Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
The reaction that a ruthless dictator sets up in us either that of awe or pity according respectively as we react to him violently on nonviolently.
I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all.
Whilst power, superimposed, always needs the help of the police and the military, power generated from within should have little or no use of them.
Far better than emasculation would be the bravery of those who use physical force. Far better than cowardice would be meeting one's death fighting.
You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, and I am dead.
If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done.
Seeing God face to face is to feel that He is enthroned in our hearts even as a child feels a mother's affection without needing any demonstration.
Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.
The very first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance, loving kindness.
Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered and conducted wars, war criminals?
Religion is not what you will get after reading all the scriptures of the world. It is not really what is grasped by the grain. It is a heart grasp.
Even if the whole of India, ranged on one side, were to declare that Hindu-Muslim unity is impossible, I will declare that it is perfectly possible.
There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before a proper settlement is arrived at.
If India is not to declare spiritual bankruptcy, religious instruction of its youth must be held to be at least as necessary as secular instruction.
I refuse to buy from anybody anything however nice or beautiful if it interferes with my growth or injures those whom Nature has made my first care.
All satyagraha and fasting is a species of tyaga. It depends for its effects upon an expression of wholesome public opinion shorn of all bitterness.
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 a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.
Man is supposed to be the maker of his destiny. It is only partly true. He can make his destiny, only in so far as he is allowed by the Great Power.
Truth, purity, self-control, firmness, fearlessness, humility, unity, peace, and renunciation - these are the inherent qualities of a civil resister.
Belief in non-violence is based on the assumption that human nature in the essence is one and therefore unfailingly responds to the advances of love.
I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.
However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.
I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics.
We believe as much in the purity of race as we think they do... We believe also that the white race of South Africa should be the predominating race.
My optimism rests on my belief in the infinite possibilities of the individual to develop nonviolence. . . . In a gentle way you can shake the world.
God tries his votaries through and through but never beyond endurance. He gives them strength enough to go through the ordeal he prescribes for them.
Untouchability of foreign cloth is as much a virtue with all of us as untouchability of the suppressed classes must be a sin with every devout Hindu.
Non-violence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves.
The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary.
The message of the Gita is to be found in the second chapter of the Gita where Lord Krishna speaks of the balanced state of mind, of mental equipoise.
Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.
I must rebel against the idea that millions of Indians, who were Hindus, the other day, changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion.
Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy?
A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless.
The restoration of spinning to its central place in India's peaceful campaign for deliverance from the imperial yoke gives her women a special status.
I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.
Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.
I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.
Do not believe in telling people of one's faith, especially with a view to conversion. Faith must be lived, and when it is, it becomes self-propagating
It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends.
The mantram becomes one's staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God.
Hatred ever kills, love never dies. Such is the vast difference between the two... The duty of a human being is to diminish hatred and to promote love.
My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world.
The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country's and ultimately that of the whole of mankind.
No effort is complete without prayer - without definite recognition that the best human endeavor is of no effect if it has not God's blessing behind it.
True love is boundless like the ocean and, swelling within one, spreads itself out and, crossing all boundaries and frontiers, envelops the whole world.
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.
Civility does not ...mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good.
A popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to its assistance.