Mahatma Gandhi (Social Activist)

Ifadopted the doctrine ofas an active part of herand introduced it in her ,would descend upon India from . But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet.

— Mahatma Gandhi war

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered . That State is the bestwhich is governed the least.

— Mahatma Gandhi will

are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarrelling?

— Mahatma Gandhi goal

An unjustis itself a species of . Arrest for its breach is more so.

— Mahatma Gandhi self

Why, of all places in Johannesburg, the Indian location should be chosen for dumping down allof the town, passes my comprehension. Of course, under my suggestion, the Town Council must withdraw the Kaffirs from the Location. About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is very unfair to the Indian population, and it is an undue tax on even the proverbial patience of my countrymen.

— Mahatma Gandhi men

In this instance of the fire-arms, the Asiatic has been most improperly bracketed with the native. The British Indian does not need any such restrictions as are imposed by the Bill on the natives regarding the carrying of fire-arms. The prominent race can remain so by preventing the native from arming himself. Is there a slightest vestige of justification for so preventing the British Indian?

— Mahatma Gandhi light

You say that the magistrate's decision is unsatisfactory because it would enable a person, however unclean, to travel by a tram, and that even the Kaffirs would be able to do so. But the magistrate's decision is quite different. The Court declared that the Kaffirs have no legal right to travel by tram. And according to tram regulations, those in an unclean dress or in a drunken state are prohibited from boarding a tram. Thanks to the Court's decision, only clean Indians or coloured people other than Kaffirs, can now travel in the trams.

— Mahatma Gandhi people

A generalseems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.

— Mahatma Gandhi children

's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of nonresistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in selfsuffering. He admits of no exception to whittle down this great and divine law of love. He applies it to all the problems that trouble mankind.

— Mahatma Gandhi love

We are our own slaves, not of the British. This should be engraved on our minds. The whites cannot remain if we do not want them. If the idea is to drive them out with firearms, let every Indian consider what precious little profit Europe has found in these.

— Mahatma Gandhi mind

One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.

— Mahatma Gandhi fear

In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.

— Mahatma Gandhi religion

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

— Mahatma Gandhi men

I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection.

— Mahatma Gandhi self

If India adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her religion and introduced it in her politics.would descend upon India from heaven. But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet.

— Mahatma Gandhi love

I have even seen the writings suggesting that I am playing a deep game, that I am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on India, and am making religious experiments at India's expense. I can only answer thatis made of sterner stuff. There is nothing reserved and nothing secret in it.

— Mahatma Gandhi writing

I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.

— Mahatma Gandhi suffering

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

— Mahatma Gandhi thoughts

The only tyrant I accept in this world is the "still small voice" within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.

— Mahatma Gandhi hope

If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence.

— Mahatma Gandhi violence

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

— Mahatma Gandhi faith

Always believe in your dreams, because if you don't, you'll still have hope.

— Mahatma Gandhi hope

I wanted to know the best of the life of one () who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.

— Mahatma Gandhi knowledge

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. An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects. ... The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil — man's greed.

— Mahatma Gandhi success

I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen.

— Mahatma Gandhi men

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

— Mahatma Gandhi strong

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.

— Mahatma Gandhi truth

I’m 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.

— Mahatma Gandhi love

For 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.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

I came to the conclusion long ago … that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu … But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian.

— Mahatma Gandhi religion

My ambition is much higher than independence. 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.

— Mahatma Gandhi art

I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth...as my life consists of nothing but those experiments.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth (1927) These should eventually have citation by translation, edition, and section or page numbers

— Mahatma Gandhi men

It is not my purpose to attempt a real autobiography. I simply want to tell the story of my experiments with truth...as my life consists of nothing but those experiments.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

In judging myself I shall try to be as harsh as truth, as I want others also to be. Measuring myself by that standard I must exclaim with Surdas: ' Where is there a wretch So wicked and loathsome as I? I have forsaken my Maker, So faithless have I been.' For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

I am a Hindu by birth. And yet I do not know much of Hinduism, and I know less of other religions. In fact I do not know where I am, and what is and what should be my belief. I intend to make a careful study of my own religion and, as far as I can, of other religions as well.

— Mahatma Gandhi religion

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.

— Mahatma Gandhi history

Jealousy does not wait for reasons.

— Mahatma Gandhi reason

Nothing is impossible for pure love.

— Mahatma Gandhi love

I saw that bad handwriting should be regarded as a sign of an imperfect education.

— Mahatma Gandhi writing

Every Hindu boy and girl should possess sound Sanskrit learning.

— Mahatma Gandhi learning

It is now my opinion that in all Indian curricula of higher education there should be a place for Hindi, Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic and English, besides of course the vernacular.

— Mahatma Gandhi education

Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.

— Mahatma Gandhi men

A man of truth must also be a man of care.

— Mahatma Gandhi truth

About this time, I heard of a well known Hindu having been converted to Christianity. It was the talk of the town that, when he was baptized, he had to eat beef and drink liquor, that he also had to change his clothes, and that thenceforth he began to go about in European costume including a hat. These things got on my nerves. Surely, thought I, a religion that compelled one to eat beef, drink liquor, and change one's own clothes did not deserve the name. I also heard that the new convert had already begun abusing the religion of his ancestors, their customs and their country. All these things created in me a dislike for Christianity.

— Mahatma Gandhi religion

One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the pledge by the party administering it.

— Mahatma Gandhi art

A convert's enthusiasm for his new religion is greater than that of a person who is born in it.

— Mahatma Gandhi religion

Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are acts more real than the acts of eating, drinking, sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they alone are real, all else is unreal.

— Mahatma Gandhi prayer

Selfishness is blind.

— Mahatma Gandhi self

My joy was boundless. I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby - not even money, certainly not my soul.

— Mahatma Gandhi time

But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

I had learnt at the onset not to carry on public work with borrowed money.

— Mahatma Gandhi money

"Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world.

— Mahatma Gandhi world

My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.

— Mahatma Gandhi experience

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?

— Mahatma Gandhi art

On all occasions of trial He has saved me. I know that the phrase 'God saved me' has a deeper meaning for me today, and still I feel that I have not yet grasped its entire meaning. Only richer experience can help me to a fuller understanding. But in all my trials — of a spiritual nature, as a lawyer, in conducting institutions, and in politics — I can say that God saved me. When every hope is gone, 'when helpers fail and comforts flee', I experience that help arrives somehow, from I know not where.

— Mahatma Gandhi hope

England has got successful competitors in America, Japan, France, Germany. It has competitors in the handful of mills in India, and as there has been an awakening in India, even so there will be an awakening in South Africa with its vastly richer resources — natural , mineral and human. The mighty English look quite pigmies before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble savages after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but no savages and in the course of a few years the Western nations may cease to find in Africa a dumping ground for their wares.

— Mahatma Gandhi success

I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.

— Mahatma Gandhi peace

I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him.

— Mahatma Gandhi worship

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world’s progress toward peace … Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?

— Mahatma Gandhi god

If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.

— Mahatma Gandhi war

The cry for the national home for the Jews does not make much appeal to me. The sanction for it is sought in the Bible and the tenacity with which the Jews have hankered after return to Palestine. Why should they not, like other peoples of the earth, make that country their home where they are born and where they earn their livelihood?

— Mahatma Gandhi art

Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs.

— Mahatma Gandhi man

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

— Mahatma Gandhi history

Political power, in my opinion, cannot be our ultimate aim. It is one of the means used by men for their all-round advancement. The power to control national life through national representatives is called political power. Representatives will become unnecessary if the national life becomes so perfect as to be self-controlled. It will then be a state of enlightened anarchy in which each person will become his own ruler. He will conduct himself in such a way that his behaviour will not hamper the well-being of his neighbours. In an ideal State there will be no political institution and therefore no political power. That is why Thoreau has said in his classic statement that . [From Hindi] Sarvodaya, January, 1939

— Mahatma Gandhi life

It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.

— Mahatma Gandhi wisdom

I do not want to see the allies defeated. But I do not considerto be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed. Englishmen are showing the strength that Empire builders must have. I expect them to rise much higher than they seem to be doing.

— Mahatma Gandhi men

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least.

— Mahatma Gandhi will

A non-violent soldier of freedom will covet nothing for himself, he fights only for the freedom of his country.

— Mahatma Gandhi freedom

Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different road, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling?

— Mahatma Gandhi goal

Had we adopted non-violence as the weapon of the strong, because we realised that it was more effective than any other weapon, in fact the mightiest force in the world, we would have made use of its full potency and not have discarded it as soon as the fight against the British was over or we were in a position to wield conventional weapons. But as I have already said, we adopted it out of our helplessness. If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.

— Mahatma Gandhi world

The Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed.

— Mahatma Gandhi art

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

— Mahatma Gandhi age

In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.

— Mahatma Gandhi ya

This war has descended upon mankind as a curse and a warning. It is a curse inasmuch as it is brutalizing man on a scale hitherto unknown. All distinctions between combatants and noncombatants have been abolished. No one and nothing is to be spared. Lying has been reduced to an art. Britain was to defend small nationalities. One by one they have vanished, at least for the time being. It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. I read the writing when the hostilities broke out. But I had not the courage to say the word. God has given me the courage to say it before it is too late.

— Mahatma Gandhi writing

I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption. Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours are not as thorough as the Germans. If that be so, yours will soon acquire the same thoroughness as theirs, if not much greater. On no other condition can you win the war. In other words, you will have to be more ruthless than the Nazis. No cause, however just, can warrant the indiscriminate slaughter that is going on minute by minute. I suggest that a cause that demands the inhumanities that are being perpetrated today cannot be called just.

— Mahatma Gandhi war

This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

Whatever the ultimate fate of my country, my love for you remains, and will remain, undiminished. My non-violence demands universal love, and you are not a small part of it. It is that love which has prompted my appeal to you.

— Mahatma Gandhi love

May God give power to every word of mine. In his name I began to write this, and in His name I close it. May your statesman have the wisdom and courage to respond to my appeal. I am telling His Excellency the Viceroy that my services are at the disposal of His Majesty’s Government, should they consider them of any practical use in advancing the object of my appeal.

— Mahatma Gandhi wisdom

It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.

— Mahatma Gandhi hope

Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.

— Mahatma Gandhi time

Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. I must continue to bear testimony to truth even if I am forsaken by all. Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of Truth.

— Mahatma Gandhi truth

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

— Mahatma Gandhi faith

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.

— Mahatma Gandhi peace

My life is my message.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

Poverty is the worst kind of violence.

— Mahatma Gandhi violence

You assist an unjust administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil.A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty.

— Mahatma Gandhi art

All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others. I cannot detach myself from the wickedest soul.[]

— Mahatma Gandhi humanity

Remember that there is always a limit to self-indulgence but none to self-restraint, and let us daily progress in that direction.

— Mahatma Gandhi self

My own experience but confirms the opinion that the Musalman as a rule is a bully, and the Hindu as rule is a coward.

— Mahatma Gandhi war

I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity ... The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings.

— Mahatma Gandhi humanity

There is more to life than increasing its speed.

— Mahatma Gandhi life

Where there is love there is life.

— Mahatma Gandhi love

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

— Mahatma Gandhi you

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

— Mahatma Gandhi self

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

— Mahatma Gandhi change

Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.

— Mahatma Gandhi live

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