Mahatma Gandhi Men Quotations

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

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.

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.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

I will far 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.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse then starving the body; it is starvation of the soul, the dweller in the body.

Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfilment.

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.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

Man can never be a woman's equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?

Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.

The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated. I hold that the more helpless a creature the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of humankind.

I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.

Contraceptive methods are like putting a premium on vice. It makes men and women reckless... As it is, man has sufficiently degraded woman for his lust, and [contraception] , no matter how well meaning the advocates may be, will still further degrade her.

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:

Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth.

A labourer cannot sit at the table and write, but a man who has worked at the table all his life can certainly take to physical labour.

A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women

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.

It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners.

Perfection is only an ideal for man; it cannot be attained, for man is made imperfect.

...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.

He who runs to the doctor, vaidya, or hakim for every little ailment, and swallows all kinds of vegetable and mineral drugs, not only curtails his life, but by becoming the slave of his body instead of remaining its master, loses self-control, and ceases to be a man.

I claim to be no more than an average man with below average capabilities.

As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding.

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress toward peace. ... Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?

Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world.

Man's happiness really lies in contentment.

You will eat not to satisfy your palate but your hunger. A self-indulgent man lives to eat; a self-restrained man eats to live.

We may attack systems. We must not attack men.

Is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater courage? Without her, man would not be. If nonviolence is to be the law of our being, the future is with women.

I swear by swadeshi as it affords occasion for ample exercise of all our faculties and it tests every one of the millions of men and women, young and old.

If a man voluntarily allows himself to be crushed, he yields the oil of moral energy which sustains the world.

Spiritual force is like any other force at the service of man.

Soul-force comes only through God's grace and never descends upon a man who is a slave to lust.

In man, reason quickens and guides feelings; in brute, the soul lies ever dormant.

How heavy is the toll of sins and wrong that wealth, power and prestige exact from man.

Individual liberty is allowed to man only to a certain extent. He cannot forget that he is a social being and his individual liberty has to be curtailed at every step.

Newspapers have become more important to the average man than the scriptures.

Government of the people by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great he may be.

No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will.

The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural needs and no more.

"All men are born equal and free" is not Nature's law in the literal sense.

If a single man demanded as much as a man with a wife and four children, then that would be a violation of the concept of economic equality.

The function of Nayee-Talim is not to teach an occupation, but through it to develop the whole man.

History is replete with instances of men, who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents.

What is imprisonment to the man who is fearless of death itself?

Further march of civilization seems to employ increasing domination of man over beast, together with a growingly humane method of using them.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.

There can be no friendship between cowards, or cowards and brave men.

I own no property and yet I feel that I am perhaps the richest man in the world.

Marriage is not an act of services. It is a comfort man or woman seeks for himself or herself.

We do want to drive out the beast in man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him.

If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker.

A true man of piety will consider himself a sinner and, therefore, untouchable.

A man of faith will remain steadfast to truth even though the whole world might appear to be enveloped in falsehood.

When large numbers of wholly innocent men are in jail, we may take it that Swaraj is at hand.

No religion taught man to kill fellowmen because he held different opinions or was of another religion.

Religion is no test of nationality, but a personal matter between man and his God.

I should wish to die if a man who is impure should parade his purity in front of me.

A man of prayer regards what are known as physical calamities as divine chastisement.

It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man.

For a nonviolent struggle, there is no age limit. The blind, the maimed and the bed-ridden may serve, and not only men but women also.

A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance.

Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent.

I can no more preach nonviolence to a cowardly man than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes.

When a man vowed to nonviolence as the law governing human beings dares to refer to war, he can only do it so as to strain every nerve to avoid it.

Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, the legislatures can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence.

The man or the woman who can display the nonviolence of the brave can easily stand against as external invasion.

In a plan of life based on nonviolence, woman has as much right to shape her own destiny as man has to shape his.

We burn the evil men do with their mortal remains. We treasure the memory of the good they do, and distance magnifies it.

Study men laying down their lives without hurting anyone else in the cause of their country's freedom.

No one should dogmatize about the capacity of human nature for degradation or exaltation.

Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow.

The field of research in the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man's life must not be frequent.

We are all very imperfect and weak things, and if we are to destroy all whose ways we do not like, there will be not a man left alive.

Repression does for a true man or a nation what fire does for gold.

He who runs may see that opium and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man's soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts.

All great religions have rightly regarded kama as the arch-enemy of man, anger or hatred coming only in the second place.

If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm?

Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian.

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

Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion two sides of the same coin.

Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced, exquisite consideration for one's neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration.

The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary.

It is degrading both for man and woman that woman should be called upon or induced to forsake the hearth and shoulder the rifle for the protection of that hearth.

The woman has circumvented man in a variety of ways in her unconsciously subtle ways, as the man has vainly and equally consciously struggled to thwart the woman in gaining ascendancy over him.

Men are good. But they are poor victims making themselves miserable under the false belief that they are doing good.

That which is inherent in man is his virtue.

Human language can but imperfectly describe God's ways.

Man, through the cow, is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives.

A man of truth must ever be confident, if he has also equal need to be diffident.