“I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Forgive and forget, but never forget to forgive. You may find a happier heart is the key to a happier life.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I can think of only one remedy for this awful state of things—that educated men should make a point of travelling thirdclass and reforming the habits of the people, as also of never letting the railway authorities rest in peace, sending in complaints wherever necessary, never resorting to bribes or any unlawful means for obtaining their own comforts, and never putting up with infringements of rules on the part of anyone concerned.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“If we see anyone who renounces his rights in regard to worldly matters and forgives even strangers, not to speak of relations, we should think of him as a good man. If we desist from beating up a thief or any other felon, do nothing to get him punished but, after admonishing him and recovering from him the stolen article, let him go, we would be credited with humanity and our action would be regarded as an instance of non-violence; a contrary course would be looked upon as violence.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“But you can wake a man only if he is really asleep. No effort that you make will produce any effect upon him if he is merely pretending sleep.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“had read the laws, but not learnt how to practise law.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The indifference of the railway authorities to the comforts of the third-class passengers, combined with the dirty and inconsiderate habits of the passengers themselves, makes third-class travelling a trial for a passenger of cleanly ways.
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The common belief is that religion is always opposed to material good. ‘One cannot act religiously in mercantile and such other matters. There is no place for religion in such pursuits; religion is only for attainment of salvation,’ we hear many worldly-wise people say. In my opinion the author of the Gita has dispelled this delusion. He has drawn no line of demarcation between salvation and worldly pursuits. On the contrary he has shown that religion must rule even our worldly pursuits. I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-today practice cannot be called religion. Thus, according to the Gita, all acts that are incapable of being performed without attachment are taboo. This golden rule saves mankind from many a pitfall. According to this interpretation murder, lying, dissoluteness and the like must be regarded as sinful and therefore taboo. Man’s life then becomes simple, and from that simpleness springs peace.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“For it is an unbroken torture to me that I am still so far from Him, who, as I fully know, governs every breath of my life, and whose offspring I am. I know that it is the evil passions within that keep me so far from Him, and yet I cannot get away from them. But I must close. I can only take up the actual story in the next chapter. M.K. Gandhi The Ashram, Sabarmati, Ahmedabad 26th November, 1925”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I felt that God could be realized only through service. And service for me was the service of India, because it came to me without my seeking, because I had an aptitude for it.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“God can never be realised by one who is not pure of heart. Self-purification therefore must mean purification in all the walks of life.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Your right is to work, and not to expect the fruit. The slave-owner tells the slave: ‘Mind your work, but beware lest you pluck a fruit from the garden. Yours is to take what I give.’ God has put us under restriction in the same manner. He tells us that we may work if we wish, but that the reward of work is entirely for Him to give. Our duty is to pray to Him, and the best way in which we can do this is to work with the pick-axe, to remove scum from the river and to sweep and clean our yards. This, certainly, is a difficult lesson to learn.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The real seat of taste was not the tongue but the mind”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so. Now the law of nonviolence says that violence should be resisted not by counter-violence but by nonviolence. This I do by breaking the law and by peacefully submitting to arrest and imprisonment.”
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Mahatma Gandhi