Mahatma Gandhi Ass Quotations

Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms.

A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed.

Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more.

Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain.

Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association.

Mass civil disobedience was for the attainment of independence.

Character alone will have real effect on the masses.

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.

My mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Mussalman passing by.

The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj.

Swaraj can only be achieved through an all-round consciousness of the masses.

It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves.

I regard the constituent assembly as the substitute ofsatyagraha. It is constructive satyagraha.

Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test all our actions in the light of ethical principles.

To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions.

Nonviolence of the strong cannot be a mere policy. It must be a creed, or a passion, if 'creed' is objected to.

Non-co-operation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power.

Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world.

A man who wants to control his animal passions easily does so if he controls his palate.

Who can deny that much that passes for science and art today destroys the soul instead of uplifting it and instead of evoking the best in us, panders to our basest passions?

The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents.

If we know how much passive violence we perpetrate against one another, we will understand why there is so much physical violence plaguing societies and the world.

At the individual level Swaraj is vitally connected with the capacity for dispassionate self-assessment , ceaseless self purification and growing self-reliance.... It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves

I am a passionate seeker after truth which is but another name for God.

Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years. Don't you think you should take a vacation?" Gandhi smiled and replied, "I am always on vacation.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves.

The path of self-purification is hard and steep. 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. I know that I have not in me as yet that triple purity in spite of constant ceaseless striving for it. That is why the world's praise fails to move me, indeed it very often stings me. To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms.

Nonviolence means an ocean of compassion. It means shedding from us every trace of ill will for others. It does not mean abjectness or timidity, or fleeing in fear. It means, on the contrary, firmness of mind and courage, a resolute spirit.

Peace is not the absence of conflict, but the ability to cope with it

We should be able to refuse to live if the price of living be the torture of sentient beings.

I know of no system other than Hinduism under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty.

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.

Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man.

The lives of Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammed, as I have understood them, have illumined many a passage in the Gita.

Ahimsa must express itself through acts of selfless service of the masses.

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

I travel third-class because there is no fouth-class.

A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success.

Anger, lust and such other evil passions raging in the heart are the real untouchables.

We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor.... Millions will always remain poor.

Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.

Love based upon indulgence of animal passion, is at best a selfish affair, and likely to snap under the slightest strain.

This earthly existence of ours is more brittle that the glass bangles that ladies wear.

Khaddar delivers the poor from the bonds of the rich and creates a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and the masses.

If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task.

Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one's own

Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use.

I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded.

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.

Untouchability of foreign cloth is as much a virtue with all of us as untouchability of the suppressed classes must be a sin with every devout Hindu.

Tolstoy's so-called inconsistencies were a sign of his development and his passionate regard for truth.

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.

The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction.