“Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. Thus the truth—that his life should be directed by the spiritual element which is its basis, which manifests itself as love, and which is so natural to man—this truth, in order to force a way to man's consciousness, had to struggle not merely against the obscurity with which it was expressed and the intentional and unintentional distortions surrounding it, but also against deliberate violence, which by means of persecutions and punishments sought to compel men to accept religious laws authorized by the rulers and conflicting with the truth.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The Mahabharata was not composed with the aim of describing a battle. The description of the battle serves only as a pretext.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“I could not swallow this. I told him that, if the sheep had speech, they would tell a different tale. I felt that the cruel custom ought to be stopped. I thought of the story of Buddha, but I also saw that the task was beyond my capacity. I hold today the same opinion as I held then. To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man. But he who has not qualified himself for such service is unable to afford to it any protection. I must go through more self-purification and sacrifice, before I can hope to save these lambs from this unholy sacrifice. Today I think I must die pining for this self-purification and sacrifice. It is my constant prayer that there may be born on earth some great spirit, man or woman, fired with divine pity, who will deliver us from this heinous sin, save the lives of the innocent creatures, and purify the temple. How is it that Bengal with all its knowledge, intelligence, sacrifice, and emotion tolerates this slaughter?”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“A man who is truthful and does not mean ill even to his adversary will be slow to believe charges even against his foes. He will, however, try to understand the viewpoints of his opponents and will always keep an open mind and seek every opportunity of serving his opponents.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“As a rule I had a distaste for any reading beyond my school books.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“There are innumerable definitions of God, because His manifestations are innumerable.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“There is only one desire in life which is good and the desire for the means to realise it is also good.”
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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
“Why, then, grieve — tatra ka paridevana — asks Shri Krishna. This is the great mystery of God. As a magician creates the illusion of a tree and destroys it, so God sports in endless ways and does not let us know the beginning and the end of his play. Why grieve over it?”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Gracias a que se mantienen unidas y se mueven de manera conjunta milloners de gotas forman el mar, lo mismo debería ocurrir con los seres humanos”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“My politics is my religion, my religion is my politics.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“If we argue that since all bodies are perishable, one may kill, does it follow that I may kill all the women and children in the Ashram? Would I have in doing so acted according to the teaching of the Bhagavad Gita, merely because their bodies are perishable? What,”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Europe I travelled third—and only once first, just to see what it was like—but there I noticed no such difference between the first and the third-classes. In South Africa third-class passengers are mostly Negroes, yet the third-class comforts are better there than here.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
