Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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.

If I could wake all of the women of Asia, India could be won in a day.

Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth.

That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values.

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.

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

Don't listen to friends when the Friend inside you says "Do this."

I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement.

I would rather have India reduced to a state of pauperism than have thousands of drunkards in our midst.

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.

Nonviolence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice - nonviolence springs from love, cowardice from hate.

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.

I believe all war to be wholly wrong.

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

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.

The Charkha is the symbol of nonviolence on which all life, if it is to be real life, must be based.

I have no weapon but nonviolence.

The object of basic education is the physical, intellectual and moral development of children through the medium of handicraft.

The cause of the spinning wheel is too great and too good to have to rest on mere hero-worship.

Truth is God, and Truth overrides all our plans. The whole Truth is only embodied within the heart of Great Power-Truth.

If all simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos.

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

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

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

The socialism that India can assimilate is the socialism of the spinning wheel.

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.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I have pinned my faith to the spinning wheel. On it, I believe, the salvation of this country depends.

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.

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

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

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

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.

My purpose is to describe experiments in the science ofsatyagraha and not at all to describe how good I am.

A nation that is unfit to fight cannot, from experience, prove the virtue of not fighting.

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.

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

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.