Quotations of Mahathma Gandhiji
PROSELYTISING
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.
Education
Literary education is of no value, if it is not able to build up a sound character.
There will have to be rigid and iron discipline before we achieve anything great and enduring, and that discipline will not come by mere academic argument and appeal to reason and logic. Discipline is learnt in the school of adversity.
Metaphysics and Religion
I worship God as Truth only. I have not yet found Him, but I am seeking after Him. I am prepared to sacrifice the things dearest to me in pursuit of this quest. Even if the sacrifice demanded by very life, I hope I may be prepared to give it.
Power invariably elects to go into the hands of the strong. That strength may be physical or of the heart or, if we do not fight shy of the word, of the spirit. Strength of the heart connotes soul-force. Let it be remembered that physical force is transitory, even as the body is transitory. But the power of spirit is permanent even as the spirit is everlasting.
The badge of the violent is his weapon, spear, sword or rifle. God is the shield of the non-violent.
No religion which is narrow and which cannot satisfy the test of reason, will survive the coming reconstruction of society in which the values will have changed and character, not possession of wealth, title or birth, will be the test of merit.
As soon as we lose the moral basis, we cease to be religious. There is no such thing as religion over-riding morality. Man, for instance, cannot be untruthful, cruel or incontinent and claim to have God on his side.
Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state. There is as little reason to deplore the one as there is to be pleased over the other.
Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts, but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.
It is through truth & non-violence that I can have some glimpse of God. Truth & non-violence are my God. They are the obverse and reverse of the same coin.
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.
Faith… must be enforced by reason… when faith becomes blind it dies.
I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.
In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in an clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
Infinite striving to be the best is man’s duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God’s hands.
It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.
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.
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy.
Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.
Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one’s own religion.
Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.
I have but shadowed forth my intense longing to lose myself in the Eternal and become merely a lump of clay in the Potter’s divine hands so that my service may become more certain because uninterrupted by the baser self in me.
The spirit of non-violence necessarily leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance on God, the rock of ages. If we would seek his aid, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart.
God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.
When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man, even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.
In nature there is a fundamental unity running through all the diversity we see about us. Religions are given to mankind so as to accelerate the process of realisation of fundamental unity.
I believe in absolute oneness of God and therefore also of humanity.
My trust is solely in God. And I trust men only because I trust God. If I had no God to rely upon, I should be like Timon, a hater of my species.
One’s own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one’s Maker and no one else’s.
My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.
A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.
Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.
God tries his votaries through and through but never beyond endurance. He gives them strength enough to go through the ordeal he prescribes for them.
It is easy enough to say, “I do not believe in God”. For God permits all things to be said of Him with impunity. he looks at our acts. And any breach of His Law carries with it, not its vindictive, but it purifying, compelling punishment.
Human society is a ceaseless growth, and unfoldment in terms of spirituality.
If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.
Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all.
I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be upset by God, but, at the same time, where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, on matter how a man’s plans are frustrated the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated.
A clean confession combined with a promise never to commit the sin again, when offered before one who has the right to receive it, is the purest type of repentance.
Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.
Perfection is the exclusive attribute of God, and it is indescribable, untranslatable. I do believe that it is possible for human beings to become perfect, even as God is perfect. It is necessary for all of us to aspire after that perfection but when that blessed state is attained, it become indescribable, indefinable.
What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.
Of all the animal creations of God, main is the only animal who has been created in order that he may know his Maker. Man’s aim is life is not therefore to add from day to day to his material prospects and to his material possessions, but his predominant calling is, from day to day to come nearer to his own Maker.
Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.
Mankind is notoriously too dense to read the signs that God sends from time to time. We require drums to be beaten into our ears, before we should wake from our trance and hear the warning and see that to lose oneself in all, is the only way to find oneself.
I do not want any patronage, as I do not give any. I am a lover of my own liberty, and so I would do nothing to restrict yours. I simply want to please my own conscience which is God.
But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.
There is an orderliness in the universe, there is an unalterable law governing everything and every being that exists or lives. It is no blind law; for no blind law can govern the conduct of living beings.
We are merely instruments of the Almighty’s will and therefore ignorant of what helps us forward and what acts as an impediment. We must thus rest satisfied with the knowledge only of the means and if these are pure, we can fearlessly leave the end to take care of itself.
Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.
When anything assumes the strength of a creed, it becomes self-sustained and derives the needed support from within.
I do dimly perceive that whilst everything around me is ever-changing, ever-dying, there is underlying all that change a living Power that is changeless, that holds all together, that creates, dissolves and recreates. That informing power or spirit is God. And since nothing else I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is.
Intellect takes us along in the battle of life to a certain limit, but at the crucial moment it fails us. Faith transcends reason. It is when the horizon is the darkest and human reason is beaten down to the ground that faith shines brightest and comes to our rescue.
I reject any religious doctrine that does not appeal to reason and is in conflict with morality.
The world is touched by sacrifice. It does not then discriminate about the merits of a cause. No so God - He is all seeing. He insists on the purity of the cause and on adequate sacrifice thereof.