Letters from One Quotes

“the old and simple truth that it is natural for men to help and to love one another, but not to torture and to kill one another, became ever clearer, so that fewer and fewer people were able to believe the sophistries by which the distortion of the truth had been made so plausible.  ”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“The longer I live-especially now when I clearly feel the approach of death-the more I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who have done evil unto him.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“I feel moved to express what I feel more strongly than anything else, and what in my opinion is of immense importance, namely, what we call the renunciation of all opposition by force, which really simply means the doctrine of the law of love unperverted by sophistries.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“Love is the only way to rescue humanity from all ills, and in it you too have the only method of saving your people from enslavement.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“The punishment of evil doers consists in making them feel ashamed of themselves by doing them a great kindness.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“it appears that, as is the case in our time with the ills of all nations, the reason lies in the lack of a reasonable religious teaching which by explaining the meaning of life would supply a supreme law for the guidance of conduct and would replace the more than dubious precepts of pseudo-religion and pseudo-science with the immoral conclusions deduced from them and commonly called 'civilization'.  ”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“Remember then: there is only one time that is important-- Now! It is the most important time because it is the only time when we have any power. The most necessary man is he with whom you are, for no man knows whether he will ever have dealings with any one else: and the most important affair is, to do him good, because for that purpose alone was man sent into this life!”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“The mere fact that this thought has sprung up among different nations and at different times indicates that it is inherent in human nature and contains the truth.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“in every individual a spiritual element is manifested that gives life to all that exists, and that this spiritual element strives to unite with everything of a like nature to itself, and attains this aim through love.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“God is one whole; we are the parts.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“people continued—regardless of all that leads man forward—to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“for every Christian feels the same, however vaguely he may do so. Socialism, Communism, Anarchism' Salvation Armies, the growth of crime, freedom from toil, the increasingly absurd luxury of the rich and increased misery of the poor, the fearfully rising number of suicides-are all indications of that inner contradiction which must and will be resolved. And, of course, resolved in such a manner that the law of love will be recognized and all reliance on force abandoned.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence—as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided—so that coercion is unavoidable however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by religion—which declared that the right to decide was valid because it was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“A commercial company enslaved a nation comprising two hundred millions. Tell this to a man free from superstition and he will fail to grasp what these words mean. What does it mean that thirty thousand people, not athletes, but rather weak and ordinary people, have enslaved two hundred millions of vigorous, clever, capable, freedom-loving people? Do not the figures make it clear that not the English, but the Indians, have enslaved themselves?”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“How few there are who gather the gifts which lie in profusion at their feet: how many there are, who, in wilful waywardness, turn their eyes away from them and complain with a wail that they have not that which I have given them; many of them defiantly repudiate not only My gifts, but Me also, Me, the Source of all blessings and the Author of their being.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]

“The reason for the astonishing fact that a majority of working people submit to a handful of idlers who control their labour and their very lives is always and everywhere the same—whether the oppressors and oppressed are of one race or whether, as in India and elsewhere, the oppressors are of a different nation.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, Letters from One: Correspondence (and more) of Leo Tolstoy and Mohandas Gandhi; including ‘Letter to a Hindu’ [a selected edit]