Mahatma Gandhi Quotations | Page 4

If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering.

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.

Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people.

The expert knows more and more about less and less until he knows everything about nothing.

My life is my message.

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines.

I can retain neither respect nor affection for government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality

Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has become lawless or corrupt. And a citizen who barters with such a state shares in its corruption and lawlessness.

When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall.. think of it, always.

The Divine Music is incessantly ringing within all of us, but the loud senses drown the delicate Music, which is unlike and infinitely superior to anything we can perceive with our senses.

God has no religion.

It is pleasant that there will be no religions in heaven.

Prayer from the heart can achieve what nothing else can in the world.

Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak.

Love never claims, it ever gives.

Like the bee gathering honey from the different flowers, the wise person accepts the essence of the different scriptures and sees only the good in all religions.

Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.

The earth, the air, the land and the water are not an inheritance from our fore fathers but on loan from our children. So we have to handover to them at least as it was handed over to us.

I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded.

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use.

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest... no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism... true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.

Generosity consists not the sum given, but the manner in which it is bestowed

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees.

Find purpose. The means will follow.

I believe that there is no prayer without fasting and there is no real fast without prayer.

I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

Truth is one, paths are many.

Though I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal.

Religions are different roads converging on the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads so long as we reach the same goal? I believe that all religions of the world are true more or less. I say "more or less" because I believe that everything the human hand touches, by reason of the very fact that human beings are imperfect, becomes imperfect.

Do not judge others. Be your own judge and you will be truly happy. If you will try to judge others, you are likely to burn your fingers.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.

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.

Yes I am, I am also a Muslim, a Christian, a Buddhist, and a Jew.

Once one assumes an attitude of intolerance, there is no knowing where it will take one. Intolerance, someone has said, is violence to the intellect and hatred is violence to the heart.

I call him religious who understands the suffering of others.

With every true friendship, we build more firmly the foundations on which the peace of the whole world rests.

The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different points of vision.

The most heinous and the most cruel crimes of which history has record have been committed under the cover of religion or equally noble motives.

I honor the place within you where, when you are in that place in you and I am in that place in me, there is only one of us.

Your beliefs become your thoughts, Your thoughts become your words, Your words become your actions, Your actions become your habits, Your habits become your values, Your values become your destiny.

In the midst of darkness, light persists.

Every worthwhile accomplishment, big or little, has its stages of drudgery and triumph: a beginning, a struggle, and a victory.

Democracy and dependence on the military and police are incompatible.

The simplest acts of kindness are by far more powerful then a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

The real love is to love them that hate you, to love your neighbor even though you distrust him.

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.

To lose patience is to lose the battle.

I learned from Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner, I learnt from Hussain how to attain victory while being oppressed.

Lovers of Swaraj cannot rest till a solution is found which would allay Mussalman apprehensions and yet not endanger Swaraj.

If Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods, it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life.

We are aware that the business of Swaraj will thrive only if the boycott of foreign cloth is successful.

To ignore the Mussalman grievance as if it was not felt is to postpone Swaraj.

It only confirms me in my belief that there is no Swaraj without a settlement with the Mussalmans.

If we want Swaraj to be built on non-violence, we will have to give the villages their proper place.

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

There can be no Swaraj where there is no harmony, no music.

Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of countrymen.

My Swaraj will be not be a result of murder of others but a voluntary act of continuous self-sacrifice.

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

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

The Swaraj of my dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions.

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

I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it.

I have had the hardihood to say that Swaraj could not be granted even by God.

With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster.

When large numbers of wholly innocent men are in jail, we may take it that Swaraj is at hand.

We shall make progress towards Swaraj only if we do everything thoughtfully and with understanding.

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

The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj.

Destruction of the churches and the like is not the way to Swaraj as defined by the Congress.

Non-co-operation and civil disobedience in terms of Swaraj are not to be thought of without substantial constructive effort.

A bogus Congress register can never lead you to Swaraj any more than a paper boat can help you to sail across the Padma.

Religious truth, or for that matter any truth, requires a calm and meditative atmosphere for its percolation.

Truth is self-evident, nonviolence is its maturest fruit. It is contained in truth, but is not self-evident.

Every truth is self-acting and possesses inherent strength.

Truth, which is permanent, eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history.

Truth is God, and truth overrides all our plans.

Truth is not truth merely because it is ancient. Nor is truth necessarily to be regarded with suspicion because it is ancient.

Truth should so humble that even dust could crush it.

Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.

The quest of Truth involves tapas-self-suffering-sometimes even unto death.

Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence.

Every expression of truth has in it the seeds of propagation, even as the sun cannot hide its light.

If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth, you must reduce yourself to a zero.

Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth.

Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being.

One cannot reach Truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach truth.

Where there is truth, there also is knowledge which is true.

A man of faith will remain steadfast to truth even though the whole world might appear to be enveloped in falsehood.

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

The deepest spiritual truths are always unutterable.

The highest truth needs no communicating, for it is by its very nature self-propelling. It radiates its influence silently as the rose its fragrance without the intervention of a medium.

In battling against untouchability, and in dedicating myself to that battle, I have no less an ambition than to see a full regeneration of humanity.

If untouchability lives, humanity must die.

My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity.

We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability.

My mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Mussalman passing by.

When untouchability is rooted out, these distinctions will vanish and no one will consider himself superior to any other.

There is no 'as far as possible' on the question of untouchability. If it is to go, it must go in its entirety from the temples as from everywhere else.