 

Further march of civilization seems to employ increasing domination of man over beast, together with a growingly humane method of using them. 

I want co-operation between nations for the salvaging of civilization, but co-operation presupposes free nations worthy of co-operation. 

The cow to me is a sermon on pity. 

The cow is the purest type of sub-human life. 

Mother cow is as useful dead as when she is alive. 

Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain. 

Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth. 

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

Cow protection means protection of the weak, the helpless, the dumb and the deaf. 

Cow protection to me is infinitely more than mere protection of the cow. 

The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. 

Cow-slaughter can never be stopped by law. 

The cow can be saved only if buffalo-breeding is given up. 

Cowardice is incompatible with divine wisdom. 

Could there be a greater proof of our cowardice than fighting amongst ourselves? 

No police or military in the world can protect people who are cowards. 

It was the cowards who died many times before their death. 

Nonviolence and cowardice go ill together. 

Far better than emasculation would be the bravery of those who use physical force. Far better than cowardice would be meeting one’s death fighting. 

The truth is that cowardice itself is violence of a subtle type and therefore dangerous and far more difficult to eradicate than the habit of physical violence. 

Running away for fear of death, leaving one’s dear ones, temples or music to take care of themselves, is irreligion; it is cowardice. 

Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. 

Death on the battlefield is welcome to a soldier. 

To die in the act of killing is, in essence, to die defeated. 

If we weep for all the deaths in our country, the tears in our eyes would never dry. 

Where death without resistance or death after resistance is the only way, neither party should think of resorting to law-courts or help from the government. 

What is imprisonment to the man who is fearless of death itself? 

I came alone in this world, I have walked alone in the valley of the shadow of death, and I shall quit alone when the time comes. 

History is replete with instances of men, who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents. 

Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war of the knife between different ideas. 

Democracy can only represent the average if not less than the average. 

Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine. 

Democracy demands patient instruction on it before legislation. 

Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world. 

Democracy and dependence on the military and police are incompatible. 

Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable to be greatly abused. 

In the days of democracy there is no such thing as active loyalty to a person. You are, therefore, loyal or disloyal to institutions. 

Democracy will break under the strain of apron strings. It can exist only on trust. 

Islam was nothing if it did not spell complete democracy. 

The line of demarcation between democracy and monocracy is often thin, but rigid and stronger than unbreakable steel. 

People in a democracy should be satisfied with drawing the Government’s attention to a mistake, if any. 

Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded. 

No perfect democracy is possible without perfect nonviolence at the back of it. 

The only force at the disposal of democracy is that of public opinion. 

True democracy is not inconsistent with a few persons representing the spirit, the hope and the aspirations of those whom they claim to represent. 

The voice of the people may be said to be God’s voice, the voice of the Panchayat. 

A born democrat is a born disciplinarian. 

A democrat must be utterly selfless. He must think and dream not in terms of self or of party, but only of democracy. 

A democratic organization has to dare to do the right at all costs. 

A duty religiously performed carries with it several other important consequences. 

Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty. 

Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. 

Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and performed their duties came naturally by their rights. 

The true source of rights is duty. 

A teetotaler would regard it as his duty to associate with his drunkard brother for the purpose of weaning him from the evil habit. 

If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. 

A wretched parent who claims obedience from his children, without first doing his duty by them, excites nothing but contempt. 

He who is ever brooding over result often loses nerve in the performance of his duty. 

No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who thought of duties. 

You cannot neglect the nearer duty for the sake of a remote. 

No displeasure, even of the dearest friends, can put me off the duty I see clearly in front of me. 

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

Is not education the art of drawing out full manhood of the children under training? 

Literacy in itself is no education. 

Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. 

Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated. 

The function of Nayee-Talim is not to teach an occupation, but through it to develop the whole man. 

By spiritual training I mean education of the heart. 

Experience gained in two schools under my control has taught me that punishment does not purify, if anything, it hardens children. 

The aim of university education should be to turn out true servants of the people who will live and die for the country’s freedom. 

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

The notion of education through handicrafts rises from the contemplation of truth and love permeating life’s activities. 

In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a tenfold return to the people even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop. 

All education in a country has got to be demonstrably in promotion of the progress of the country in which it is given. 

Schools and colleges are really a factory for turning out clerks for the Government. 

Equality of sexes does not mean equality of occupations. 

Economic equality of my conception does not mean that every one will literally have the same amount. 

The real meaning of economic equality is “To each according to his need.” 

What is equality of rights between a giant and a dwarf? 

Economic equality is the master-key to nonviolent independence. 

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

No two leaves were alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches on which they grow. 

Under ideal conditions, the barrister and the bhangi (sweeper) should both get the same payment. 

If a single man demanded as much as a man with a wife and four children, then that would be a violation of the concept of economic equality. 

“All men are born equal and free” is not Nature’s law in the literal sense. 

My idea of society is that while we are born equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportunity, all have not the same capacity. 

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more. 

The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural needs and no more. 

The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality. 

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

The fear of the judge within is more terrible than that of the one without. 

There is always the fear of self-righteousness possessing us, the fear of arrogating to ourselves a superiority that we do not possess. 

It is weakness which breeds fear, and fear breeds distrust. 

The greatest help you can give me is to banish fear from your hearts. 

External fears cease of their own accord when once we have conquered these traitors within the camp. 

It needs more than a heart of oak to shed all fear except the fear of God. 

Fearlessness presupposes calmness and peace of mind. 

Freedom of worship, even of public speech, would become a farce if interference became the order of the day. 

Freedom received though the efforts of others, however benevolent, cannot be retained when such effort is withdrawn. 

Freedom battles are not fought without paying heavy prices. 

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

Freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth. 

We want freedom for our country, but not at the expense or exploitation of others, not so as to degrade other countries. 

It will be hard to find a parallel in history in which unarmed people have represented the urge for freedom, turning their armlessness into the central means for deliverance. 

Though we are politically free, we are hardly free from the subtle domination of the West. 

A slave has not the freedom even to do the right thing. 

A slave- holder, who has decided to abolish slavery, does not consult his slaves whether they desire freedom or not. 

There is no such thing as ‘Gandhism’, and I do not want to leave any sect after me. 

They might kill me but they cannot kill Gandhism. If truth can be killed, Gandhism can be killed. 

There is already enough superstition in our country. No effort should be spared to resist further addition in the shape of Gandhi worship. 

Was it that you wanted to pull my leg by transporting me to the frozen Himalayan heights of ‘mahatmaship’ and claiming for yourself absolution from having to follow my precepts? 

A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed. 

Government of the people by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great he may be. 

I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring ‘satanic’ and I withdraw naught out of it. 

Under my plan, the state will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or to force them to do its will. 

Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights. 

The stability of the State depends upon the readiness of every citizen to subordinate his rights to those of the rest. 

Do not concentrate on showing the misdeeds of the government, for we have to convert and befriend those who run it. 

The hater hates not for the sake of hatred but because he wants to drive away from his country the hated being or beings. 

I would rather drown myself in the waters of the Sabarmati than harbour hate or animosity in my heart. 

Harshness is conquered by gentleness, hatred by love, lethargy by zeal and darkness by light. 

Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law. 

Complete independence does not mean arrogant isolation or a superior disdain for all help. 

When real independence comes to India, the Congress and the League will be nowhere unless they represent the real opinion of the country. 

The fire of independence is burning just as bright in my breast as in the most fiery breast in this country, but ways and methods differ. 

We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we seek to end, if it will not mend. 

Islam stands for the unity and brotherhood of mankind, and not for disrupting the oneness of the human family. 

Surely Islam has nothing to fear from criticism even if it be unreasonable. 

The early Mussalmans accepted Islam not because they knew it to be revealed but because it appealed to their virgin reason. 

A perfect Muslim is he from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe. 

I would like to say that that even the teachings of the Koran cannot be exempted from criticism. 

Journalism has become the art of “intelligent anticipation of events.” 

The sole aim of journalism should be service. 

Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money. 

Journalism has a distinct place in familiarizing and expressing public opinion. 

A journalist’s peculiar function is to read the mind of the country and to give definite and fearless expression to that mind. 

The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies. 

Newspapers today have almost replaced the Bible, the Koran, the Gita and other religious scriptures. 

The press is called the Fourth Estate. It is definitely a power, but, to misuse that power is criminal. 

Newspapers should be read for the study of facts. They should not be allowed to kill the habit of independent thinking. 

In the East, as in the West, newspapers are fast becoming people’s Bible, Koran, Zend-Avesta and Gita all rolled into one. 

Freedom of the press is a precious privilege that no country can forego. 

Newspapers have become more important to the average man than the scriptures. 

Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire. 

Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the test of renunciation of the fruits of action. 

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength. 

The dry knowledge of the three R’s is not even now, it can never be, a permanent part of the villagers’ life. 

Without devotion, action and knowledge are cold and dry and many even become shackles. 

Knowledge of the tallest scientist or the greatest spiritualist is like a particle of dust. 

Renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. 

Liberty is a dearly bought commodity and prisons are factories where it is manufactured. 

Liberty never meant the license to do anything at will. 

A rose will smell as sweet by any other name, but it must be the rose of liberty that I want and not the artificial product. 

No power on earth can resist the lovers of liberty who are ready not to kill opponents, but be killed by them. 

Individual liberty is allowed to man only to a certain extent. He cannot forget that he is a social being and his individual liberty has to be curtailed at every step. 

The one condition for fighting for peace and liberty is to acquire self-restraint. 

Compulsory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing obedience to one’s father is the glory of son ship. 

Peace is unattained by part performance of conditions, even as a chemical combination is impossible without complete fulfillment of the conditions of attainment thereof. 

Without prayer there is no inward peace. 

Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace is to disbelieve in the Godliness of human nature. 

The English peace is the peace of the grave. 

Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world. 

There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. 

Whilst power, superimposed, always needs the help of the police and the military, power generated from within should have little or no use of them. 

Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives. 

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

Steam becomes a mighty power only when it allows itself to be imprisoned in a strong little reservoir, produces tremendous motion and carries huge weights by permitting itself a tiny and measured outlet. 

The moment the cultivators of the soil realize their power, the evil of Zamindari will be sterilized. 

How heavy is the toll of sins and wrong that wealth, power and prestige exact from man. 

For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. 

Rama was not only on the lips of Hanuman. He was enthroned in his heart. He gave Hanuman exhaustless strength. 

My Rama, the Rama of our prayers, is not the historical Rama, the son of Dasharatha, the king of Ayodhya. 

It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable self-government. 

Ramanama can be used only for a good, never for an evil end, or else thieves and robbers would be the greatest devotees. 

Ramanama purifies while it cures, and, therefore, it elevates. 

Even Ramanama is by itself lifeless, but it has become a living symbol of the deity because millions of people have consecrated it. 

Reason has to be strengthened by suffering, and suffering opens the eyes of understanding. 

In man, reason quickens and guides feelings; in brute, the soul lies ever dormant. 

Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason. 

Nothing in the Shastras, which is capable of being reasoned, can stand if it is in conflict with reason. 

There is no doubt that our last state will be worse than our first, if we surrender our reason into somebody’s keeping. 

Islam appeals to people because it appeals also to reason. 

I have described Swaraj as Ramarajya and Ramarajya is an impossibility unless we have thousands of Sitas. 

Execution of the constructive programme in its entirety means more than Swaraj. It means Ram Raj, Khudai Sultanat or the Divine Kingdom. 

Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya. 

My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions. In this lies the secret of Ramarajya. 

Renunciation is everyone’s prerogative. 

Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit. 

Renunciation which is natural does not herald its coming by the blowing of trumpets. It comes in imperceptibly without letting anyone notice it. 

Renunciation made for the sake of service is an ineffable joy of which none can deprive anyone, because that nectar springs from within and sustains life. 

He who gives up action falls. He who gives up the reward rises. But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result. 

That parrot’s non-co-operation with the cage, with its master, will live for ever because it looks upon renunciation, non-co-operation, as a joy. 

An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. 

Desirelessness or renunciation does not come for the mere talking about it. 

Rights of true citizenship accrue only to those who serve the State to which they belong. 

There being no absolute and universal standard of right, terrorism must be held to be wrong in every case. 

If all simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos. 

Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. 

The safest rule of conduct is to claim kinship when we want to do service and not to insist on kinship when we want to assert a right. 

Satan’s snares are mostly subtly laid and are the most tempting when the dividing line between right and wrong is so thin as to be imperceptible. 

The only things that separates us from the brute, with which we have so much in common, is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. 

The State is the sum total of the sacrifice, on its behalf, of its members. 

Since one Satan is one too many for me, I would not multiply him. 

A fast to be true must be accompanied by a readiness to receive pure thoughts and determination to resist all Satan’s temptations. 

Unless all the discoveries that you make have the welfare of the poor as the end in view, all your workshops will be really no better than Satan’s workshops. 

Service is not possible unless it is rooted in love orahimsa. 

Social service that savours of patronage is not service. 

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

The platform of services is as big as the world. It is never overcrowded. 

For me, humanitarian service, or rather service of all that lives, is religion. And I draw no distinction between such religion and politics. 

The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence. 

That prince is acceptable to me who becomes a prince among his people’s servants. 

The time is fast coming when politicians will cease to fear the religion of humanity and humanitarians will find entrance into political life indispensable for full service. 

Cent percent swadeshi gives sufficient scope for the most insatiable ambition for service and a satisfaction of every kind of talent. 

To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty. 

The way of mutual strife and exclusiveness is the only way to perdition and slavery. 

No one chains a slave without chaining himself. 

A slave-holder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage for holding the slave. 

When a slave begins to take pride in his fetters and hugs them like precious ornaments, the triumph of the slave-owner is complete. 

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

The use of soul-force for turning stones into bread would have been considered, as it is still considered, as black magic. 

History supplied numerous instances to prove that brute force is as nothing before soul-force. 

Great causes cannot be served by intellectual equipment alone, they call for spiritual effort of soul-force. 

The strength of the soul can defy a whole world in arms against it. 

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

Spiritual force is like any other force at the service of man. 

Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevate it. 

Anything which is a hindrance to the fight of the soul is a delusion and a snare, even like the body which often does hinder you in the path of salvation. 

The force of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. 

My soul refuses to be satisfied so long as it is a helpless witness of a single wrong or a single misery. 

A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free. 

Spiritual instruments suffer in their potency when their use is taught through non-spiritual messages which are self-propagating. 

Temples are like spiritual hospitals, and the sinful, who are spiritually diseased, have the first right to be ministered to by them. 

Mortification of the flesh has been held all the world over as a condition of spiritual progress. 

One’s everyday life is never capable of being separated from his spiritual being. 

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

A definite forgiveness would mean a definite recognition of our strength. 

If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief. 

If a man voluntarily allows himself to be crushed, he yields the oil of moral energy which sustains the world. 

Nanda broke down every barrier and won his way to freedom not by brag, not by bluster, but by the purest form of self-suffering. 

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

I literally believe in the possibility of a Sudhanva smiling away whilst he was being drowned in boiling oil. 

He who atones for sins never calculates; he pours out the whole essence of his contrite heart. 

True swadeshi is that alone in which all the processes through which cotton has to pass are carried out in the same village or town. 

Swadeshism is not a cult of hatred. It is a doctrine of selfless service that has its roots in the purest ahimsa, i.e. love. 

I swear by swadeshi as it affords occasion for ample exercise of all our faculties and it tests every one of the millions of men and women, young and old. 

Swadeshi is the only doctrine consistent with the law of humanity and love. 

I must not serve a distant neighbour at the expense of the nearest. 

I refuse to buy from anybody anything however nice or beautiful if it interferes with my growth or injures those whom Nature has made my first care. 

If the people resolve and carry out this programme of boycott and Swadeshi, they would not have to wait for Swaraj even for a year. 

Even swadeshi, like any other good thing, can be ridden to death if it is made a fetish. 

Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. 

Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil. 

Tolerance is the only thing that will enable persons belonging to different religions to live as good neighbours and friends. 

Mutual tolerance is a necessity for all time and for all races. 

Decency and tolerance, to be of any value, must be capable of withstanding the severest strain. 

Unless we are able to evolve a spirit of mutual tolerance for diametrically opposite views, non co-operation is an impossibility. 

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

The taking of vows that are not feasible or that are beyond one’s capacity would betray thoughtlessness and want of balance. 

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

It goes without saying that moderation and sobriety are of the very essence of vow-taking. 

Self-restraint is the very keystone of the ethics of vow-taking. 

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

The essence of a vow does not consist in the difficulty of its performance but in the determination behind it unflinchingly to stick to it in the teeth of difficulties. 

Yajna is not yajna if one feels it to be burdensome or annoying. 

Yajna having come to us with our birth, we are debtors all our lives, and thus for ever bound to serve the universe. 

Yajna is duty to be performed, or service to be rendered, all twenty-four hours of the day. 

Do not believe in telling people of one’s faith, especially with a view to conversion. Faith must be lived, and when it is, it becomes self-propagating 

An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind. 

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it-always. 

First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, and then you win. 

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. 

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes. 

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: – I shall not fear anyone on Earth. – I shall fear only God. – I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. – I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. – I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering. 

The future depends on what you do today. 

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. 

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or in the holy name of liberty or democracy? 

The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace. 

My Life is My Message 

Remember that all through history, there have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they seem invincible. But in the end, they always fall. Always. 

I was reading. 

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. 

If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children. 

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation. 

Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong. 

I must say that, beyond occasionally exposing me to laughter, my constitutional shyness has been no dis-advantage whatever. In fact I can see that, on the contrary, it has been all to my advantage. My hesitancy in speech, which was once an annoyance, is now a pleasure. Its greatest benefit has been that it has taught me the economy of words. I have naturally formed the habit of restraining my thoughts. And I can now give myself the certificate that a thoughtless word hardly ever escapes my tongue or pen. I do not recollect ever having had to regret anything in my speech or writing. I have thus been spared many a mishap and waste of time. Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man, and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of any benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth. 

Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; the female sex. 

In a gentle way you can shake the world. 

The only difference between man and man all the world over is one of degree, and not of kind, even as there is between trees of the same species. Where in is the cause for anger, envy or discrimination? 

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort is full victory. 

You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist. 

Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. 

It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us. This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart whatever they might have to say. 

Where there is life, there is love. 

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. 

You yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve love and affection. 

The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination? 

The only tyrant I accept is the still, small voice within me. 

I may be a despicable person, but when Truth speaks through me I am invincible. 

Your tomorrow depends entirely on what you do today. 

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does the truth become error because nobody will see it. (Young India 1924-1926) 

What lies ahead of you & what lies behind you is nothing compared to what lies within you. 

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together. For unity and peace. 

Among the many misdeeds of British rule in India, history will look upon the Act which deprived a whole nation of arms as the blackest. 

Love is the strongest force the world possesses. 

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honored by the humiliation of their fellow beings. 

There are only two ways to live your life: as though nothing is a miracle, or as though everything is a miracle. 

Sacrifice is joy. 

No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive. 

Be the change you want to see in the world 

Vaccination is a barbarous practice and one of the most fatal of all the delusions current in our time. Conscientious objectors to vaccination should stand alone, if need be, against the whole world, in defense of their conviction. 

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love. 

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but it is really fear. 

Hate the sin and not the sinner is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world… It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. for we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world. 

Ahimsa is a comprehensive principle. We are helpless mortals caught in the conflagration of himsa. The saying that life lives on life has a deep meaning in it. Man cannot for a moment live without consciously or unconsciously committing outward himsa. The very fact of his living – eating, drinking and moving about – necessarily involves some himsa, destruction of life, be it ever so minute. A votary of ahimsa therefore remains true to his faith if the spring of all his actions is compassion, if he shuns to the best of his ability the destruction of the tiniest creature, tries to save it, and thus incessantly strives to be free from the deadly coil of himsa. He will be constantly growing in self-restraint and compassion, but he can never become entirely free from outward himsa. Then again, because underlying ahimsa is the unity of all life, the error of one cannot but affect all, and hence man cannot be wholly free from himsa. So long as he continues to be a social being, he cannot but participate in the himsa that the very existence of society involves. When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is to stop the war. He who is not equal to that duty, he who has no power of resisting war, he who is not qualified to resist war, may take part in war, and yet wholeheartedly try to free himself, his nation and the world from war. 

To Believe is something,and do not live it,is dishonest.. 

The first principal of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating. 

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. 

There are innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable. 

The Best Thing To Find Yourself Is To Loose Yourself In The Service Of Others 

My difficulties lay deeper. It was more than I could believe that Jesus was the only incarnate son of God, and that only he who believed in him would have everlasting life. If God could have sons, all of us were His sons. If Jesus was like God, or God Himself, then all men were like God and could be God Himself. My reason was not ready to believe literally that Jesus by his death and by his blood redeemed the sins of the world. Metaphorically there might be some truth in it. Again, according to Christianity only human beings had souls, and not other living beings, for whom death meant complete extinction; while I held a contrary belief. I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept. The pious lives of Christians did not give me anything that the lives of men of other faiths had failed to give. I had seen in other lives just the same reformation that I had heard of among Christians. Philosophically there was nothing extraordinary in Christian principles. From the point of view of sacrifice, it seemed to me that the Hindus greatly surpassed the Christians. It was impossible for me to regard Christianity as a perfect religion or the greatest of all religions. 

Morality is a contraband in war. 

I too took the plunge – the vow to observe brahmacharya for life. I must confess that I had not then fully realized the magnitude and immensity of the task I undertook. The difficulties are even today staring me in the face. The importance of the vow is being more and more borne in upon me. Life without brahmacharya appears to me to be insipid and animal-like. The brute by nature knows no self-restraint. Man is man because he is capable of, and only in so far as he exercises, self-restraint. What formerly appeared to me to be extravagant praise of brahmacharya in our religious books seems now, with increasing clearness every day, to be absolutely proper and founded on experience. 

I might be ready to embrace a snake, but, if one comes to bite you, I should kill it and protect you. 

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. 

……..I am & have been for years a confirmed anti-vaccinationist. Anti-vaccination has no backing from the orthodox medical opinion. A medical man who expresses himself against vaccination loses caste. Tremendous pecuniary interests too have grown around vaccination. 

Hanya Tuhan yang boleh mengambil hidup seseorang, karena Ia yang memberikannya. 

I wanted to know the best of the life of one (Muhammad) who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle. 

I have called her beautiful, because it was her moral beauty that at once attracted me. True beauty after all consists in purity of heart. 

Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence … I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor… 

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness. 

In reality, there are as many religions as there are individuals. 

Dobbiamo diventare il cambiamento che vogliamo vedere. 

Unity to be real must survive the severest strain without breaking. 

I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations. My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties. 

Where there is love, there is life 

No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor, and instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies, and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal. 

In the very first month of Indian Opinion, I realized that the sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countrysides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within. If this line of reasoning is correct, how many of the journals in the world would stand the test? But who would stop those that are useless? And who should be the judge? The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice. 

Keep your thoughts positive because your thought become YOUR WORDS. Keep your words positive because your words become YOUR BEHAVIOR Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes YOUR HABITS Keep your habits positive because your habits become YOUR VALUES Keep your values positive because your values become YOUR DESTINY 

Where there is love there is life 

Leo Tolstoy’s life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of nonresistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in selfsuffering. 

If you love peace, then hate injustice, hate tyranny, hate greed ‘ but hate these things in yourself, not in another. 

Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth. 

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any. 

Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason. 

I came to the conclusion long ago… that all religions were true, and also that all had some error in them. 

A No uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a Yes merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble. 

The 7 Deadly Sins are: Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Knowledge without character Business without morality Science without humanity Worship without sacrifice Politics without principle 

I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. 

Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame. 

If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today. 

Almost anything you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it. 

To put up with… distortions and to stick to one’s guns come what may – this is the… gift of leadership. 

Ahimas is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value. 

I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world. 

To believe what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man. 

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall – think of it, ALWAYS. 

Non-violence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. 

Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny. 

Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world; but to change ourselves. 

I can retain neither respect nor affection for government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality 

Even a believer in nonviolence has to say between two combatants which is less bad or whose cause is just. 

God is not in strength but in truth. 

My wisdom flows from the Highest Source. I salute that Source in you. Let us work together for unity and love. 

Strength does not come from winning. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength. 

If we have listening ears, God speaks to us in our own language, whatever that language be 

Always believe in your dreams, because if you don’t, you’ll still have hope. 

The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing. 

There is no ‘way to peace,’ there is only ‘peace. 

I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life. 

I crave to die with my hand at the spinning wheel. 

I am but a poor struggling soul yearning to be wholly good, wholly truthful and wholly non-violent in thought, word and deed, but ever failing to reach the ideal which I know to be true. It is a painful climb, but each step upwards makes me feel stronger and fit for the next. 

I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ. 

I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage. 

In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all. 

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn. 

I learned from Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner, I learnt from Hussain how to attain victory while being oppressed. 

Truth is one, paths are many. 

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed. 

The only difference between man and man all the world over is one of degree, and not of kind, even as there is between trees of the same species. Where in is the cause for anger, envy or discrimination? 

Seven Deadly Sins Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice. 

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love. 

God has no religion. 

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. 

Where there is fear there is no religion. 

To my mind, the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. 

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. 

It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result. 

No one can ride on the back of a man unless it is bent. 

To believe that what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man. 

If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly. 

A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers. 

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory. 

I may be a despicable person, but when Truth speaks through me I am invincible. 

Hate the sin, love the sinner. 

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: – I shall not fear anyone on Earth. – I shall fear only God. – I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. – I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. – I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering. 

Everyone holds a piece of the truth. 

What we are doing to the forests of the world is but a mirror reflection of what we are doing to ourselves and to one another. 

Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man’s supremacy over lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live. 

My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet. 

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny. 

Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly. 

The inner voice is something which cannot be described in words. But sometimes we have a positive feeling that something in us prompts us to do a certain thing. The time when I learnt to recognise this voice was, I may say, the time when I started praying regularly. 

Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable. 

I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings. 

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority. 

They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience. 

It is easier to build a boy than to mend a man. 

I claim to be no more than the average person with less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith. 

There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for. 

A man, whilst he is dreaming, believes in his dream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his slumber. 

Nothing is so aggravating as calmness. 

Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The Valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone. 

There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results. 

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole 

All have not the same capacity. I would allow a man of intellect to earn more, I would not cramp his talent. 

Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak. 

Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed…. Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic force, his power is gone. 

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one’s acts. 

It is not that I do not get angry. I don’t give vent to my anger. I cultivate the quality of patience as angerlessness, and generally speaking, I succeed. But I only control my anger when it comes. How I find it possible to control it would be a useless question, for it is a habit that everyone must cultivate and must succeed in forming by constant practice. 

But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. 

It is good to see ourselves as others see us. Try as we may, we are never able to know ourselves fully as we are, especially the evil side of us. This we can do only if we are not angry with our critics but will take in good heart whatever they might have to say. 

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others. 

Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help… 

I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress. 

I want freedom for the full expression of my personality. 

There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader. 

As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it. 

They cannot take away our self respect if we do not give it to them. 

Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him. 

Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. 

Where there is love there is life. 

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony. 

My life is my message. 

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. 

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. 

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind. 

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty. 

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator. 

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver. 

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. 

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment. 

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart. 

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. 

First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win. 

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people. 

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory. 

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent. 

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind. 

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. 

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up. 

A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. 

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated. 

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm. 

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history. 

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts. 

Action expresses priorities. 

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide. 

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy. 

Poverty is the worst form of violence. 

In a gentle way, you can shake the world. 

There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed. 

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding. 

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle. 

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him. 

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different. 

All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take. 

Nobody can hurt me without my permission. 

I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could. 

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes. 

What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy? 

Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians – you are not like him. 

Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit. 

There is more to life than increasing its speed. 

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances. 

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave. 

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. 

Man’s nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature. 

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts. 

The real ornament of woman is her character, her purity. 

It has always been a mystery to me how men can feel themselves honoured by the humiliation of their fellow beings. 

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act. 

Morality is the basis of things and truth is the substance of all morality. 

Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul. 

It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business. 

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain. 

Man can never be a woman’s equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her. 

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. 

The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted. 

Imitation is the sincerest flattery. 

Self-respect knows no considerations. 

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession. 

The good man is the friend of all living things. 

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others. 

An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching. 

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest. 

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress. 

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom. 

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. 

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. 

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it. 

A ‘No’ uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. 

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop. 

God, as Truth, has been for me a treasure beyond price. May He be so to every one of us. 

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness. 

Peace is its own reward. 

In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart. 

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. 

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man’s happiness really lies in contentment. 

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust. 

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. 

Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our being. 

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body. 

Non-violence is the article of faith. 

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world – that is the myth of the atomic age – as in being able to remake ourselves. 

No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. 

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread. 

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion. 

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man. 

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body. 

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity. 

Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it. 

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study. 

What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea. 

Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another. 

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. 

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. 

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer. 

Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one’s own religion. 

There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings. 

Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive. 

Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth. 

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into. 

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear. 

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth. 

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. 

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. 

It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err. 

I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed. 

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world. 

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion. 

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment. 

Those who know how to think need no teachers. 

Where love is, there God is also. 

Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. 

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart. 

Prayer is a confession of one’s own unworthiness and weakness. 

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up. 

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith. 

I am in the world feeling my way to light ‘amid the encircling gloom.’ 

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be. 

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. 

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent. 

Each one prays to God according to his own light. 

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems. 

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages. 

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. 

I know, to banish anger altogether from one’s breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God’s grace. 

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children. 

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers. 

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart. 

In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place. 

Truth never damages a cause that is just. 

When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible. 

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education. 

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another. 

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well. 

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. 

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained. 

Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all. 

I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality. 

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless. 

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh. 

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause. 

I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth. 

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice. 

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following. 

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps. 

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained. 

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion. 

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared. 

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. 

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth. 

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope. 

One’s own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one’s Maker and no one else’s. 

A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal. 

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone. 

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts. 

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners. 

Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power. 

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position. 

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough in me to confess my errors and to retrace my steps. 

I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. 

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is. 

Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies. 

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living? 

Infinite striving to be the best is man’s duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God’s hands. 

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless. 

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up. 

Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress. 

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within. 

Only he can take great resolves who has indomitable faith in God and has fear of God. 

Morality is contraband in war. 

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself. 

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point. 

There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good. 

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison. 

The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience. 

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident. 

It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head. 

We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts? 

Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it. 

I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice. 

Fear has its use but cowardice has none. 

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac. 

Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort. 

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party. 

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame. 

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed. 

I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force. 

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith. 

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment. 

If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty. 

Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having. 

Commonsense is the realised sense of proportion. 

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent. 

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience. 

That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake. 

He is lost who is possessed by carnal desire. 

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful? 

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness. 

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral. 

When every hope is gone, ‘when helpers fail and comforts flee,’ I find that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal. 

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth. 

Love never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents never revenges itself. 

The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different points of vision. 

The devotion of such titans of spirit as Lenin to an Ideal must bear fruit. The nobility of his selflessness will be an example through centuries to come, and his Ideal will reach perfection. 

You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them. 

The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer. 

I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India’s ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection. – Hind Swaraj 

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs… Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home 

I should love to satisfy all, if I possibly can; but in trying to satisfy all, I may be able to satisfy none. I have, therefore, arrived at the conclusion that the best course is to satisfy one’s own conscience and leave the world to form its own judgment, favorable or otherwise. 

If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning. 

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so. 

I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian. 

Peace between countries must rest on the solid foundation of love between individuals. 

One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds. 

If you don’t find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further. 

If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: Search after truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth… Hinduism is the religion of truth. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known. 

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

I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one’s self-respect. 

A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair. 

We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day by the mass of people acting in harmony as if by instinct. If they were instinctively violent, the world would end in no time. 

There are unjust laws as there are unjust men. 

What barrier is there that love cannot break? 

Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado or loneliness. It consists in daring to do the right thing and facing consequences whether it is in matters social, political or other. It consists in deeds not words. 

I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world. 

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence. 

It is man’s social nature which distinguishes him from the brute creation. If it is his privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent. Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and be self-contained. 

Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women. 

The path is the goal. 

Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison. 

I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. 

Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood. 

Truth is what the voice within tells you. 

Enter with me into the sufferings, not only of the people of India but of the whole world. Nonviolence is a more active and real fight against wickedness than retaliation whose very nature is to increase wickedness. It is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and bravest. 

The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is. 

Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart. 

My religion enables me, obliges me to imbibe all that is good in all the great religions of the earth. 

Independence of my conception means nothing less than the realization of the “Kingdom of God” within you and on this earth. 

Our existence as embodied beings is purely momentary; what are a hundred years in eternity? But if we shatter the chains of egotism, and melt into the ocean of humanity, we share its dignity. To feel that we are something is to set up a barrier between God and ourselves; to cease feeling that we are something, is to become one with God. 

The truth is that God is the force. He is the essence of life. He is pure and undefiled consciousness. He is eternal. 

God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. 

God’s grace and revelation are the monopoly of no race or nation. 

For me the only certain means of knowing God is nonviolence, ahimsa, love. 

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. 

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

Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has to be pursued even in face of violence raging around you. 

Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God. 

High thinking is inconsistent with a complicated material life based on high speed and imposed on us by mammon worship. 

I am not built for academic writings. Action is my domain. 

Fasting is futile unless it is accompanied by an incessant longing for self-restraint. 

If anybody said that I should die if I did not take beef-tea or mutton, even under medical advice, I would prefer death. 

In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one’s opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one’s own self. 

Restraint never ruins one’s health. What ruins it,is not restraint but outward suppression. A really self-restrained person grows every day from strength to strength and from peace to more peace. The very first step in self-restraint is the restraint of thoughts. 

A man of faith does not bargain or stipulate with God. 

Proved right should be capable of being vindicated by right means as against the rude i.e. sanguinary means. Man may and should shed his own blood for establishing what he considers to be his right. He may not shed the blood of his opponent who disputes his ‘right’. 

God alone is the judge of true greatness because He knows men’s hearts. 

Surely conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows his creatures’ hearts. A conversion without a clean heart is, in my opinion, a denial of God and Religion. Conversion without cleanliness of heart can only be a matter of sorrow, not joy, to a godly person. 

Ill-digested principles are, if anything, worse than ill-digested food, for the latter harms the body and there is cure for it, whereas the former ruins the soul and there is no cure for it. 

If I preach against the modern artificial life of sensual enjoyment, and ask men and women to go back to the simple life epitomized in the charkha, I do so because I know that without an intelligent return to simplicity, there is no escape from our d. 

A dissolute character is more dissolute in thought than in deed. And the same is true of violence. Our violence in word and deed is but a feeble echo of the surging violence of thought in us. 

To say that God permits evil in the world may not be pleasing to the ear. But if He is held responsible for the good, it follows that He has to be responsible for the evil too. 

Justice does not help those who slumber but helps only those who are vigilant. 

Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion 

Infinite Love is a weapon of matchless potency. It is the ‘summum bonum’ of life. It is an attribute of the brave, in fact it is their all. It does not come within the each of the coward. It is no wooden of lifeless dogma but a living and life-giving. 

A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of majority 

Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well. There is nothing more potent than thought. Deed follows word and word follows thought. The word is the result of a mighty thought, and where the thought is mighty and pure the result is always mighty and pure. 

I do not want my house to be rounded by walls and my windows to be closed to other cultures. I wish to become familiar with the culture of lands as much as possible but I will not permit them to affect me or shake me from my own status. 

A woman’s intuition has often proved truer than a man’s arrogant assumption of knowledge. 

To me I seem to be constantly growing. I must respond to varying conditions, yet remain changeless within. 

The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress. 

The beauty of poetry is that the creation transcends the poet. 

I learnt the lesson on nonviolence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her. 

An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer 

Satan’s successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips. 

It is no easy task to do away with a thing that is established. We, therefore, say that the non-beginning of a thing is supreme wisdom. 

Jealousy does not wait for reasons. 

I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby – not even money, certainly not my soul. 

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

One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects. 

If everyone will try to understand the core of his own religion and adhere to it, and will not allow false teachers to dictate to him, there will be no room left for quarrelling. 

When a tiger changes his nature, Englishmen will change theirs. 

The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women. 

I consider Western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ’s Christianity. 

Remember there is always a limit to self-indulgence, none to restraint… Civilization , in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication but in the deliberate and voluntary restriction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment , and increases the capacity for service . 

Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him. 

Throughout the history of mankind there have been murderers and tyrants; and while it may seem momentarily that they have the upper hand, they have always fallen. Always. 

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet. 

You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results. 

You must be the change you wish to see in the world. 

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever. 

Outward Peace is useless without inner Peace 

There is no road to freedom, freedom is the road. 

Be the change that you wish to see in the world. 

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.