Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi citations (253 citations, Page 7)

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.
en
Années 1920

confiance , problème , courage , vie

“Je tiens au progrès, je tiens à la détermination personnelle, à la liberté, mais je les veux pour l'âme. Je doute que l'âge de l'acier soit supérieur à l'âge de pierre. Peu m'importe. C'est à l'évolution de l'âme qu'il faut consacrer toute notre intelligence et toutes nos autres facultés.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Années 1920

intelligence , liberté , faute , personnes

“Je veux développer chez l'enfant ses mains, son cerveau et son âme. Les mains sont presque atrophiées, de même que l'âme a été trop tenue à l'écart.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Années 1940

enfants , âme

“La non-violence est la plus grande force que l'humanité ait à sa disposition. Elle est plus puissante que l'arme la plus destructrice inventée par l'homme.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Années 1940

hommes

“Le vrai démocrate est celui qui, avec des moyens purement non violents, défend sa liberté, partant, celle de son pays et, en fin de compte, celle de l'humanité toute entière.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Années 1940

liberté , pays , démocratie

“Chacun a raison de son propre point de vue, mais il n'est pas impossible que tout le monde ait tort.”

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

Années 1940

monde

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi: Citations en anglais

“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13 ( 3 May 1919)
1910s

“Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.”

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Mahatma Gandhi Freedom's Battle

"The Inwardness of Non-Co-operation". Quoted in Freedom's Battle: Being a Comprehensive Collection of Writings and Speeches (1922), p. 144 https://books.google.com/books?id=ZRXCAwAAQBAJ&pg=PA144.
1920s

“I have always held that social justice, even to the least the lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Harijan (20 April 1940) p. 97
1940s

“Poverty is the worst kind of violence.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Quoted without reference to earlier source, time or location in A Just Peace through Transformation: Cultural, Economic, and Political Foundations for Change (1988) by the International Peace Association
Disputed

“I am a lover of my own liberty and so I would do nothing to resist yours.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

As quoted Quote in Justice and Democracy (1997), edit., Ron Bontekoe and Marietta Stepaniants, University of Hawai’i Press, p. 233.
1930s

“Jealousy does not wait for reasons.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Part I, Chapter 4, Playing the Husband
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“The only thing lawful is non-violence. Violence can never be lawful in the sense meant here, i. e., not according to man-made laws, but according to the laws made by Nature for man.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Harijan (27 October 1946) p. 369
1940s

“If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Letter in Harijan (1938) http://web.archive.org/20021008131454/die_meistersinger.tripod.com/gandhi9.html
1930s

“Nothing is impossible for pure love.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Part I, Chapter 4, Playing the Husband
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“England has got successful competitors in America, Japan, France, Germany. It has competitors in the handful of mills in India, and as there has been an awakening in India, even so there will be an awakening in South Africa with its vastly richer resources — natural, mineral, and human. The mighty English look quite pigmies before the mighty races of Africa. They are noble savages, after all, you will say. They are certainly noble, but no savages and in the course of a few years the Western nations may cease to find in Africa a dumping ground for their wares.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Statement at Oxford (24 October 1931), published in Young India Vol. 13 (1931), p. 355
1930s

“No society can possibly be built upon a denial of individual freedom. It is contrary to the very nature of man. Just as a man will not grow horns or a tail, so will he not exist as man if he has no mind of his own. In reality even those who do not believe in the liberty of the individual believe in their own.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict by Joan V. Bondurant (1965) University of California Press, Berkeley: CA, p. 174. Harijan (1 February 1942) p. 27
1940s

“One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Sect. 1
1900s, Hind Swaraj (1908)

“I believe that the civilization India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestors, Rome went, Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become Westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. The people of Europe learn their lessons from the writings of the men of Greece or Rome, which exist no longer in their former glory. In trying to learn from them, the Europeans imagine that they will avoid the mistakes of Greece and Rome. Such is their pitiable condition. In the midst of all this India remains immovable and that is her glory. It is a charge against India that her people are so uncivilized, ignorant and stolid, that it is not possible to induce them to adopt any changes. It is a charge really against our merit. What we have tested and found true on the anvil of experience, we dare not change. Many thrust their advice upon India, and she remains steady. This is her beauty: it is the sheet-anchor of our hope.
Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. So doing, we know ourselves. The Gujarati equivalent for civilization means “good conduct.””

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Mahatma Gandhi

Sect. 13
Variant translations: I believe that the civilisation into which India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestry. Rome went; Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become westernised; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation.
Greece, Egypt, Rome — all have been erased from this world, yet we continue to exist. There is something in us, that our character never ceases from the face of this world, defying global hostility for centuries.
1900s, Hind Swaraj (1908)

“Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Young India (2 March 1922)
1920s

“But all my life though, the very insistence on truth has taught me to appreciate the beauty of compromise. I saw in later life that this spirit was an essential part of Satyagraha. It has often meant endangering my life and incurring the displeasure of friends. But truth is hard as adamant and tender as a blossom.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Part II, Chapter 18, Colour Bar
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“God has no religion.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Aphorism pre-dating Gandhi, e.g., in Re-statements of Christian Doctrine: In Twenty-five Sermons, Henry Whitney Bellows, (1867) http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=TZemW-uwcQ4C&pg=PA149; the attribution of this to Gandhi dates from the 1980s. https://books.google.com/books?id=8mJFKnxzlG0C&pg=PA104&dq=%22god+has+no+religion%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CB0Q6AEwAGoVChMIg9S9yuKIyQIVF9tjCh0h2wK4#v=onepage&q=%22god%20has%20no%20religion%22&f=false
Misattributed

“Selfishness is blind.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Part II, Chapter 4, The First Shock
1920s, An Autobiography (1927)

“My life is my message.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Response to a journalist's question about what his message to the world was. Mahatma: Life of Gandhi 1869-1948 (1968) Reel 13 http://www.gandhiserve.org/video/mahatma/commentary13.html
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

“I do not wish to suggest that because we were one nation we had no differences, but it is submitted that our leading men travelled throughout India . . . They learned one another’s languages . . . they saw that India was one undivided land so made by nature. They, therefore, argued that it must be one nation. Arguing thus, they established holy places in various parts of India, and fired the people with an idea of nationality in a manner unknown in other parts of the world. Any two Indians are one as no two Englishmen are.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

1900s, Hind Swaraj (1908)

“We have to live and move and have our being in ahimsa, even as Hitler does in himsa. It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with which he has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration. That he uses them as a monster is immaterial for our purpose. We have to bring to bear the same single-mindedness and perseverance in evolving our ahimsa. Hitler is awake all the 24 hours of the day in perfecting his sadhana. He wins because he pays the price. His inventions surprise his enemies. But it is his single-minded devotion to his purpose that should be the object of our admiration and emulation. Although he works all his waking hours, his intellect is unclouded and unerring. Are our intellects unclouded and unerring? A mere belief in ahimsa or the charkha will not do. It should be intelligent and creative. If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of non-violence.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

June 1940 speech. (Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999), vol. 78, p. 349. https://www.gandhiservefoundation.org/about-mahatma-gandhi/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi/
1940s

“But my object in writing this letter is not to ventilate my grievances. It is to place before you my reaction to the war situation. The latest development seems to be most serious. Want of truthful news is tantalizing. I suppose it is inevitable. But assuming that things are as black as they appear to be for the Allied cause, is it not time to sue for peace for the sake of humanity? I do not believe Herr Hitler to be as bad as he is portrayed. He might even have been a friendly power as he may still be. It is due to suffering humanity that this mad slaughter should stop.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

LETTER TO [the viceroy of India] LORD LINLITHGOW , May 26, 1940 p. 253 (Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999), vol. 78, https://www.gandhiservefoundation.org/about-mahatma-gandhi/collected-works-of-mahatma-gandhi/
1940s

“In my opinion, they are not examples of real conversion. If a person through fear, compulsion, starvation or for material gain or consideration goes over to another faith, it is a misnomer to call it conversion. Most cases of mass conversion, of which we have heard so much during the past two years, have been to my mind false coin… I would, therefore, unhesitatingly re-admit to the Hindu fold all such repentants without much ado, certainly without any shuddhi… And as I believe in the equality of all the great religions of the earth, I regard no man as polluted because he has forsaken the branch on which he was sitting and gone over to another of the same tree. If he comes to the original branch, he deserves to be welcomed and not told that he had committed sin by reason of his having forsaken the family to which he belonged. In so far as he may be deemed to have erred, he has sufficiently purged himself of it when he repents of the error and retraces his step.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works Volume 66, New Delhi, 1976, pp. 163-64. As quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytising. It is the cause of much avoidable conflict between classes and unnecessary heart-burning among the missionaries… In 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. … The other day a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine-stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous. The temple could not belong to the converted, and it could not belong to the Christian missionary. But this friend goes and gets it demolished at the hands of the very men who only a little while ago believed that God was there.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi The Collected Works Volume 61, Ahmedabad, 1975, p, 46-57. As quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“Unfortunately, Christianity in India has been inextricably mixed up for the last one hundred years with the British rule. It appears to us as synonymous with the materialistic civilization and imperialistic exploitation by the strong white races of the weaker races of the world. Its contribution to India has been therefore largely of a negative character. It has done some good in spite of its professors. It has shocked us into setting our own house in order.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works, Volume 40. New Delhi. 1970, pp. 58-59. as quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“I do not regard Jainism or Buddhism as separate from Hinduism. Hinduism believes in the oneness not of merely all human life but in the oneness of all that lives.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi. October 1927. The Collected Works, Volume 35, New Delhi, 1968, pp. 166-67. Quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“During my travels, I find a general belief that to turn a Christian is to turn European; to become self-willed, and give up self-restraint, use only foreign cloth, dress oneself in European style and start taking meat and brandy. But I think the fact is, if a person discards his country, his customs and his old connections and manners when he changes his religion, he becomes all the more unfit to gain a knowledge of God. For, a change of religion means really a conversion of the heart. When there is a real conversion, a man’s heart grows. But in this country one finds that conversion brings about deep disdain for one’s old religion and its followers, i. e., one’s old friends and relatives. The next change that takes place is that of dress and manners and behaviour. All that does great harm to the country.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi in Mahadev Desai, Day-to-Day with Gandhi,Volume 7, Varanasi, 1969, as quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996)
Posthumous publications (1950s and later)

“I am grieved to learn that people are running away from the West Punjab and I am told that Lahore is being evacuated by the non-Muslims. I must say that this is what it should not be. If you think Lahore is dead or is dying, do not run away from it, but die with what you think is the dying Lahore. (…) When you suffer from fear you die before death comes to you. That is not glorious. I will not feel sorry if I hear that people in the Punjab have died not as cowards but as brave men. (…) I cannot be forced to salute any flag. If in that act I am murdered I would bear no ill will against anyone and would rather pray for better sense for the person or persons who murder me.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

6 August 1947,. (Hindustan Times, 8-8-1947, CWoMG, vol. LXXXIX, p. 11) Quoted from Elst, Koenraad (2018). Why I killed the Mahatma: Uncovering Godse's defence. New Delhi : Rupa, 2018. App. 4
1940s

“I am told that there are still left over 18,000 Hindus and Sikhs in Rawalpindi and 30,000 in the Wah Camp. I will repeat my advice that they should all be prepared to die rather than leave their homes. The art of dying bravely and with honour does not need any special training, save a living faith in God. Then there will be no abductions and no forcible conversions. I know that you are anxious I should go to the Punjab at the earliest moment. I want to do so. But if I failed in Delhi, it is impossible for me to succeed in Pakistan. For I want to go to all the parts and provinces of Pakistan under the protection of no escort save God. I will go as a friend of the Muslims as of others. My life will be at their disposal. I hope that I may cheerfully die at the hands of anyone who chooses to take my life. Then I will have done as I have advised all to do.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

SELECTED WRITINGS OF MAHATMA GANDHI https://web.archive.org/web/20180216130212/https://www.mkgandhi.org/swmgandhi/chap07.htm, Extracts from the Delhi Diary, 23 September 1947.
1940s

“Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo even their existence.”

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Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi post-prayer speech at Birla Mandir, New Delhi, on April 6, 1947. quoted in Arvind Lavakare, Of Sabarmati secularism & non-violence, 16 April 2002, Rediff. Quoted from Hinduism and Judaism compilation https://web.archive.org/web/20060423090103/http://www.nhsf.org.uk/images/stories/HinduDharma/Interfaith/hinduzion.pdf
1940s