Popular Mahatma Gandhi's Quotes And Sayings

Outward Peace is useless without inner Peace

Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth.

I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.

Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher laws - to the strength of the spirit.

Be the change you are trying to create.

If all Christians acted like Christ, the whole world would be Christian.

Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.

Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help.

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman?

Speak only if it improves upon the silence.

Faith is not a delicate flower which would wither away under the slightest stormy weather.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

There is force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

The greatness of humanity is not in being human, but in being humane.

Love is the law of life.

A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.

Make injustice visible.

Seven Deadly Sins Wealth without work Pleasure without conscience Science without humanity Knowledge without character Politics without principle Commerce without morality Worship without sacrifice.

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.

The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall see Truth in fragment and from different angles of vision.

Where there is love there is life.

I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.

For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect.

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.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

In the march towards Truth, anger, selfishness, hatred, etc., naturally give way, for otherwise Truth would be impossible to attain. A man who is swayed by passions may have good enough intentions, may be truthful in word, but he will never find the Truth.

Live simply so that others may simply live.

Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall in the clutches of the wolf.

Hesitating to act because the whole vision might not be achieved, or because others do not yet share it, is an attitude that only hinders progress.

You cannot succeed in one department of life while cheating on another, life is an indivisible whole.

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest... no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism... true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.

An error can never become true however many times you repeat it. The truth can never be wrong, even if no one hears it.

Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs. As it is, they succumbed anyway in their millions.

Education is the basic tool for the development of consciousness and the reconstitution of society.

If you do nothing there will be no results

Don't let anybody walk through your mind with dirty feet.

Think for tomorrow but act for today.

It does not require money to be neat, clean and dignified.

We may attack systems. We must not attack men.

Do not worry about what others are doing! Each of us should turn the searchlight inward and purify his or her own heart as much as possible.

You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good man will therefore resist an evil system or administration with his whole soul.

Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.

The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies.

Adversity is the mother of progress.

You can't shake hands with a closed fist.

Prayer from the heart can achieve what nothing else can in the world.

In a gentle way, you can shake the world.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

Wildlife is decreasing in the jungles, but it is increasing in the towns.

Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.

There is no path to peace; peace is the path.

A thousand candles can be lighted from the flame of one candle, and the life of the candle will not be shortened. Happiness can be spread without diminishing that of yourself.

Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.

It is better to allow our lives to speak for us than our words.

True education is that which proves useful in life and makes you industrious.

We must be the world we want to create.

Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.

I find that we are all such sinners that it is better to leave the judging to God.

See the good in people and help them.

In the midst of darkness, light persists.

The earth, the air, the land and the water are not an inheritance from our fore fathers but on loan from our children. So we have to handover to them at least as it was handed over to us.

What may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker. When there is honest effort, it will be realised that what appears to be different truths are like apparently different countless leaves of the same tree.

Let the first act of every morning be to make the following resolve for the day: - I shall not fear anyone on Earth. - I shall fear only God. - I shall not bear ill will toward anyone. - I shall not submit to injustice from anyone. - I shall conquer untruth by truth. And in resisting untruth, I shall put up with all suffering.

Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.

Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong, but of the weak.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.

True beauty consists of purity of heart.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

Imperfect men have no right to judge other imperfect men.

We may not be God, but we are of God, even as a little drop of water is of the ocean.

There is no need of a teacher for those who know how to think.

Do not judge others. Be your own judge and you will be truly happy. If you will try to judge others, you are likely to burn your fingers.

The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society.

A person who is worried about the outcome of his work does not see his goal; he sees only his opposition and the obstacles before him.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's needs, but not every man's greed.

Hatred is not essential for nationalism. Race hatred will kill the real national spirit.

I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use, and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. ... Nature produces enough for our wants from day to day, and if only every-body took enough for himself and nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world, there would be no man dying of starvation in this world. But so long as we have got this inequality, so long we are thieving.

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use.

Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

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.

To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.

My religion enables me, obliges me to imbibe all that is good in all the great religions of the earth.

If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly.

A man with a grain of faith in God never loses hope, because he ever believes in the ultimate triumph of Truth.

Recall the face of the poorest and weakest man you have seen, and ask yourself if this step you contemplate is going to be any use to him.

Always believe in your dreams, because if you don't, you'll still have hope.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

My faith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness.

Poverty is the worst form of violence.

Now the man on duty used to be changed from time to time. Once one of these men, without giving me the slightest warning, without even asking me to leave the footpath, pushed and kicked me into the street. I was dismayed. Before I could question him as to his behaviour, Mr Coates, who happened to be passing the spot on horseback, hailed me and said: 'Gandhi, I have seen everything. I shall gladly be your witness in court if you proceed against the man. I am very sorry you have been so rudely assaulted.'

Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.

The golden way is to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family as one.

Both heaven and hell are within us.

Illness or disease is only Nature's warning that filth has accumulated in some portion or other of the body; and it would surely be the part of wisdom to allow Nature to remove the filth, instead of covering it up with the help of medicines.

What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

The best politics is right action.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.