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Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

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. It is necessary for all of us to aspire after that perfection but when that blessed state is attained, it becomes indescribable, indefinable.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Poverty is the worst form of violence.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness... It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Proved right should be capable of being vindicated by right means as against the rude i.e. sanguinary means. Man may and should shed his own blood for establishing what he considers to be his right. He may not shed the blood of his opponent who disputes his 'right'.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Real suffering, bravely borne, melts even a heart of stone. Such is the potency of suffering. And there lies the key to Satyagraha.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Restraint never ruins one's health. What ruins it,is not restraint but outward suppression. A really self-restrained person grows every day from strength to strength and from peace to more peace. The very first step in self-restraint is the restraint of thoughts.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Rights accrue automatically to him who duly performs his duties. In fact the right to perform one's duties is the only right that is worth living for and dying for. It covers all legitimate rights. All the rest is grab under one guise or another and contains in it seed of Himsa.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Self-respect knows no considerations.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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
Spiritual relationship is far more precious than physical. Physical relationship divorced from spiritual is body without soul.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Suffering cheerfully endured, ceases to be suffering and is transmuted into an ineffable joy.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Suffering has its well-defined limits. Suffering can be both wise and unwise, and when the limit is reached, to prolong it would be not unwise but the height of folly.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Surely conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows his creatures' hearts. A conversion without a clean heart is, in my opinion, a denial of God and Religion. Conversion without cleanliness of heart can only be a matter of sorrow, not joy, to a godly person.
– Mahatma Gandhi
That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The badge of the violent is his weapon, spear, sword or rifle. God is the shield of the non-violent.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The first condition of humaneness is a little humility and a little diffidence about the correctness of one's conduct and a little receptiveness.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The good man is the friend of all living things.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The hardest metal yields to sufficient heat. Even so must the hardest heart melt before sufficiency of the heat of non- violence. And there is no limit to the capacity of non-violence to generate heat.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The human voice can never reach the distance that is covered by the still small voice of conscience.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The moment there is suspicion about a person's motives, everything he does becomes tainted.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The real ornament of woman is her character, her purity.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance. Co-operation which needs consideration is a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
– Mahatma Gandhi
The world is touched by sacrifice. It does not then discriminate about the merits of a cause. Not so God - He is all seeing. He insists on the purity of the cause and on adequate sacrifice thereof.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supercedes all other courts.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There is a sufficiency in the world for man's need but not for man's greed.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There is more to life than increasing its speed.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There is no one without faults, not even men of God. They are men of God not because they are faultless, but because they know their own faults, they strive against them, they do not hide them, and are ever ready to correct themselves.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
There should be truth in thought, truth in speech, and truth in action. To the man who has realised this truth in perfection, nothing else remains to be known because all knowledge is necessarily included in it.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
This campaign of non-cooperation has no reference to diplomacy, secret or open. The only diplomacy it admits of is the statement and pursuance of truth at any cost.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Those who know how to think need no teachers.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Those who will not heed themselves perish. To understand this principle is not to be impatient, not to reproach fate, not to blame others. He who understands the doctrine of self-help blames himself for failure.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Though we may know Him by a thousand names, He is one and the same to us all.
– Mahatma Gandhi
To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that the one that must be loved is not a friend. There is no merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend.
– Mahatma Gandhi
To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.
– Mahatma Gandhi
To me art in order to be truly great must, like the beauty of Nature, be universal in its appeal. It must be simple in its presentation and direct in its expression, like the language of Nature.
– Mahatma Gandhi
True religion is not a narrow dogma. It is not external observance. It is faith in God and living in the presence of God. It means faith in a future life, in truth and Ahimsa. There prevails today a sort of apathy towards these things of the Spirit.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Truth quenches untruth, love quenches anger, self-suffering quenches violence. This eternal rule is a rule not for saints only but for all.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.
– Mahatma Gandhi
We are merely the 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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
We may have our private opinions but why should they be a bar to the meeting of hearts?
– Mahatma Gandhi
We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.
– Mahatma Gandhi
We must become the change we want to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi
We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.
– Mahatma Gandhi
We win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
– Mahatma Gandhi
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
– Mahatma Gandhi
What do I think of Western civilization? I think it would be a very good idea.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When anything assumes the strength of a creed, it becomes self-sustained and derives the needed support from within.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.
– Mahatma Gandhi
When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible.
– Mahatma Gandhi
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.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Where love is, there God is also.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Where there is love there is life.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. She has the right to participate in the minutest details in the activities of man, and she has an equal right of freedom and liberty with him.
– Mahatma Gandhi
You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.
– Mahatma Gandhi
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.
– Mahatma Gandhi
You must be the change you wish to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi
You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
– Mahatma Gandhi
To run away from danger, instead of facing it, is to deny one's faith in man and God, even one's own self. It were better for one to drown oneself than live to declare such bankruptcy of faith.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
– Mahatma Gandhi
As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
– Mahatma Gandhi
Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
– Mahatma Gandhi
I want freedom for the full expression on my personality.
– Mahatma Gandhi
One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.
– Mahatma Gandhi
You must be the change you want to see in the world.
– Mahatma Gandhi