“Ahimsa necessarily includes truth and fearlessness.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I felt that it was not a historical work, but that, under the guise of physical warfare, it described the duel that perpetually went on in the hearts of mankind, and that physical warfare was brought in merely to make the description of the internal duel more alluring. This preliminary intuition became more confirmed on a closer study of religion and the Gita. A study of the Mahabharata gave it added confirmation. I do not regard the Mahabharata as a historical work in the accepted sense. The Adiparva contains powerful evidence in support of my opinion. By ascribing to the chief actors superhuman or subhuman origins, the great Vyasa made short work the history of kings and their peoples. The persons therein described may be historical, but the author of the Mahabharata has used them merely to drive home his religious theme.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“How it is that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter?”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that one that must be loved is not a friend. There is not merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend. ”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“But all my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“It is simple impertinence for any man, or any body of men, to begin, or to contemplate, reform of the whole world.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Europe I travelled third—and only once first, just to see what it was like—but there I noticed no such difference between the first and the third-classes. In South Africa third-class passengers are mostly Negroes, yet the third-class comforts are better there than here.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I have from my experience come to the conclusion that Gita has been composed to teach this one truth which I have explained. We can follow truth only in the measure that we shed our attachment to the ego.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read
sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others'
religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of the
world's religions is a sacred duty.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I came to the conclusion long ago that all religions were true and that also that all had some error in them, and while I hold by my own religion, I should hold other religions as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we were Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu; but our innermost prayer should be that a Hindu should become a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, and a Christian a better Christian.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The earth provides enough to satisfy every person's need, but not every person's greed.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man and silence is necessary in order to surmount it.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“understood more clearly in the light of the Gita teaching the implication of the word ‘trustee’.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi