“I realised that in refusing to take a vow man was drawn into temptation, and that to be bound by a vow was like a passage from libertinism to a real monogamous marriage. “I believe in effort, I do not want to bind myself with vows,” is the mentality of weakness and betrays a subtle desire for the thing to be avoided. Or where can be the difficulty in making a final decision? I vow to flee from the serpent which I know will bite me, I do not simply make an effort to flee from him. I know that mere effort may mean certain death. Mere effort means ignorance of the certain fact that the serpent is bound to kill me. The fact, therefore, that I could rest content with an effort only, means that I have not yet clearly realised the necessity of definite action. “But supposing my views are changed in the future, how can I bind myself by a vow?” Such a doubt often deters us. But that doubt also betrays a lack of clear perception that a particular thing must be renounced.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“You will incur no sin by killing your kinsmen’ — this is said repeatedly in the Gita. If a person remains unconcerned with defeat or victory, knowing that they are a part of life, he commits no sin in fighting. But we should also say that he earns no merit. If we seek merit, we shall also incur sin. Even the best thing has an element of evil in it. Nothing in the world is wholly good or wholly evil. Where there is action there is some evil. If a person learns to make no distinction between gain and loss, pleasure and pain, he would rarely be tempted to commit a sin.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“All that appears and happens about and around us is uncertain, transient.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“In Hinduism, incarnation is ascribed to one who has performed some extraordinary service of mankind. All embodied life is in reality an incarnation of God, but it is not usual to consider every living being an incarnation. Future generations pay this homage to one who, in his own generation, has been extraordinarily religious in his conduct. I can see nothing wrong in this procedure;”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“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 history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Your right is to work, and not to expect the fruit. The slave-owner tells the slave: ‘Mind your work, but beware lest you pluck a fruit from the garden. Yours is to take what I give.’ God has put us under restriction in the same manner. He tells us that we may work if we wish, but that the reward of work is entirely for Him to give. Our duty is to pray to Him, and the best way in which we can do this is to work with the pick-axe, to remove scum from the river and to sweep and clean our yards. This, certainly, is a difficult lesson to learn.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The Best Thing To Find Yourself Is To Loose Yourself In The Service Of Others”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“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.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“The manner in which the Gita has solved the problem is to my knowledge unique. The Gita says, ‘Do your allotted work but renounce its fruit — be detached and work — have no desire for reward and work.”
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Mahatma Gandhi
“Besides, I had learnt nothing at all of Indian law. I had not the slightest idea of Hindu and Mahomedan Law. I had not even learnt how to draft a plaint, and felt completely at sea. I had heard of Sir Pherozeshah Mehta as one who roared like a lion in law courts. How, I wondered, could he have learnt the art in England?”
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Mahatma Gandhi
