“I believe in the Hindu theory of Guru and his importance in spiritual realisation. I think there is a great deal of truth in the doctrine that true knowledge is impossible without a Guru.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The mind of a person of uncertain purpose grows weak day by day and becomes so unsettled that he can think of nothing except what is in his mind at the moment. This does not help us to realise the atman; in fact we lose our soul. We lose our dharma, we lose the capacity for good works, lose both this world and the other.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“soulless soul-force and that its severe discipline has made it merely mechanical. I suppose both—the critics and I—are wrong. It is, at best, a humble attempt to place at the disposal of the nation a home where men and women may have scope for free and unfettered development of character, in keeping with the national genius, and, if its controllers do not take care, the discipline that is the foundation of character may frustrate the very end in view. I would venture, therefore, to warn enthusiasts in co-operation against entertaining false hopes. With Sir Daniel Hamilton it has become a religion. On the 13th January last, he addressed the students of the Scottish Churches College and, in order to point a moral, he instanced Scotland's poverty”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“This belief in incarnation is a testimony of man’s lofty spiritual ambition. Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. The endeavour to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realization. This self-realization is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures. But its author surely did not write it to establish that doctrine. The object of the Gita appears to me to be that of showing the most excellent way to attain self-realization.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I am & have been for years a confirmed anti-vaccinationist. Anti-vaccination has no backing from the orthodox medical opinion. A medical man who expresses himself against vaccination loses caste. Tremendous pecuniary interests too have grown around vaccination.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“You may have occasion to possess or use material things, but the secret of life lies in never missing them.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The common belief is that religion is always opposed to material good. ‘One cannot act religiously in mercantile and such other matters. There is no place for religion in such pursuits; religion is only for attainment of salvation,’ we hear many worldly-wise people say. In my opinion the author of the Gita has dispelled this delusion. He has drawn no line of demarcation between salvation and worldly pursuits. On the contrary he has shown that religion must rule even our worldly pursuits. I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-today practice cannot be called religion. Thus, according to the Gita, all acts that are incapable of being performed without attachment are taboo. This golden rule saves mankind from many a pitfall. According to this interpretation murder, lying, dissoluteness and the like must be regarded as sinful and therefore taboo. Man’s life then becomes simple, and from that simpleness springs peace.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with him whom he seeks to reform. True friendship is an identity of souls rarely to be found in this world.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Vivre simplement, pour que simplement d'autres puissent vivre.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“No one has attained his goal without action. Even men like Janaka attained salvation through action.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Behaviour is the mirror in which we can display our image.”
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Mahatma Gandhi