Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness can be spread without diminishing that of yourself.
If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker.
A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism.
My mission is to convert every Indian, every Englishman and finally the world to nonviolence for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic, social or religious.
A democrat should not rely upon the force of the arms his state could flaunt in the face of the world, but on the moral force his state could put at the disposal of the world.
Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country.
We, the English educated Indians, often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indians is the whole of India.
All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.
I felt that God could be realized only through service. And service for me was the service of India, because it came to me without my seeking, because I had an aptitude for it.
Humankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter - hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred.
Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it.
To say that God permits evil in the world may not be pleasing to the ear. But if He is held responsible for the good, it follows that He has to be responsible for the evil too.
To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.
The Bhagavad-Gita calls on humanity to dedicate body, mind and soul to pure duty and not to become mental voluptuaries at the mercy of random desires and undisciplined impulses.
Music has given me peace. I can remember occasions when music instantly tranquillized my mind, when I was greatly agitated over something. Music has helped me to overcome anger.
If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task.
Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.
Was it that you wanted to pull my leg by transporting me to the frozen Himalayan heights of 'mahatmaship' and claiming for yourself absolution from having to follow my precepts?
I was a co-operator too in the sense that I non-co-operated for co-operation, and even then I said that if I could carry the country forward by co-operation I should co-operate.
Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.
A man who has broken with his past feels a different man. He will not feel it a shame to confess his past wrongs, for the simple reason that these wrongs do not touch him at all.
If everyone will try to understand the core of his own religion and adhere to it, and will not allow false teachers to dictate to him, there will be no room left for quarrelling.
Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mind of truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there.
In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file.
A satyagrahi is sometimes bound to use language which is capable of two meanings, provided both the meanings are obvious and necessary and there is no intention to deceive anyone.
Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified.
Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.
The various religions are like different roads converging on the same point. What difference does it make if we follow different routes, provided we arrive at the same destination?
Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, the legislatures can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence.
I would bend the knee before the poorest scavenger, the poorest untouchable in India for having participated in crushing him for centuries; I would even take the dust off his feet.
Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner.
We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.
If India won her freedom through truth and non-violence, India would not only point the way to all the exploited Asiatic nations, she would become a torch-bearer for the Negro races.
Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth.
We want to go in for suffering, and there may be torture. If we put the women in front the Government may hesitate to inflict on us all the penalty that they might otherwise inflict.
I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? 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.
In times to come people will not judge us by the creed we profess or the label we wear or the slogans we shout, but, by our work, industry, sacrifice, honesty and purity of character.
Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought.
I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience which is God.
It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and hide the hearts of one people from those of another.
Don't talk about it. The rose doesn't have to propagate its perfume. It just gives it forth, and people are drawn to it. Live it, and people will come to see the source of your power.
... we have to learn to use that force (love) among all that lives, and in the use of it consists our knowledge of God. Where there is love there is life; hatred leads to destruction.
My idea of village SWARAJ is that is a complete republic, independent of its neighbors for its own vital wants, and yet interdependent for many others which dependence is a necessity.
My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.
The ideal that marriage aims at is that of spiritual union through the physical. The human love that it incarnates is intended to serve as a stepping stone to diving or universal love.
Labour, because it chose to remain unintelligent, either became subservient, or insolently believed in damaging the capitalists' goods and machinery or even in killing the capitalists.
We are too near the scene of tragedy to realize that this canker or untouchability has traveled far beyond its prescribed limits and has sapped the very foundation of the whole nation.
It is the duty of a non-co-operator to preach disaffection towards the existing order of things. Non-co-operators are but giving disciplined expression to a nation's outraged feelings.
Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth & violence. Even if my belief is a fond delusion, it will be admitted that it is a fascinating delusion.
Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity.