Mahatma Gandhi Mean Quotations

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

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.

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.

Find purpose. The means will follow.

Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of countrymen.

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

Prosecution of the constructive programme means constructing the structure of Swaraj.

A successful search for truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng, such as of love and hate, happiness and misery.

Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability.

Return to the villages means a definite, voluntary recognition of the duty of bread labour and all its connotes.

My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform.

A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses.

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.

Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing.

Cow protection means protection of the weak, the helpless, the dumb and the deaf.

Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war of the knife between different ideas.

Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty.

By spiritual training I mean education of the heart.

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.

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.

Complete independence does not mean arrogant isolation or a superior disdain for all help.

Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives.

Execution of the constructive programme in its entirety means more than Swaraj. It means Ram Raj, Khudai Sultanat or the Divine Kingdom.

Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit.

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.

A definite forgiveness would mean a definite recognition of our strength.

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

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.

Violent means will give violent freedom.

Means are ends in the making

It is an ever-growing belief with me that truth cannot be found by violent means.

Waiting on God means increasing purity.

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.

A Swaraj government means a government established by the free joint will of Hindus, Mussalmans and others.

India's coming into her own will mean every nation doing likewise.

My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.

Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister.

The khadi spirit means fellow-feeling with every human being on earth.

The khadi spirit means also an infinite patience.

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

No labour is too mean for one who wants to earn an honest penny.

Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect.

Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life.

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.

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.

Nonviolence is the means, the end for everyone is complete independence.

The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence.

Nonviolence, in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering.

Appreciation of nonviolence means patient research and still more patient and difficult practice.

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.

Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life.

Every moment of my existence is dedicated to the winning of Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence.

Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour.

The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be.

Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness and peace and repose in our daily acts.

A congregational prayer is a means for establishing essential human unity though common worship.

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.

Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.

A satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to satyagraha.

Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals.

Swaraj means even under dominion status a capacity to declare independence at will.

Man's upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed.

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

President means chief servant

Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.

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.

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.

Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law.

But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant to other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God.

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.

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.

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.

Patience means self-suffering.

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

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.

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.

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.

All good thoughts and ideas mean nothing without action

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Independence of my conception means nothing less than the realization of the "Kingdom of God" within you and on this earth.

For me the only certain means of knowing God is nonviolence, ahimsa, love.

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.

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'.

The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.

If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed.

The spinning wheel means national consciousness and a contribution by every individual to a definite constructive national work.

Nothing can so quickly put the masses on their legs as the spinning wheel and all it means.

Swaraj means, a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English.