“How much more does Sonia Gandhi’s son know about the past of the party of which he is now the vice president? Not very much. In Rahul Gandhi’s understanding of his party’s history, only five leaders have mattered: his mother, his father, his grandmother, his great-grandfather and Mahatma Gandhi, the only Indian politician whom he (and Sonia) have granted parity with their own family. Gokhale, Tilak, Rajaji, Azad, Kamaraj, even (or especially) Patel—these are merely names (and sometimes not even that) to the heir apparent. By”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I can retain neither respect nor affection for government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its immorality”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“If a single man achieves the highest kind of love, it will be sufficient to neutralize the hate of millions.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“No knowledge is to be found without seeking, no tranquility without travail, no happiness except through tribulation. Every seeker has, at one time or another, to pass through a conflict of duties, a heart-churning.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The Gita does not decide for us. But if, whenever faced with a moral problem, you give up attachment to the ego and then decide what you should do, you will come to no harm. This is the substance of the argument which Shri Krishna has expanded into 18 chapters.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I must confess that here I had to compromise the principle of giving no commission, which in Bombay I had so scrupulously observed. I was told that conditions in the two cases were different; that whilst in Bombay commissions had to be paid to touts, here they had to be paid to vakils who briefed you; and that here as in Bombay all barristers, without exception, paid a percentage of their fees as commission.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I realised that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. “I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows,” is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realised the necessity of definite action. “But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?” Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Disease increases in proportion to the increase in the number of doctors in a place.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way it treats its animals.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi