Quotations and Poems

» Action » “A man is the sum of his actions, of what he has done, of what he can do, Nothing else.”

» Action » “Whatever you do may seem insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.”

» Adaptability » “Adaptability is not imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.”

» Anger » “Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.”

» Ask » “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

» Candor » “A ”No” uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ”Yes” merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”

» Capitalism » “Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.”

» Causes » “Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

» Change » “Be the change you want to see in the world.”

» Change » “We must become the change we want to see.”

» Change » “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

» Christians and Christianity » “If Christians would really live according to the teachings of Christ, as found in the Bible, all of India would be Christian today.”

» Conflict » “To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”

» Control » “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”

» Control » “The control of the palate is a valuable aid for the control of the mind.”

» Country » “The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”

» Coward and Cowardice » “Fear has its use but cowardice has none.”

» Coward and Cowardice » “Cowards can never be moral.”

» Culture » “Culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.”

» Culture » “No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive.”

» Despair » “When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall — think of it, ALWAYS.”

» Dictators and Dictatorship » “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.”

» Faith » “Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.”

» Faith » “Faith must be enforced by reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.”

» Faith » “I claim to be an average man of less than average ability. I have not the shadow of a doubt that any man or woman can achieve what I have, if he or she would make the same effort and cultivate the same hope and faith.”

» Faith » “Non-violence is the article of faith.”

» Food and Eating » “God comes to the hungry in the form of food.”

» Forgiveness » “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”

» Freedom » “The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave. His fetters fall… freedom and slavery are mental states.”

» Freedom » “Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.”

» God » “The mantram becomes one’s staff of life and carries one through every ordeal. Each repetition has a new meaning, carrying you nearer and nearer to God.”

» Good and Evil » “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”

» Happiness » “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”

» Hatred » “Hatred can be overcome only by love.”

» History and Historians » “To believe what has not occurred in history will not occur at all, is to argue disbelief in the dignity of man.”

» Humankind » “As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world — that is the myth of the atomic age — as in being able to remake ourselves.”

» Humankind » “You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.”

» Humor » “If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.”

» Idleness » “Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.”

» Indolence » “Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.”

» Inheritance » “I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.”

» Jesus Christ » “A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”

» Leaders and Leadership » “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.”

» Life and Living » “There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.”

» Love » “Where there is love there is life.”

» Love » “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”

» Love » “Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”

» Love » “My life is an indivisible whole, and all my attitudes run into one another; and they all have their rise in my insatiable love for mankind.”

» Marriage » “I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage.”

» Materialism » “Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.”

» Nonviolence » “Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be inseparable part of our very being.”

» Occupation » “Monotony is the law of nature. Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises. The monotony of necessary occupation is exhilarating and life giving.”

» Patience » “Patience means self-suffering.”

» Peace » “Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.”

» Policy » “A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.”

» Potential » “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problem.”

» Poverty and The Poor » “Poverty is the worst form of violence.”

» Power » “I have learned through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmitted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmitted into a power that can move the world.”

» Prayer » “Let everyone try and find that as a result of daily prayer he adds something new to his life, something with which nothing can be compared.”

» Prayer » “Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.”

» Prayer » “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”

» Prayer » “Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.”

» Profits » “What is a man if he is not a thief who openly charges as much as he can for the goods he sells?”

» Quality » “It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.”

» Reason » “Rationalists are admirable beings, rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. Attribution of omnipotence to reason is as bad a piece of idolatry as is worship of stock and stone believing it to be God. I plead not for the suppression of reason, but for a due recognition of that in us which sanctifies reason.”

» Responsibility » “All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities.”

» Restraint » “There are limits to self-indulgence, none to restraint.”

» Revenge » “An eye for eye only ends up making the whole world blind.”

» Right and Rightness » “Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.”

» Sacrifice » “The mice which helplessly find themselves between the cats teeth acquire no merit from their enforced sacrifice.”

» Satisfaction » “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.”

» Self-confidence » “The history of the world is full of men who rose to leadership, by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity.”

» Self-control » “Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock.”

» Self-respect » “They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.”

» Service » “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”

» Service » “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”

» Service » “Consciously or unconsciously, every one of us does render some service or other. If we cultivate the habit of doing this service deliberately, our desire for service will steadily grow stronger, and will make, not only our own happiness, but that of the world at large.”

» Society » “Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.”

» Soul » “Ahimas is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.”

» Teachers and Teaching » “Those who know how to think need no teachers.”

» Technology » “I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”

» Tolerance » “Intolerance betrays want of faith in one’s cause.”

» Truth » “The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one’s opponent.”

» Truth » “There is no god higher than truth.”

» Truth » “Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.”

» Truth » “Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.”

» Truth » “Non-violence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.”

» Unity » “Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking.”

» Violence » “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

» Vision » “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.”

» Vision » “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and Non-violence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.”

» Vow » “Your capacity to keep your vow will depend on the purity of your life.”

» Vow » “Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood.”

» Vow » “A vow is fixed and unalterable determination to do a thing, when such a determination is related to something noble which can only uplift the man who makes the resolve.”

» War » “Morality is contraband in war.”

» War and Peace » “It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.”

» Will and Will Power » “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

» Wisdom » “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.”

» Worry » “There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.”