Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
You have to remember that although Gandhi and Churchill only met physically once, their paths crossed again and crossed again all over the globe, from London and South Africa and India and back to London. In fact, I discovered that during the Boer War in 1899 they literally passed yards from each other on the battlefield.
When young people see movies like 'Gandhi 'or 'JFK,' there is an element of romanticization of these powerful people, and young people often feel a huge distance between their own lives and the lives of these social-change heroes. But the Panthers were flawed-up people from the streets, so it's easier to identify with them.
Gandhi wanted to meet with Churchill, his most bitter foe, when he visited London in 1931- but it didn't happen. Churchill wanted to go to India personally as prime minister in 1942 to negotiate a final settlement on India with Gandhi and the other nationalist leaders - but the fall of Singapore prevented it from happening.
Since when has the Congress become protector of judiciary? Do I have to remind how Indira Gandhi treat the judiciary when one verdict went against them? Rajeev Gandhi in 1988 almost brought the bill, and during that phase, how many cases were filed against the media? And their son and grandson is talking about press freedom.
One lesson I got from Gandhi, 'Be the change you want to see,' haunts me. I just feel like I can't keep stomping around pointing the finger at BP when I am supporting the oil industry with my very own dollars and actions by buying their products, helping to pay their mortgage - plastic is from oil... polyester, shower curtains.
I remember back in the 1960s - late '50s, really - reading a comic book called 'Martin Luther King Jr. and the Montgomery Story.' Fourteen pages. It sold for 10 cents. And this little book inspired me to attend non-violence workshops, to study about Gandhi, about Thoreau, to study Martin Luther King, Jr., to study civil disobedience.
I've only cried at one book, but I'm too embarrassed to tell you which. It wasn't terribly intellectual. I will admit, though, to crying when I've read books aloud to my elementary class. We read a biography of Gandhi once, and it was very difficult to read the part where Gandhi was killed, because they were waiting for a happy ending.
To Mahatma Gandhi, the key to India's progress was the development of its villages. In his unified vision, education, agriculture, village industry, social reform all came together to provide the basis for a vibrant rural society free from exploitation and linked to the urban centres as equals. Our planning incorporates this basic insight.
There is a scene in Richard Attenborough's biopic where Gandhi argues with his wife because she refuses to clean their latrine. She says it is the work of untouchables; he tells her there is no such thing. Gandhi's tactics of encouraging brotherly love across caste boundaries and urging Indians to clean their own latrines had failed miserably.
Gandhi, when he was on the salt march, had everyone singing the song of Rabindranath Tagore, which goes, 'Walk alone, walk alone...' Now there's some paradox in that, with a million people on the march! But he was cultivating the thought that each individual has dignity, and the dignity consists partly in the willingness to stand up to authority.
I don't think that one should beat himself or herself over the head if immediately you're not like Jesus Christ or, you know, Gandhi or whoever. But I think the idea is to... to look at those examples and try to... try to operate in a way that every day you live or every interaction you have pushes you further along to operating with that mindset.
Gandhi said it; Frederick Douglass said it. A lot of people have probably said 'It's not Christ that I have a problem with, it's his people.' And that was my struggle: it's God's people. I felt disenfranchisement. I felt so much abuse from organized religion because I'm walking in a direction that a lot of them couldn't fathom and can't understand.
