“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
“But here the physical battle is only an occasion for describing the battlefield that is the human body.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Civil Disobedience, mass or individual, is an aid to Constructive effort and is a full substitute for armed revolt. Training is necessary as well for Civil Disobedience as for armed revolt. Only the ways are different.… Training for military revolt means learning the use of arms, ending perhaps in the atomic bomb. For Civil Disobedience it means the Constructive Program.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I believe that just as everyone inherits a particular form so does he inherit the particular characteristics and qualities of his progenitors, and to make this admission is to conserve one's energy.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“How it is that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter?”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The real seat of taste was not the tongue but the mind”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant to other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“How can a person who has awakened to the truth about his body ever die? Such a one attains to immortality.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back-but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Strength of numbers is the delight of the timid. The Valiant in spirit glory in fighting alone.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Renunciation of objects, without the renunciation of desires, is short-lived, however hard you may try.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
