Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

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.

Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life.

God's ways are more than Man's arithmetic.

It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt.

With my meager knowledge of my own religion I do not want to belong to any religious body

My attempt and prayer are and will be for an honorable peace between belligerent nations in the least possible time.

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.

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

You can only have lasting peace based on justice.

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

For satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering.

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.

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

A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of majority

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.

Swaraj is not a product of excitement or intoxication. Swaraj will be the natural and inevitable result of business like habits.

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

Prayer presupposes faith. No prayer is in vain. Prayer is like any other action.

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.

If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done.

The only real and reliable guarantee for khadi would be honesty, truthfulness and sincerity of khadi workers.

I must not serve a distant neighbour at the expense of the nearest.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

For me, humanitarian service, or rather service of all that lives, is religion. And I draw no distinction between such religion and politics.

Non-co-operation in itself is unnatural, vicious and sinful.

To me Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except the way of nonviolence.

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

A mind not set on God is given to wandering and lacks the quality of a temple of worship.

Civil disobedience is a stimulation for the fighters and a challenge to the opponent, in the present instance, authority.

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

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.

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.

Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have.

I do not want India to rise on the ruin of other nations.

Swaraj is our birthright. No one can deprive us of it unless we forfeit it ourselves.

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.

Let our lives be open books for all to study.

A born democrat is a born disciplinarian.

Labour is a great leveler of all distinctions.

We may attack systems. We must not attack men.

Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul force or the power of the godhead within us.

In the Gita continuous concentration on God is the king of sacrifices.

Spiritual force is like any other force at the service of man.

Mass illiteracy is India's sin and shame and must be liquidated.

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French.

I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.

If Hinduism teaches hatred of Islam or of non-Hindus, it is doomed to destruction.

For a non-violent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him.