“The Mahabharata was not composed with the aim of describing a battle. The description of the battle serves only as a pretext.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Civil Disobedience, mass or individual, is an aid to Constructive effort and is a full substitute for armed revolt. Training is necessary as well for Civil Disobedience as for armed revolt. Only the ways are different.… Training for military revolt means learning the use of arms, ending perhaps in the atomic bomb. For Civil Disobedience it means the Constructive Program.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“How was one to treat alike insulting, insolent and corrupt officials, co-workers of yesterday raising meaningless opposition, and men who had always been good to one?”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“We stand on the threshold of a twilight-whether morning or evening we do not know. One is followed by the night, the other heralds the dawn.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Toute ma vie, j'ai été habitué à ce que les autres se trompent sur mon compte. C'est le lot de tout homme public. Il lui faut une solide cuirasse; car s'il fallait donner des explications pour se justifier quand on se méprend sur vos intentions, la vie deviendrait insupportable. Je me suis fait une règle de ne jamais intervenir pour rectifier ce genre d'erreur, à moins que ne l'exige la cause que je défends. Ce principe m'a épargné bien du temps et bien des tracas.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“understood more clearly in the light of the Gita teaching the implication of the word ‘trustee’.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The moment there is suspicion about a person’s motives, everything he does becomes tainted
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I believe in trusting. Trust begets trust. Suspicion is foetid and only stinks. He who trusts has never yet lost in the world.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I realised that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. “I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows,” is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realised the necessity of definite action. “But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?” Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Friendship that insists upon agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Words like aparigraha (non-possession) and samabhava (equability) gripped me. How to cultivate and preserve that equability was the question.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
