“I have no doubt that the ideal is for public institutions to live, like nature, from day to day. The institution that fails to win public support has no right to exist as such.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I learnt the lesson on non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her, and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“it's easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”
―
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
“In the very first month of Indian Opinion, I realized that the sole aim of journalism should be service. The newspaper press is a great power, but just as an unchained torrent of water submerges whole countrysides and devastates crops, even so an uncontrolled pen serves but to destroy. If the control is from without, it proves more poisonous than want of control. It can be profitable only when exercised from within. If this line of reasoning is correct, how many of the journals in the world would stand the test? But who would stop those that are useless? And who should be the judge? The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Truth is like a vast tree, which yields more and more fruit, the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there, in the shape of openings for an ever greater variety of service.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided—so that coercion is unavoidable however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by religion—which declared that the right to decide was valid because it was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Good travels at a snail's pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Je n'ai connu aucune distinction entre parents et inconnus, entre compatriotes et étrangers, entre blancs et hommes de couleur, entre hindous et Indiens appartenant à d'autres confessions, qu'ils soient musulmans, Parsis, chrétiens ou juifs. Je peux dire que mon coeur a été incapable défaire de telles distinctions”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“[T]he devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness. It certainly is not blind faith. The devotion of the Gita has the least to do with the externals. A devotee may use, if he likes, rosaries, forehead marks, make offerings, but these things are no test of his devotion. He is the devotee who is jealous of none, who is a fount of mercy, who is without egotism, who is selfless, who treats alike cold and heat, happiness and misery, who is ever forgiving, who is always contented, whose resolutions are firm, who has dedicated mind and soul to God, who causes no dread, who is not afraid of others, who is free from exultation, sorrow and fear, who is pure, who is versed in action and yet remains unaffected by it, who renounces all fruit, good or bad, who treats friend and foe alike, who is untouched by respect or disrespect, who is not puffed up by praise, who does not go under when people speak ill of him who loves silence and solitude, who has a disciplined reason. Such devotion is inconsistent with the existence at the same time of strong attachments.
We thus see that to be a real devotee is to realize oneself.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
