Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
My method is conversion, not coercion, it is self-suffering, not the suffering of the tyrant. I know that method to be infallible.
The spinning wheel and the spinning wheel alone will solve, if anything will solve, the problem of the deepening poverty of India.
Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it.
Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life.
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.
The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to be conceived by God or man.
The duty of motherhood, which the vast majority of woman will always undertake, requires the qualities which men need not possess.
Truth and non-violence are not cloistered virtues but applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market place.
The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural needs and no more.
If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief.
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.
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.
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.
It was manly and dignified to rely upon God for the dissolution of all troubles. He was the only infallible help, guide and friend.
My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.
A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia.
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.
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.
Is a civilization worth the name, which requires, for its existence the very doubtful prop of a racial legislation and a lynch law?
A teetotaler would regard it as his duty to associate with his drunkard brother for the purpose of weaning him from the evil habit.
Even Ramanama is by itself lifeless, but it has become a living symbol of the deity because millions of people have consecrated it.
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.
Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind.
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.
I see a clear breach of ahimsa even in driving away monkeys; the breach would be proportionately greater if they have to be killed.
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.
The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.
An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer
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.
Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke.
Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them.
The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification.
A nonviolent action accompanied by nonviolence in thought and word should never produce enduring violent reaction upon the opponent.
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.
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.
My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control.
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.
Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, demands the greatest exercise of faith.
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.
To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty.
If you want something done, ask. If you want something done quickly, ask, and then begin counting down from ten with no explanation.
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.
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.
For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from.
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.
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.