Gandhi Quotes

“That the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. (2) That a lawyer’s work has the same value as the barber’s inasmuch as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. (3) That a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“How was one to treat alike insulting, insolent and corrupt officials, co-workers of yesterday raising meaningless opposition, and men who had always been good to one?”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“To attain to perfect purity one has to become absolutely passion-free in thought, speech and action; to rise above the opposing currents of love and hatred, attachment and repulsion.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“I have always felt that the true text-book for the pupil is his teacher”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“The deeper the search in the mine of truth the richer the discovery of the gems buried there”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“But the fact that I had learnt to be tolerant to other religions did not mean that I had any living faith in God.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“I have known only one way of carrying on missionary work, viz., by personal example and discussion with searchers for knowledge.”
― Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography - The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“وحاول المعلم أن يلفت نظري إلى هذا الخطأ بغمزة من مقدم حذائه، ولكني لم أفهم ما يريد، لم أفهم أنه كان يريد مني أن أنقل الهجاء الصحيح من لوح التلميذ الذي يجلس إلى جواري، فقد كنت أظن دائما أن عمل المعلم إنما هو مراقبتنا حتى يمنعنا من الغش. وكانت النتيجة المحتومة أن جميع التلاميذ، بإستثنائي وحدي، استطاعوا أن يأتو بالهجاء الصحيح للكلمات الخمس. وهكذا كنت الغبي الوحيد بينهم، وعبثا حاول معلمي فيما بعد أن يكشف لي عن غباوتي فلم أستطع يوما أن أحذق فن الغش.
على أن هذا الحادث لم ينقص من قدر معلمي في نظري مثقال ذرة، فقد كنت بطبيعتي، عندما يكون الأمر متصلاً بأخطاء من يكبرونني سناً، أعمى لا أرى ولا أبصر. بل لقد عرفت فيما بعد الكثير من نواحي النقص الأخرى في هذا المعلم، ولكن احترامي له ظل ثابتاً لا يتغير، فقد تعلمت طاعة الكبار، لا نقد أعمالهم.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“The consequences of the regulation regarding the use of footpaths were rather serious for me. I always went out for a walk through President Street to an open plain. President Kruger’s house was in this street – a very modest, unostentatious building, without a garden and not distinguishable from other houses in its neighbourhood. The houses of many of the millionaires in Pretoria were far more pretentious, and were surrounded by gardens. Indeed President Kruger’s simplicity was proverbial. Only the presence of a police patrol before the house indicated that it belonged to some official. I nearly always went along the footpaths past this patrol without the slightest hitch or hindrance.

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.’

‘You need not be sorry,’ I said. ‘What does the poor man know? All coloured people are the same to him. He no doubt treats Negroes just as he has treated me. I have made it a rule not to go to court in respect of any personal grievance. So I do not intend to proceed against him.’

‘That is just like you,’ said Mr Coates, ‘but do think it over again. We must teach such men a lesson.’ He then spoke to the policeman and reprimanded him. I could not follow their talk, as it was in Dutch, the policeman being a Boer. But he apologized to me, for which there was no need. I had already forgiven him.

But I never again went through this street. There would be other men coming in this man’s place and, ignorant of the incident, they would behave likewise. Why should I unnecessarily court another kick? I therefore selected a different walk.

The incident deepened my feeling for the Indian settlers. I discussed with them the advisability of making a test case, if it were found necessary to do so, after having seen the British Agent in the matter of these regulations.

I thus made an intimate study of the hard condition of the Indian settlers, not only by reading and hearing about it, but by personal experience. I saw that South Africa was no country for a self-respecting Indian, and my mind became more and more occupied with the question as to how this state of things might be improved.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“One should eat not in order to please the palate, but just to keep the body going.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography

“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”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“Numerous examples have convinced me that God ultimately saves him whose motive is pure.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“The heart’s earnest and pure desire is always fulfilled. In my own experience I have often seen this rule verified.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“If one Ponders on objects of the sense, there springs Attraction; from attraction grows desire, Desire flames to fierce passion, passion breeds Recklessness; then the memory—all betrayed— Lets noble purpose go, and saps the mind, Till purpose, mind, and man are all undone.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“I had learnt at the outset not to carry on public work with borrowed money. One could rely on people’s promises in most matters except in respect of money.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“I had always heard the merchants say that truth was not possible in business. I did not think so then, nor do I now. Even today there are merchant friends who contend that truth is inconsistent with business. Business, they say, is a very practical affair, and truth a matter of religion; and they argue that practical affairs are one thing, while religion is quite another. Pure truth, they hold, is out of the question in business; one can speak it only as far as is suitable.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“The useful and the useless must, like good and evil generally, go on together, and man must make his choice.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“The more I reflect and look back on the past, the more vividly do I feel my limitations.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“As the elephant is powerless to think in the terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in the terms of, or legislate for, the Indian.”
― Mohandas Gandhi, An Autobiography - The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“I have disregarded the order served upon me not for want of respect for lawful authority, but in obedience to the higher law of our being, the voice of conscience.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“Gandhi's insistence that personal change and the ability to bring about social change are linked. He warns that it is no use striving to implement principles such as nonviolence or justice in public affairs so long as one neglects them in one's personal life. And it is wise to begin in small and piecemeal ways.”
― Sissela Bok, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“Evil means, he insisted, corrupt and degrade not only the purposes for which they are
undertaken but also the persons who stoop to such means. Overcoming the urge to resort to such means is hardest when one aims to rectify past injustices. It is because ‘hate the sin and not the sinner’ is a precept so rarely practiced that ‘the poison of hatred spreads in the world”
― Sissela Bok, Gandhi: An Autobiography

“Such service can have no meaning unless one takes pleasure in it. When it is done for show or for fear of public opinion, it stunts the man and crushes his spirit. Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“The book and the picture left an indelible impression on my mind.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi

“Experience has taught me that silence is part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. Proneness to exaggerate, to suppress or modify the truth, wittingly or unwittingly, is a natural weakness of man and silence is necessary in order to surmount it. A man of few words will rarely be thoughtless in his speech; he will measure every word. We find so many people impatient to talk. There is no chairman of a meeting who is not pestered with notes for permission to speak. And whenever the permission is given the speaker generally exceeds the time-limit, asks for more time, and keeps on talking without permission. All this talking can hardly be said to be of my benefit to the world. It is so much waste of time. My shyness has been in reality my shield and buckler. It has allowed me to grow. It has helped me in my discernment of truth.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography or The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows' is the mentality of weakness, and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth

“It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They”
― Mahatma Gandhi, My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography of Mahatma Gandhi