I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.

Truth quenches untruth, love quenches anger, self-suffering quenches violence. This eternal rule is a rule not for saints only but for all.

My errors have been errors of calculation and judging men, not in appreciating the true nature of truth and ahimsa or in their application.

What faith can you place in a general or a soldier who lacks resolution and determination, who says, 'I shall keep guard as long as I can'?

In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place.

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 nonviolence.

Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

The Attainment of freedom, whether for a person, a nation or a world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of nonviolence for each

My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper.

What I want to achieve, what I have been striving and pining for these thirty years, is self-realization, that is, to see God face to face.

All the religions of the world describe God pre-eminently as the Friend of the friendless, Help of the helpless, and Protector of the weak.

Swaraj is not meant for cowards, but for those who would mount smilingly to the gallows and refuse even to allow their eyes to be bandaged.

If a single man demanded as much as a man with a wife and four children, then that would be a violation of the concept of economic equality.

Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible.

Study men following the law of their higher nature, the law of love, so that when you grow to manhood, you will have improved your heritage.

Confession of errors is like a broom which sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.

The turning of the charkha in a lifeless way will be like the turning of the beads of the rosary with a wandering mind turned away from God.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things.

If all were nonviolent, there would be no anarchy and there would be no question of anybody being armed for meeting aggression from without.

What has appealed to me most in Tolstoy's life is that he practiced what he preached and reckoned no cost too great in his pursuit of truth.

Even if masses of people were to burn khadi publicly and say that it is an insane programme, I will declare that those people have gone mad.

We stand on the threshold of a twilight-whether morning or evening we do not know. One is followed by the night, the other heralds the dawn.

A nation that is capable of limitless sacrifice is capable of rising to limitless heights. The purer the sacrifice the quicker the progress.

My religion forbids me to belittle or disregard other cultures, as it insists, under pain of civil suicide, upon imbibing and living my own.

The fight of satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying.

All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal rejections and acceptances.

To benefit by others' killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

For me, humanitarian service, or rather service of all that lives, is religion. And I draw no distinction between such religion and politics.

The seeker is at liberty to extract from this treasure any meaning he likes, so as to enable him to enforce in his life the central teaching.

Unexampled bravery, born of nonviolence, coupled with strict honesty shown by a fair number of Muslims, is sure to infect the whole of India.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

A soldier fights with an irresistible strength when he has blown up his bridges and burnt his boats. Even so, it is with a soldier of ahimsa.

One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole

My life has been full of external tragedies and if they have not left any visible effect on me, I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavadgita.

Further march of civilization seems to employ increasing domination of man over beast, together with a growingly humane method of using them.

As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding.

In this, of all the countries in the world, possession of inordinate wealth by individuals should be held as a crime against Indian humanity.

If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence.

It is my conviction that nothing enduring can be built on violence. The only safe way to overcome an enemy is to make of that enemy a friend.

Religion to be true must satisfy what may be termed humanitarian economics, that is, where the income and the expenditure balance each other.

Each and every one of you should consider himself to be a trustee for the welfare of the rest of his fellow labourers and not be self-seeking.

But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.

The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal.

Just as there are signs by which you can recognize violence with the naked eye, so is the spinning wheel to me a decisive sign of nonviolence.

It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

The Law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name.

If Euclid's point, though incapable of being drawn by any human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live.

Share This Page