“[We] need the same advice that was given to Martha. If we but do “the one thing needful,” there is no occasion for us to be “anxious and troubled” about the many things in the shape of wanting to know what our Governors will do, or who the next Prime Minister is likely to be, or what laws affecting us are likely to be passed
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“There are innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“He who is ever brooding over result often loses nerve in the performance of his duty. He becomes impatient and then gives vent to anger and begins to do unworthy things; he jumps from action to action never remaining faithful to any. He who broods over results is like a man given to objects of senses; he is ever distracted, he says goodbye to all scruples, everything is right in his estimation and he therefore resorts to means fair and foul to attain his end.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I believed then, and I believe even now, that, no matter what amount of work one has, one should always find some time for exercise, just as one does for one’s meals.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I saw that a man of truth must also be a man of care.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man's supremacy over lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man. They had also brought out the truth that man eats not for enjoyment but to live.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“What is described is the conflict within the human body between opposing moral tendencies, which are imagined as distinct figures. A seer such as Vyasa would never concern himself with a description of mere physical fighting. It is the human body that is described as Kurukshetra, as dharmakshetra9 . The epithet may also mean that for a Kshatriya a battlefield is always a fi eld of dharma. Surely a fi eld on which the Pandavas too were present could not be altogether a place of sin.”
―
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
“No matter how well one cultivates vairagya or how diligent one is in performing good actions or what measure of bhakti, devotion, one practises, one will not shed the sense of ‘I’ and ‘mine’ till one has attained knowledge. One can attain self-realisation only if one sheds this attachment to the ego. Only when this ‘I’ is done away with can one attain self-realisation. A man’s devotion to God is to be judged from the extent to which he gives up his stiffness and bends low in humility. Only then will he be, not an impostor, but a truly illumined man, a man of genuine knowledge.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“A man, whilst he is dreaming, believes in his dream; he is undeceived only when he is awakened from his slumber.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“(When asked what he thought of Western civilization): 'I think it would be a good idea.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read
sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others'
religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of the
world's religions is a sacred duty.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'. ”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
