Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

The stability of the State depends upon the readiness of every citizen to subordinate his rights to those of the rest.

Do not concentrate on showing the misdeeds of the government, for we have to convert and befriend those who run it.

The English peace is the peace of the grave.

Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world.

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.

The moment the cultivators of the soil realize their power, the evil of Zamindari will be sterilized.

Ramanama can be used only for a good, never for an evil end, or else thieves and robbers would be the greatest devotees.

Ramanama purifies while it cures, and, therefore, it elevates.

Even Ramanama is by itself lifeless, but it has become a living symbol of the deity because millions of people have consecrated it.

Reason has to be strengthened by suffering, and suffering opens the eyes of understanding.

There is no doubt that our last state will be worse than our first, if we surrender our reason into somebody's keeping.

Islam appeals to people because it appeals also to reason.

The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers.

My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention."

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?

Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as such boycott brought about by hand-spinning and khaddar.

That which impels man to do the right thing is God.

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.

On India rests the burden of pointing the way to all the exploited races of the earth.

If India becomes the slave of the machine, then, I say, heaven save the world.

India's freedom must revolutionize the world's outlook upon Peace and War.

I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial.

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times.

Non-co-operators will make a serious mistake if they seek to convert people to their creed by violence.

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.

We must treat arrest as the normal condition of the life of a non-co-operator.

Though a non-co-operator, I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me mahatma and to touch my feet.

People engaged in a war do not lose temper over matters which affect the fortunes of war.

The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare; on the contrary he has proved its futility.

I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country's honour.

Woman is the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering and her advent to public life should, therefore, result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and accumulation of property.

Marriage must cease to be a matter of arrangement made by parents for money.

Languages proclaim that woman is half of man, and by parity of reasoning, man is half of woman.

I am the only one, whom you may find it hard to get rid of, for I have always counted myself as a woman.

I have mentally become a woman in order to steal into her heart.

There can be no friendship between cowards, or cowards and brave men.

Sorrow and suffering make for character if they are voluntarily borne, but not if they are imposed.

In placing civil disobedience before constructive work I was wrong and I did not profit by the Himalayan blunder that I had committed.

Disobedience, to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention.

Ours is a civil fight, and imprisonment as a civil prisoner has got to be earned by the strict observance of the programme.

If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done.

In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a tenfold return to the people even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop.

All education in a country has got to be demonstrably in promotion of the progress of the country in which it is given.

I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India.

The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners.

What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of the British or foreign rule.

Our nonviolence vis-а-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak.

I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers.

The collectors of revenue and the policeman are the only symbols by which millions in India's villages know British rule.

It was not through democratic methods that Britain bagged India.