Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

Fear of disease killed more men than disease itself.

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.

Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya.

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

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

There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.

The call of the spinning wheel is the noblest of all. Because it is the call of love. And love is Swaraj.

Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties.

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.

Hinduism has absorbed the best of all the faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism is not an exclusive religion.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry.

The only force at the disposal of democracy is that of public opinion.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.

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

The knowledge of the omnipresence of God also means respect for the lives even of those who may be called opponents.

Nonviolence abhors fear and therefore, secrecy.

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.

A living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind.

Nonviolence is not an easy thing to understand, still less to practice, weak as we are.

It is wrong and immoral to seek to escape the consequences of one's acts.

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

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 path is the goal.

Swaraj as conceived by me does not mean the end of kingship.

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.

I have called spinning the yajna of this age of India.

There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything.

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.

Well, India is a country of nonsense

Let me say that God will send me the plan when He gives the word as He has done before now.

If we are true servants of the masses, we would take pride in spinning for their sake.

If you do nothing there will be no results

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.

My religion and my patriotism derived from my religion, embrace all life.

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.

In Swaraj, based on ahimsa, people need not know their rights, but it is also necessary for them to know their duties.

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

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.

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

I would rather have India without education, if that is the price to be paid for making it dry.

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?

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

Boycott of foreign cloth through picketing may easily be violent; through the use of khadi it is most natural and absolutely nonviolent.

The whole world is in the throes of a new birth. Anything done for a temporary gain would be tantamount to an abortion.

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.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.

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.

Faith alone is the sun of life.