Mahatma's Collections

Quotations of Mahathma Gandhiji

Armament

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.

Humility

The only virtue I want to claim is truth and non-violence. I lay no claim to super-human powers. I want none. I wear the same corruptible flesh that the weakest of my fellow beings wears, and am therefore as liable to err as any. My services have many limitations, but God has up to now blessed them in spite of the imperfections.

I claim to be a simple individual liable to err like any other fellow mortal. I own, however, that I have humility enough to confess my errors and to retrace my steps.

The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one’s conduct and a little receptiveness.

It is man’s social nature which distinguishes him from the brute creation. If it is his privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent. Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and be self-contained.

Asceticism

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plain living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man’s happiness really lies in contentment.

As a rule, the mind, residing in a body that has become weakened by pampering, is also weak, and where there is no strength of mind there can be no strength of soul.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.

I am a Puritan myself, but I am catholic toward others.

I would rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God’s creation, woman, the object of our lust.

No sacrifice is worth the name unless it is a joy. Sacrifice and a long face go ill together. Sacrifice is “making sacred”. He must be a poor specimen of humanity who is in need of sympathy for his sacrifice.