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Acceptance
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The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Action(s)
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Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Adaptability
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Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Anger
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Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Capitalism
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Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Change
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You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Christianity
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If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Confidence
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The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Conflict
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To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Consumerism
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Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Control
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Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Cowardice/Weakness
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Fear has its use but cowardice has none.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Cowards can never be moral.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith.
-Mahatma Gandhi, November 24, 1946
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My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. I can no more preach nonviolence to a coward than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes.
-Mahatma Gandhi, The Gospel of Nonviolence (essay)
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Culture
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Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Despair
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When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Evil
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Must I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Faith
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Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Food
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God comes to the hungry in the form of food.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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I shall content myself with merely declaring my firm conviction that, for the seeker who would live in fear of God and who would see Him face to face, restraint in diet both as to quantity and quality is as essential as restraint in thought and speech.
-Mahatma Gandhi, Te Story of My Experiments with truth - An Autobiography; p. 228
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Forgiveness
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The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Freedom
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Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall... freedom and slavery are mental states.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Friends
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The good man is the friend of all living things.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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God
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The mantram becomes one's staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Gun Control
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I used to issue leaflets asking people to enlist as recruits. One of the arguments I had used was distasteful to the Commissioner: 'Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest. If we want the Arms Act to be repealed, if we want to learn the use of arms, here is a golden opportunity. If the middle classes render voluntary help to Government in the hour of its trial, distrust will disappear, and the ban on possessing arms will be withdrawn.' The Commissioner referred to this and said that he appreciated my presence in the conference in spite of the differences between us. And I had to justify my standpoint as courteously as I could.
N.B.: This quote refers to the British disarmament of the Indian Army. Gandhi never advocated the individual right to bear arms.
-Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi, An Autobiography, The story of my experiments with truth (Chapter XXVII, Recruiting Campaign, pg 446-447, Beacon Press, 1957)
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Happiness
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Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Hate
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Hatred can be overcome only by love.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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History
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To believe what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Humanity
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As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world -- that is the myth of the atomic age -- as in being able to remake ourselves.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Humor
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If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Inheritance
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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.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Law
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An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Laziness
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Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Leadership
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I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Life
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There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Live as if your were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Love
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A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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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
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Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Where there is love there is life.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Nothing is impossible for pure love.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Marriage
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I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Media
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I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
-Mahatma Gandhi, (attributed)
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Minorities
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My non-violence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities.
-Mahatma Gandhi, 1947
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Obedience
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Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be inseparable part of our very being.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Patience
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Patience means self-suffering.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Patriotism
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The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Peace
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Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Potential
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The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Poverty
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Poverty is the worst form of violence.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Power
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I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer
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Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Principles
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A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Profit
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What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Progress
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Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Promises
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A vow is fixed and unalterable determination to do a thing, when such a determination is related to something noble which can only uplift the man who makes the resolve.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Your capacity to keep your vow will depend on the purity of your life.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Prophecy
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I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Quality
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It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Questions
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If you don't ask, you don't get.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Reason
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Truth never damages a cause that is just.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Responsibility
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All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Restraint
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There are limits to self-indulgence, none to restraint.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Revenge
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An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Right, Rightness
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Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Sacrifice
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The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Satisfaction
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Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Self Respect
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They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Service
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Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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In a gentle way, you can shake the world.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Sincerity
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A No uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a Yes merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Society
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Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward, you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward, this trampling is on a much bigger scale; and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Soul
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Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Teaching
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Those who know how to think need no teachers.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Technology
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I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Tolerance
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Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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I do not like the word tolerance, but could not think of a better one. Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one
-Mahatma Gandhi, Young India, (Bulletin), February 10, 1930
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Torture
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They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me-then they will have my dead body, not my obedience.
-Mahatma Gandhi, (attributed, from the movie 'Gandhi')
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Truth
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Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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There is no god higher than truth.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Unity
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Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Violence
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I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence....I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment. Forgiveness adorns a soldier...But abstinence is forgiveness only when there is the power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature....But I do not believe India to be helpless....I do not believe myself to be a helpless creature....Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
-Mahatma Gandhi, August 11, 1920
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War
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Morality is contraband in war.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Wisdom
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It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Work
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Monotony is the law of nature. Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises. The monotony of necessary occupation is exhilarating and life giving.
-Mahatma Gandhi
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Worry
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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
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Books by and about Mahatma Gandhi
