Mahatma Gandhi Quotes & Sayings

The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress. — Mahatma Gandhi

I am in the world feeling my way to light 'amid the encircling gloom.' — Mahatma Gandhi

Truth is the first thing to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be added unto you. — Mahatma Gandhi

What is equality of rights between a giant and a dwarf? — Mahatma Gandhi

People engaged in a war do not lose temper over matters which affect the fortunes of war. — Mahatma Gandhi

My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is beyond my power to induce in you a belief in God. There are certain things which are self proved and certain which are not proved at all. — Mahatma Gandhi

In the dictionary of the seeker of truth there is no such thing as being "not successful." He is or should be an irrepressible optimist because of his immovable faith in the ultimate victory of Truth, which is God. — Mahatma Gandhi

Love is the humblest yet the most powerful force that the human being has. — Mahatma Gandhi

The real property that a parent can transmit to all equally is his or her character and educational facilities. — Mahatma Gandhi

If I am true to myself, if I am true to mankind, if I am true to humanity, I must understand all the faults that human flesh is heir to. — Mahatma Gandhi

A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble. — Mahatma Gandhi

It Is possible to live in peace. — Mahatma Gandhi

The spinning wheel is itself an exquisite piece of machinery. My head daily bows in reverence to its unknown inventor. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is a travesty of true religion to consider one's own religion as superior and other's as inferior. — Mahatma Gandhi

The Law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name. — Mahatma Gandhi

I believe in conversion of mankind, not its destruction. — Mahatma Gandhi

The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force. — Mahatma Gandhi

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. — Mahatma Gandhi

The real meaning of economic equality is "To each according to his need." — Mahatma Gandhi

That which impels man to do the right thing is God. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is much more difficult to live for nonviolence than to die for it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolence or soul force does not need physical aids for its propagation of effect. — Mahatma Gandhi

Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise. — Mahatma Gandhi

One is ever young in the presence of the God of Truth, or Truth which is God. — Mahatma Gandhi

Man is neither mere intellect not the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. — 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

I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives. — Mahatma Gandhi

If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. — Mahatma Gandhi

Much that we hug today as knowledge is ignorance pure and simple. It makes the mind wander and even reduces it to a vacuity. — Mahatma Gandhi

What the two hands of the labourer can achieve, the capitalist will never get with all his gold and silver. — Mahatma Gandhi

No one chains a slave without chaining himself. — Mahatma Gandhi

Love based upon indulgence of animal passion, is at best a selfish affair, and likely to snap under the slightest strain. — Mahatma Gandhi

An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers. — Mahatma Gandhi

My nonviolence is made of stern stuff. It is firmer than the firmest metal known to scientists. — Mahatma Gandhi

Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been. — Mahatma Gandhi

Idolatry is permissible in Hinduism when it sub serves an ideal. — Mahatma Gandhi

The Law and the Lawgiver are one. — Mahatma Gandhi

I call God long-suffering and patient precisely because He permits evil in the world. I know that He has no evil in Him and yet if there is evil, He is the author of it and yet untouched by it. — Mahatma Gandhi

My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind. — Mahatma Gandhi

Armed conspiracies against something satanic is like matching Satans against Satan. — Mahatma Gandhi

I am not anti-English, I am not anti-British, I am not anti-any Government, but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-injustice. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is not a mistake to commit a mistake, for no one commits a mistake knowing it to be one. But it is a mistake not to correct the mistake after knowing it to be one. If you are afraid of committing a mistake, you are afraid of doing anything at all. You will correct your mistakes whenever you find them. — Mahatma Gandhi

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness. — Mahatma Gandhi

Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity. — Mahatma Gandhi

How heavy is the toll of sins and wrong that wealth, power and prestige exact from man. — Mahatma Gandhi

Lady is the buddy of man, skilled with equivalent mental limit. — Mahatma Gandhi

If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the Granth Sahib or the Koran? — Mahatma Gandhi

I consider Western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ's Christianity. — Mahatma Gandhi

Religion is not what is grasped by the brain, but a heart grasp. — Mahatma Gandhi

The satyagrahi general has to obey his inner voice, for over and above the situation outside he examines himself constantly and listens to the dictates of the inner self. — Mahatma Gandhi

That nation is great which rests its head upon death as its pillow. — Mahatma Gandhi

Facts we would always place before our readers, whether they are palatable or not, and it is by placing them constantly before the public in their nakedness that the misunderstanding between the two communities in South Africa can be removed. — Mahatma Gandhi

The spinning wheel for us is the foundation for all public corporate life. — Mahatma Gandhi

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners. — Mahatma Gandhi

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever. — Mahatma Gandhi

The process of learning should be as far as possible a pleasurable one and not laborious — Mahatma Gandhi

God is not outside this earthly case of ours. — Mahatma Gandhi

Had read the laws, but not learnt how to practise law. — Mahatma Gandhi

I have called spinning the yajna of this age of India. — Mahatma Gandhi

Could there be a greater proof of our cowardice than fighting amongst ourselves? — Mahatma Gandhi

Truth and nonviolence demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be. — Mahatma Gandhi

You can't shake hands with a closed fist. — Mahatma Gandhi

To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy. — Mahatma Gandhi

There is no time limit for a satyagrahi nor is there a limit to his capacity for suffering. — Mahatma Gandhi

Forgiveness is choosing to love. It is the first skill of self-giving love. — Mahatma Gandhi

Men aspiring to be free can hardly think of enslaving others. — Mahatma Gandhi

The function of Nayee-Talim is not to teach an occupation, but through it to develop the whole man. — Mahatma Gandhi

Far more indispensable then food for the physical body is spiritual nourishment for the soul. One can do without food for a considerable time, but a man of the spirit cannot exist for a single second without spiritual nourishment. — Mahatma Gandhi

The platform of services is as big as the world. It is never overcrowded. — Mahatma Gandhi

God cannot be realized through intellect. — Mahatma Gandhi

The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women. — Mahatma Gandhi

My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all embracing. The conception of my patriotism is nothing if it is not always, in every case, without exception, consistent with the broadest good of humanity at large. — Mahatma Gandhi

No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation. — Mahatma Gandhi

Your future depends on what you do today. — Mahatma Gandhi

Religious truth, or for that matter any truth, requires a calm and meditative atmosphere for its percolation. — Mahatma Gandhi

That parrot's non-co-operation with the cage, with its master, will live for ever because it looks upon renunciation, non-co-operation, as a joy. — Mahatma Gandhi

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral. — Mahatma Gandhi

God is the shield of the nonviolent. — Mahatma Gandhi

The Britisher is the top dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country. — Mahatma Gandhi

The greater the realization of truth and ahimsa, the greater the illumination. — Mahatma Gandhi

Non-cooperation is directed not against men but against measures. It is not directed against the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non-cooperation lies not in hatred but in justice if not in love. — Mahatma Gandhi

If India adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her religion and introduced it in her politics. Swaraj would descend upon India from heaven. But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet. — Mahatma Gandhi

There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of nonviolence. — Mahatma Gandhi

My varnashram dharma teaches me that there must be some significance in the fact of my being born in India instead of in Europe. — Mahatma Gandhi

It will be hard to find a parallel in history in which unarmed people have represented the urge for freedom, turning their armlessness into the central means for deliverance. — Mahatma Gandhi

Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. — Mahatma Gandhi

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands. — Mahatma Gandhi

God is not in Kaaba or in Kashi. He is within everyone of us. — Mahatma Gandhi

We, the English educated Indians, often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indians is the whole of India. — Mahatma Gandhi

Man cannot breathe with borrowed lungs. — Mahatma Gandhi

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. — Mahatma Gandhi

Violence is the weapon of weak, non-violence that of the strong. — Mahatma Gandhi

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study. — Mahatma Gandhi

A person is bound to work in obedience to and in conformity to that person's own nature. — Mahatma Gandhi

I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. — Mahatma Gandhi

Man's triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by a struggle for mutual service. — Mahatma Gandhi

Man the law-giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he has imposed upon the so called weaker sex. — Mahatma Gandhi

Real non-co-operation is non-co-operation with evil and not with the evil-doer. — Mahatma Gandhi

Thinking along these lines, I have felt that in trying to enforce in one's life the central teaching of the Gita, one is bound to follow Truth and ahimsa. — Mahatma Gandhi