“True beauty lies in purity of the heart.”

“the weak are always apt to be revengeful.”

“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.”

“How it is that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter?”

“My Life is My Message”

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”

“Si on persiste à se fourvoyer dans une mauvaise voie on est sûr de ne jamais atteindre sa destination.”

“Stoning prophets and erecting churches to their memory afterwards has been the way of the world through the ages. Today we worship Christ, but the Christ in the flesh we crucified.”

“Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. The deeper the search in the mind of truth, the richer the discovery of the gems buried there.”

“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.” 

“If I become free from anger and shake off ignorance, if I become more vigilant and alert, I would be doing no karma even when occupied in some karma. This illustration explains both the ideas, of a person doing no karma even when occupied in karma and of another who, though he believes that he is doing no karma, is in fact weaving the bonds of karma round himself.”

“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul. Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”

“Action expresses priorities.”

“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth”

“(When asked what he thought of Western civilization): 'I think it would be a good idea.”