Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength.

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

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

Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights.

Whomsoever you follow, howsoever great, see to it that you follow the spirit of the master and not imitate him mechanically.

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

All great religions have rightly regarded kama as the arch-enemy of man, anger or hatred coming only in the second place.

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.

Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevate it.

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.

Nonviolent non-co-operation with evil means co-operation with all that is good.

Work for Swaraj fails to appeal to us because we have no music in us.

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?

If you don't find God in the next person you meet, it is a waste of time looking for him further.

The sum total of karma is God.

Whilst the Bihar calamity damages the body, the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony.

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.

For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.

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

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.

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.

True nonviolence is mightier than the mightiest violence.

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

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

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.

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

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

Love is the law of life.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

God took and needed no personal service. He served His creatures without demanding any service for Himself in return.

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

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.

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

Unity among the different races and the different religions of India is indispensable to the birth of national life.

Real non-co-operation is non-co-operation with evil and not with the evil-doer.

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.

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

My Swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization.