“When there is no desire for fruit, there is no temptation for untruth or himsa (violence). Take any instance of untruth or violence, and it will be found that at its back was the desire to attain the cherished end. But it may be freely admitted that the Gita was not written to establish ahimsa. It was an accepted and primary duty even before the Gita age. The Gita had to deliver the message of renunciation of fruit. This is clearly brought out as early as the second chapter. 26. But if the Gita believed in ahimsa or it was included in desirelessness, why did the author take a warlike illustration? When the Gita was written, although people believed in ahimsa, wars were not only not taboo, but nobody observed the contradiction between them and ahimsa.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. The endeavour to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realization.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Our duty is very simple and plain. We want to serve the community, and in our own humble way to serve the Empire. We believe in the righteousness of the cause, which it is our privilege to espouse. We have an abiding faith in the mercy of the Almighty God, and we have firm faith in the British Constitution. That being so, we should fail in our duty if we wrote anything with a view to hurt.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Un lucru a săpat rădăcini adânci în sufletul meu: credinţa că morala stă la baza tuturor lucrurilor şi că adevărul este substanţa întregii moralităţi. Astfel că adevărul a devenit singurul meu scop. El a devenit din ce în ce mai important pentru mine, iar sensurile pe care i le-am dat au devenit din ce în ce mai largi.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Why, then, grieve — tatra ka paridevana — asks Shri Krishna. This is the great mystery of God. As a magician creates the illusion of a tree and destroys it, so God sports in endless ways and does not let us know the beginning and the end of his play. Why grieve over it?”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“There are innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“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... It is quite proper to resist and attack a system, but to resist and attack its author is tantamount to resisting and attacking oneself. for we are all tarred with the same brush, and are children of one and the same Creator, and as such the divine powers within us are infinite. To slight a single human being is to slight those divine powers, and thus to harm not only that being but with him the whole world.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“It takes two to make a quarrel. If I do not want to quarrel with a Mahomedan, the latter will be powerless to foist a quarrel on me; and, similarly, I should be powerless if a Mahomedan refuses his assistance to quarrel with me.
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I have not conceived my mission to be that of a knight-errant wandering everywhere to deliver people from difficult situations.
My humble occupation has been to show people how they can solve their own difficulties.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Ethically they had arrived at the conclusion that man’s supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower,”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“You civilised fellows are all cowards. Great men never look at a person’s exterior. They think of his heart.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“If a single man achieves the highest kind of love, it will be sufficient to neutralize the hate of millions.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
