Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

Be the change that you wish to see in the world.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

The good man is the friend of all living things.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

Love transcends all animosity and is never partial.

The Law of Love, call it attraction, affinity, cohesion if you like, governs the world.

Cowardice is incompatible with divine wisdom.

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

Love is the law of life.

Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind.

True beauty lies in purity of the heart.

Wherever you are you will always be in my heart.

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

The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.

A man of truth must also be a man of care.

I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.

Speak only if it improves upon the silence.

My life is my message.

I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.

To forget how to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget ourselves.

Fearlessness presupposes calmness and peace of mind.

May the work of your hands be a sign of gratitude and reverence to the human condition.

Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.

Morality is contraband in war.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.

Only he can take great resolves who has indomitable faith in God and has fear of God.

Each one prays to God according to his own light.

I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.

A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

Freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth.

Your words become your actions, your actions become your habits.

Almost everything you do will seem insignificant, but it is important that you do it.

Decency and tolerance, to be of any value, must be capable of withstanding the severest strain.

Decency requires that when a programme is approved by the majority, all should carry it out faithfully.

Cleanliness Is Next to Godliness.

Live simply that others may simply live.

The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers.

The British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe.

Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen.

We may attack systems. We must not attack men.

Islam appeals to people because it appeals also to reason.

The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence.

Equality of sexes does not mean equality of occupations.

An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

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

Our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world as in being able to remake ourselves.

A democratic organization has to dare to do the right at all costs.

When you make yourself into zero, your power becomes invincible.

The snakes have their place in the agricultural economy of the village, but our villagers do not seem realize it.

Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself.

Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal if it closes its temples to Harijans.

Self-defense is the only honourable course where there is unreadiness for self-immolation.

Outward appearance is nothing to Him if it is not an expression of the inner.

If the lambs of the world had been willingly led, they would have long ago saved themselves from the butcher's knife.

You and I: we are one. I cannot hurt you without hurting myself.

A perfect Muslim is he from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe.

Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure. Not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.

Purity of life is the highest and truest art.

The idol in the temple is not God. But since God resides in every atom, He resides in that idol too.

Without real nonviolence, there would be perfect anarchy.

Punishment is God's. He alone is the infallible Judge.

It is easy to stand in the crowd, but it takes courage to stand alone.

That prince is acceptable to me who becomes a prince among his people's servants.

Yajna is not yajna if one feels it to be burdensome or annoying.

No two leaves were alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches on which they grow.

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

Jesus never uttered a loftier or a grander truth than when he said that wisdom cometh out of the mouths of babes.

Men to be men must be able to trust their womenfolk, even as the latter are compelled to trust them.

He who is ever brooding over result often loses nerve in the performance of his duty.

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

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

Behaviour is the mirror in which we can display our image.

Compulsory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing obedience to one's father is the glory of son ship.

Solitude is a catalyst for innovation.

All sins are committed in secrecy. The moment we realize that God witnesses even our thoughts, we shall be free.

Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall in the clutches of the wolf.

Whoever is victor, there should be, after the war, a commonwealth of all nations.

At the moment the British Common-wealth is a Commonwealth of White nation.

Democracy and dependence on the military and police are incompatible.

What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?

Possession of arms implies an element of fear, if not of cowardice.

Cowards can never be moral.

Surely, conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows His creatures' hearts.

To change one's religion under the threat of force is no conversion but rather cowardice.

The cow is the purest type of sub-human life.

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

Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire.

Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence.

If there is violence, it will certainly be crushed because violence can only end in a disgraceful rout.

All our philosophy is as dry as dust if it is not immediately translated into some act of living service.

Character alone will have real effect on the masses.

The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is.

Truthful movements spontaneously attract to themselves all manner of pure and disinterested help.

Non-co-operation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power.

Disobedience, to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention.

The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust.

Freedom of worship, even of public speech, would become a farce if interference became the order of the day.

I retain the opinion that council entry is inconsistent with non-co-operation as I conceive it.

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

The world is weary of hate. We see the fatigue overcoming the Western nations.

Love and exclusive possession can never go together.

Violence is bound sooner or later to exhaust itself but peace cannot issue out of such exhaustion.

A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women.

The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners.

I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India.

I know that man who forsakes Truth can forsake his country and his nearest and dearest ones.

My effort should never be to undermine another's faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith.

Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace is to disbelieve in the Godliness of human nature.

Love is a rare herb that makes a friend even of a sworn enemy and this herb grows out of nonviolence.

All society is held together by nonviolence even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation.

The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right.

I have shut my mind against nothing and I am a friend of Great Britain. I always have been. I have no axe to grind.

If my nonviolence is to be contagious and infectious, I must acquire greater control over my thoughts.

There is no greater spellbinder of peace than the name of God.

I believe all war to be wholly wrong.

We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere life-homage to truth and nonviolence.

My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica.

There is no road to freedom, freedom is the road.

Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces.

Everything that we do is insignificant...and...it is very important that we do it!

I would like to say that that even the teachings of the Koran cannot be exempted from criticism.

A woman's intuition has often proved truer than a man's arrogant assumption of knowledge.

Labour is a great leveler of all distinctions.

I do not regard capital to be the enemy of labour.

Faith becomes lame, when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason!

Man can only conceive God within the limitation of his own mind.

No one has the capacity to judge God. We are drops in that limitless ocean of mercy.

God speaks to us every day only we don't know how to listen.

For me the present is merged in eternity. I may not sacrifice the latter for the present.

All men are born equal and free is not Nature's law in the literal sense.

The greatest menace to the world today is the growing, exploiting, irresponsible imperialism.

A love that is based on the goodness of those whom you love is a mercenary affair.

My non-violence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities.

A true and nonviolent combination of labour would act like a magnet attracting to it all the needed capital.

I have known many meat eaters to be far more nonviolent than vegetarians.

Violent nationalism, otherwise known as imperialism, is a curse.

I have recognized that the nation has the right, if it so wills, to vindicate her freedom even by actual violence.

My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual.

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

I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property, for offense or defense.

Without proper, careful organisation of the spinning wheel and khaddar, there is absolutely no civil disobedience.

If a man voluntarily allows himself to be crushed, he yields the oil of moral energy which sustains the world.

Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering.

My motto is Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention.

It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and sin against God.

A person is bound to work in obedience to and in conformity to that person's own nature.

It was our love of foreign cloth that ousted the wheel from its position of dignity.

The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man's Swaraj.

Idleness is the great plague of India.

The day a woman can walk freely on the roads at night, that day we can say that India has achieved independence.

How heavy is the toll of sins and wrong that wealth, power and prestige exact from man.

Labour is priceless, not gold.

True prayer is not a prelude to inaction.

Your readiness to suffer will light the torch of freedom which will never be put out.

God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision.

If you give me rice, I'll eat today; if you teach me how to grow rice, I'll eat every day.

No human being is so bad as to be beyond redemption.

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

More caution and perhaps more restraint are necessary in breaking a fast than in keeping it.

It dawned upon me that fasting could be made as powerful a weapon of indulgence as of restraint.

Restraint never ruins one's health.

Desirelessness or renunciation does not come for the mere talking about it.

Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the test of renunciation of the fruits of action.

India's freedom will not be won by violence but only by the purest suffering without retaliation.

Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice.

If I did not have a sense of humor, I would have long ago killed myself.

Since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is.

Without devotion, action and knowledge are cold and dry and many even become shackles.

The Koran says that there can be no heaven for one who sheds the blood of an innocent neighbour.

Weeding is as necessary to agriculture as sowing.

The only true resistance to this Government... is to cease to co-operate with it.

There's more to life than increasing its speed.

The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me.

Concentrate on your task.

All crime is a kind of disease and should be treated as such.

Faith is put to the test when the situation is most difficult.

All the great religions of the world inculcate equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of toleration.

The measure of a country's greatness should be based on how well it cares for its most vulnerable populations.

I condemn, for all climes and for all times, secret murders and unfair methods even for a fair cause.

God is certainly one. He has no second. He is unfathomable, unknowable and unknown to the vast majority of mankind.

Justice does not help those who slumber but helps only those who are vigilant.