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Mahatma Gandhi: 476 quotes13 likes

“I have even seen the writings suggesting that I am playing a deep game, that I am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on India, and am making religious experiments at India's expense. I can only answer that Satyagraha is made of sterner stuff. There is nothing reserved and nothing secret in it.”

Mahatma Gandhi

"A Word of Explanation" in Young India (January 1921)
1920s

“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Address given in Bombay (26 September 1896), Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 1, p. 410 (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes.
1890s

“In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Non-Violence in Peace and War (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton
1940s

“A man of truth must also be a man of care.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“My joy was boundless. I had learnt the true practice of law. I had learnt to find out the better side of human nature and to enter men’s hearts. I realized the true function of a lawyer was to unite parties riven asunder. The lesson was so indelibly burnt into me that a large part of my time during the twenty years of my practice as a lawyer was occupied in bringing about private compromises of hundreds of cases. I lost nothing thereby - not even money, certainly not my soul.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Part II, Chapter 14, Preparation for the Case
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

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

Mahatma Gandhi

Harijan (28 July 1949) p. 219
1940s

“What the divine author of the Mahabharata said of his great creation is equally true of Hinduism. Whatever of substance is contained in any other religion is always to be found in Hinduism, and what is not contained in it is insubstantial or unnecessary.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (27 September 1925)
1920s

“Nor, do I believe in inequalities between human beings. We are all absolutely equal. But equality is of the souls and not the bodies. Hence, it is a mental state. We need to think of, and to assert, equality because we see great inequality in the physical world. We have to realize equality in the midst of this apparent external inequality. Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. Thus caste, in so far as it connotes distinctions in status, is an evil.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict, by Joan V. Bondurant (1965) University of California Press, Berkeley: CA, pp. 168-169
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (4 August 1920)
1920s

“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the "still small voice" within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”

Mahatma Gandhi book The Essential Gandhi

In Young India (2 March 1922). Quoted in The Essential Gandhi: An Anthology of His Writings on His Life, Work, and Ideas edited by Louis Fischer (2002), p. 160 http://books.google.com/books?id=gz6l-vCVgxQC&lpg=PP1&pg=PA160#v=onepage&q&f=false. <br class="br">1920s

“I know of no one who has done more for humanity than Jesus. In fact, there is nothing wrong with Christianity … The trouble is with you Christians. You do not begin to live up to your own teachings.”

Mahatma Gandhi

In conversation, attributed by James E. McEldowney http://people.virginia.edu/~pm9k/jem/words/gandhi.html <br class="br">Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“The indirect influence of Christianity has been to quicken Hinduism to life. The cultured Hindu society has admitted its grievous sin against the untouchables. But the effect of Christianity upon India in general must be judged by the life lived in our midst by the average Christian and its effect upon us. I am sorry to have to re record my opinion that it has been disastrous. It pains me to have to say that the Christian missionaries as a body, with honourable exceptions, have actively supported a system which has impoverished, enervated and demoralised a people considered to be among the gentlest and most civilized on earth…”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (13 July 1924), reprinted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 24, New Delhi, 1967, p. 476.
1920s

“I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (13 June 1929); also in All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections (2005) edited by Krishna Kripalani, p. 163
1920s

“Hate the sin and love the sinner.”

Mahatma Gandhi

This is variant of a traditional Christian proverb; ie: "Hate the sin, but love the sinner" in Sermons, Lectures, and Occasional Discourses (1828) Edward Irving http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=VwUeH-wTxZ8C&pg=PA132, and similar expressions date to those of Augustine of Hippo: "Love the sinner and hate the sin." Gandhi did express approval of such sentiments in his An Autobiography (1927): "Hate the sin and not the sinner" is a precept which, though easy enough to understand, is rarely practiced, and that is why the poison of hatred spreads in the world. <br class="br">Misattributed

“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (15 December 1921)
1920s

“Always believe in your dreams, because if you don't, you'll still have hope.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (23 March 1924)
1920s

“One golden rule is to accept the interpretation honestly put on the pledge by the party administering it.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Part I, Chapter 17, Experiments in Dietetics
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“Truth never damages a cause that is just.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Non-Violence in Peace and War (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton Google Books link http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=AIrLed2w1lkC ISBN 0811200973 <br class="br">1940s

“If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing. For Hindu households, the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family, coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink.”

Mahatma Gandhi

‘Harijan’, English weekly, Poona, founded by M.K. Gandhi, dated May 11, 1935
1930s

“Today I know that physical training should have as much place in the curriculum as mental training.”

Mahatma Gandhi

Part I, Chapter 5, At the High School
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)