“If I were a dictator, religion and state would be separate. I swear by my religion. I will die for it. But it is my personal affair. The state has nothing to do with it. The state would look after your secular welfare, health, communications, foreign relations, currency and so on, but not your or my religion. That is everybody's personal concern!”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Who can say thus far, no further, to the tide of his own nature?” Who can erase the impressions with which he is born? It is idle to expect one’s children and wards necessarily to follow the same course of evolution as oneself.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I wanted to know the best of the life of one who holds today an undisputed sway over the hearts of millions of mankind… I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter self-effacement of the Prophet the scrupulous regard for pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, 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. When I closed the second volume (of the Prophet’s biography), I was sorry there was not more for me to read of that great life.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The face of Truth is hidden behind the golden veil of maya, says the Upanishad.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“A vakil should know human nature. He should be able to read a man’s character from his face. And every Indian ought to know Indian history.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“But all my life through, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“No knowledge is to be found without seeking, no tranquility without travail, no happiness except through tribulation. Every seeker has, at one time or another, to pass through a conflict of duties, a heart-churning.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“The aim of the sinless One lies in not doing evil unto those who have done evil unto him.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“That matchless remedy (for self realisation) is renunciation of fruits of action.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“Why
should I, who have no need to work for food, spin? ' may be the question
asked. Because I am eating what does not belong to me. I am living on the
spoliation of my countrymen. Trace the source of every coin that finds its way
into your pocket, and you will realise the truth of what I write. Every one
must spin.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I learnt the lesson on non-violence from my wife, when I tried to bend her to my will. Her determined resistance to my will on the one hand, and her quiet submission to the suffering my stupidity involved on the other, ultimately made me ashamed of myself and cured me of my stupidity in thinking that I was born to rule over her, and in the end she became my teacher in non-violence.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi
“I hold that it is the duty of every cultured man or woman to read
sympathetically the scriptures of the world. If we are to respect others'
religions as we would have them to respect our own, a friendly study of the
world's religions is a sacred duty.”
―
Mahatma Gandhi