“Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Truth is transcendent. There are many expressions of it and ways to glimpse it. We cannot hold it in our clenched fist, but must hold it in our open palm and invite others to see it for themselves.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“In Hinduism, incarnation is ascribed to one who has performed some extraordinary service of mankind. All embodied life is in reality an incarnation of God, but it is not usual to consider every living being an incarnation. Future generations pay this homage to one who, in his own generation, has been extraordinarily religious in his conduct. I can see nothing wrong in this procedure;”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of nonresistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in selfsuffering.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I am now of the opinion that children should first be taught the art of drawing before learning how to write.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“If we are to reach real peace in the world, we shall have to begin with the children.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I wanted to know the best of the life of one (Muhammad) who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind. I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“In prayer it is better to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“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
“Friendship that insists upon agreement on all things isn't worth the name.”
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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