“I become more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of Hussein, the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers and his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These and not the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every obstacle.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I realised that even a man’s reforming zeal ought not to make him exceed his limits. I also saw that in thus lending trust-money I had disobeyed the cardinal teaching of the Gita, viz., the duty of a man of equipoise to act without desire for the fruit. The error became for me a beacon-light of warning.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“If physical fasting is not accompanied by mental fasting it is bound to end in hypocrisy and disaster.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“It is impossible in this body to follow ahimsa fully. Violence is inescapable. While the eyes wink and nails have to be pared, violence in one form or another is unavoidable. Evil is inherent in action, says the Gita. Arjuna did not, therefore, raise the question of violence and nonviolence. He simply raised the question of distinction between kinsmen and others, much in the same way that a fond mother would advance arguments favouring her child.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“If we are unmanly today, we are so, not because we do not know how to strike, but because we fear to die.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I have from my experience come to the conclusion that Gita has been composed to teach this one truth which I have explained. We can follow truth only in the measure that we shed our attachment to the ego.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“understood more clearly in the light of the Gita teaching the implication of the word ‘trustee’.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“This is the centre round which the Gita is woven. This renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. The body has been likened to a prison. There must be action where there is body. Not one embodied being is exempted from labour. And yet all religions proclaim that it is possible for man, by treating the body as the temple of God, to attain freedom. Every action is tainted, be it ever so trivial. How can the body be made the temple of God? In other words how can one be free from action, i.e. from the taint of sin? The Gita has answered the question in decisive language: ‘By desireless action; by renouncing fruits of action; by dedicating all activities to God, i.e., by surrendering oneself to Him body and soul.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
A man is but the product of his thoughts what he thinks, he becomes.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
