A fast to be true must be accompanied by a readiness to receive pure thoughts and determination to resist all Satan's temptations.

The eternal duel between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Satan, is raging in my breast, which is one among their billion battlefields.

Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place.

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

Even Ramanama is by itself lifeless, but it has become a living symbol of the deity because millions of people have consecrated it.

Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind.

The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural needs and no more.

In order to get meat, we have to kill. And we are certainly not entitled to any other milk except the mother's milk in our infancy.

A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia.

The method of satyagraha requires that the satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it.

Love can never express itself by imposing sufferings on others. It can only express itself by self-suffering, by self-purification.

Is a civilization worth the name, which requires, for its existence the very doubtful prop of a racial legislation and a lynch law?

If the people resolve and carry out this programme of boycott and Swadeshi, they would not have to wait for Swaraj even for a year.

If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief.

By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, if I secure it at the hands of my opponent, I should bow down my head to him.

A teetotaler would regard it as his duty to associate with his drunkard brother for the purpose of weaning him from the evil habit.

I see a clear breach of ahimsa even in driving away monkeys; the breach would be proportionately greater if they have to be killed.

There is not a moment when I do not feel the presence of a Witness whose eye misses nothing and with whom I strive to keep in tune.

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.

It was manly and dignified to rely upon God for the dissolution of all troubles. He was the only infallible help, guide and friend.

God lives, but not as we. His creatures live but to die. But God is life. Therefore, goodness is not an attribute. Goodness is God.

I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it.

When a slave begins to take pride in his fetters and hugs them like precious ornaments, the triumph of the slave-owner is complete.

Under my plan, the state will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or to force them to do its will.

A nonviolent action accompanied by nonviolence in thought and word should never produce enduring violent reaction upon the opponent.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

It is nonviolent non-co-operation which evokes the highest spirit of self-sacrifice that will wean one from the error of one's ways.

Religion is the tie that binds one to one's Creator, and whilst the body perishes, as it has to, religion persists even after death.

God is not a Power residing in the clouds. He is an unseen Power residing within us and nearer to us than finger nails to the flesh.

An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer

True swadeshi is that alone in which all the processes through which cotton has to pass are carried out in the same village or town.

Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them.

I am endeavouring to see God through service of humanity; for I know that God is neither in heaven, nor down below, but in everyone.

To slight a single human being, is to slight those divine powers and thus to harm not only that being but with him, the whole world.

If you want something done, ask. If you want something done quickly, ask, and then begin counting down from ten with no explanation.

To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty.

My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control.

Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.

For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from.

The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification.

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.

Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, demands the greatest exercise of faith.

A man who is swayed by negative emotions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth.

My faith in truth and nonviolence is ever growing, and as I am ever trying to follow them in my life, I too am growing every moment.

The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.

All religions enjoined worship of the One God who is all-pervasive. He is present even in a drop of water or in a tiny speck of dust.

When the wheel was accepted as part of the national flag, it was surely implied that the spinning wheel would hum in every household.

To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face, one must be able to love the meanest of all creation as oneself.

All religions are branches of the same mighty tree, but I must not change over from one branch to another for the sake of expediency.

To have a happy ending, choose a happy moment and call it 'the ending'. Honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.

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