Mahatma Gandhi Mean Quotations

My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realising Him.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

Find purpose. The means will follow.

You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil system never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his or her whole soul.

It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there'll be any fruit. But that doesn't mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

It is an ever-growing belief with me that truth cannot be found by violent means.

Means are ends in the making

Violent means will give violent freedom.

I have in my life never been guilty of saying things I did not mean - my nature is to go straight to the heart and if often I fail in doing so for the time being, I know that Truth ultimately makes itself heard and felt, as it has often done in my experience.

It is better to resist oppression by violent means than to submit, but it is best of all to resist by nonviolent means.

A definite forgiveness would mean a definite recognition of our strength.

He who gives up action falls. He who gives up the reward rises. But renunciation of fruit in no way means indifference to the result.

Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit.

Execution of the constructive programme in its entirety means more than Swaraj. It means Ram Raj, Khudai Sultanat or the Divine Kingdom.

Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives.

Complete independence does not mean arrogant isolation or a superior disdain for all help.

It will be hard to find a parallel in history in which unarmed people have represented the urge for freedom, turning their armlessness into the central means for deliverance.

Economic equality of my conception does not mean that every one will literally have the same amount.

Equality of sexes does not mean equality of occupations.

By spiritual training I mean education of the heart.

Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty.

Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war of the knife between different ideas.

Cow protection means protection of the weak, the helpless, the dumb and the deaf.

Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing.

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.

A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses.

My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform.

Return to the villages means a definite, voluntary recognition of the duty of bread labour and all its connotes.

Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability.

A successful search for truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng, such as of love and hate, happiness and misery.

Prosecution of the constructive programme means constructing the structure of Swaraj.

Swaraj as conceived by me does not mean the end of kingship.

Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of countrymen.

Swaraj means even under dominion status a capacity to declare independence at will.

Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals.

A satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to satyagraha.

Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion.

It is a tragedy that religion for us means, today, nothing more than restrictions on food and drink, nothing more than adherence to absence of superiority and inferiority.

A congregational prayer is a means for establishing essential human unity though common worship.

Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness and peace and repose in our daily acts.

The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be.

Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour.

Every moment of my existence is dedicated to the winning of Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence.

Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life.

Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, the legislatures can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence.

Appreciation of nonviolence means patient research and still more patient and difficult practice.

Nonviolence, in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering.

The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence.

Nonviolence is the means, the end for everyone is complete independence.

Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice.

Nonviolent non-co-operation with evil means co-operation with all that is good.

Non-co-operation means refusal both to help the sinner in his sin and not to accept any help or gift from him till he has repented.

Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life.

Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect.

No labour is too mean for one who wants to earn an honest penny.

Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life.

The khadi spirit means also an infinite patience.

The khadi spirit means fellow-feeling with every human being on earth.

Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister.

My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.

India's coming into her own will mean every nation doing likewise.

A Swaraj government means a government established by the free joint will of Hindus, Mussalmans and others.

The only way Hinduism can convert the whole world to cow-protection is by giving an object-lesson in cow-protection and all it means.

Waiting on God means increasing purity.

The knowledge of the omnipresence of God also means respect for the lives even of those who may be called opponents.

Shraddha means self-confidence and self-confidence means faith in God.

A living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind.

For me the Voice of God, of Conscience, of Truth or the Inner Voice or the still small Voice mean one and the same thing.

By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God.

My implicit faith in nonviolence does mean yielding to minorities when they are really weak.

If you have faith in the cause and the means and in God, the hot sun will be cool for you.

For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of English or the disappearance of Englishmen.

Swaraj means, a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English.

Nothing can so quickly put the masses on their legs as the spinning wheel and all it means.

The spinning wheel means national consciousness and a contribution by every individual to a definite constructive national work.

If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed.

All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body.

True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all.

Dharma is one and one only. Ahimsa means moksha, and moksha is the realization of Truth.

Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering.

By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, if I secure it at the hands of my opponent, I should bow down my head to him.

The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country's and ultimately that of the whole of mankind.

The end is inherent in the means.

The right to err, which means the freedom to try experiments, is the universal condition of all progress.

Proved right should be capable of being vindicated by right means as against the rude i.e. sanguinary means. Man may and should shed his own blood for establishing what he considers to be his right. He may not shed the blood of his opponent who disputes his 'right'.

In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one's own self.

For me the only certain means of knowing God is nonviolence, ahimsa, love.

Independence of my conception means nothing less than the realization of the "Kingdom of God" within you and on this earth.

Means are not to be distinguished from ends. If violent means are used, there will be bad results.

When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is nonviolence.

Ashram means a community of men of religion. I feel that an ashram was a necessity of life for me.

Many an individual has turned from the mean, personal, acquisitive point of view to one that sees society as a whole and works for its benefit. If there has been such a change in one person, there can be the same change in many.

It is not given to man to know the whole Truth. His duty lies in living up to the truth as he sees it, and in doing so, to resort to the purest means, i.e., to non-violence. God alone knows absolute truth. Therefore, I have often said, Truth is God. It follows that man, a finite being, cannot know absolute truth. Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. This is God's attribute alone. Relative truth is all we know. Therefore, we can only follow the truth as we see it. Such pursuit of truth cannot lead anyone astray.

Civility does not ...mean the mere outward gentleness of speech cultivated for the occasion, but an inborn gentleness and desire to do the opponent good.

My doctrine means that I must identify myself with life, with everything that lives, that I must share the majesty of life in the presence of God. The sum-total of this life is God. .. Man is not at peace with himself until he has become like unto God. The endeavor to reach this state is the supreme, the only ambition worth having. And this is self-realisation. This self-realisation is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures... to be a real devotee is to realise oneself. Self-realisation is not something apart.

We are merely instruments of the Almighty's will and therefore ignorant of what helps us forward and what acts as an impediment. We must thus rest satisfied with the knowledge only of the means and if these are pure, we can fearlessly leave the end to take care of itself.

The spirit of non-violence necessarily leads to humility. Non-violence means reliance on God, the rock of ages. If we would seek his aid, we must approach Him with a humble and contrite heart.

All good thoughts and ideas mean nothing without action

If we take care of the means, we are bound to reach the end sooner or later. When once we have grasped this point, final victory is beyond question. Whatever difficulties we encounter, whatever apparent reverses we sustain, we may not give up the quest for truth.

By education, I mean an all-round drawing of the best in child and man in body, mind and spirit.