Mahatma Gandhi Men Quotations [Page 5]

A national spirit is necessary for national existence. A flag is a material aid to the development of such a spirit.

God chooses as His instrument the humblest and weakest of His creatures to fulfill Himself.

Man is the center of a circle without a circumference, except the one he creates for himself.

I am not anti-English, I am not anti-British, I am not anti-any Government, but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-injustice.

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent.

Every good movement passes through five stages, indifference, ridicule, abuse, repression, and respect.

Any young man, who makes dowry a condition to marriage, discredits his education and his country and dishonours womanhood.

A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect.

Though violence is not lawful, when it is offered in self-defense or for the defense of the defenseless, it is an act of bravery far better than cowardly submission. The latter befits neither man nor woman. Under violence, there are many stages and varieties of bravery. Every man must judge this for himself. No other person can or has the right.

Study not man in his animal nature - man following the laws of the jungle - but study man in all his glory.

Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them.

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman.

When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not one ray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad-gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditate on the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day.

God never made man that he may consider another man as untouchable.

I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.

Men say I am a saint losing himself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to become a saint.

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

All business depends upon men fulfilling their responsibilities.

I have found by experience that man makes his plans to be upset by God, but, at the same time, where the ultimate goal is the search of truth, on matter how a man's plans are frustrated the issue is never injurious and often better than anticipated.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die.

To a man with an empty stomach food is God

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 respect our own, a friendly study of the world's religions is a sacred duty.

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.

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity.

Civilization is the encouragement of differences.

Are creeds such simple things like the clothes which a man can change at will and put on at will? Creeds are such for which people live for ages and ages.

Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.

Constant development is the law of life, and a man who always tries to maintain his dogmas in order to appear consistent drives himself into a false position.

Morality which depends upon the helplessness of a man or woman has not much to recommend it. Morality is rooted in the purity of our hearts.

Man's nature is not essentially evil. Brute nature has been know to yield to the influence of love. You must never despair of human nature.

Infinite striving to be the best is man's duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God's hands.

Man can never be a woman's equal in the spirit of selfless service with which nature has endowed her.

Homeopathy cures a larger percentage of cases than any other form of treatment and is beyond doubt safer and more economical.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.

I know that man who forsakes Truth can forsake his country and his nearest and dearest ones.

The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it.

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity...If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior...If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take.

Whenever I see an erring man, I say to myself I have also erred; when I see a lustful man I say to myself, so was I once; and in this way I feel kinship with everyone in the world and feel that I cannot be happy without the humblest of us being happy.

Good government is no substitute for self-government.

Imperfect men have no right to judge other imperfect men.

I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won't presume to probe into the faults of others.

Power is of two kinds: one is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love.

It is very significant that some of the most thoughtful and cultured men are partisans of a pure vegetable diet

Unlike the animal, God has given man the faculty of reason.

I suggest that we are thieves in a way. If I take anything that I do not need for my own immediate use, and keep it, I thieve it from somebody else. ... Nature produces enough for our wants from day to day, and if only every-body took enough for himself and nothing more, there would be no pauperism in this world, there would be no man dying of starvation in this world. But so long as we have got this inequality, so long we are thieving.

Man's upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed.

Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help…

Whenever you are in doubt, or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test. Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen, and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to a control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to swaraj for the hungry and spiritually starving millions?

Study men following the law of their higher nature, the law of love, so that when you grow to manhood, you will have improved your heritage.

I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward.

Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women.

Men often become what they believe themselves to be. If I believe I cannot do something,it makes me incapable of doing it. When I believe I can,I acquire the ability to do it even if I didn’t have it in the beginning.’"Mahatma Gandhi

You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won't help, but that is no excuse, you must still act.

A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.

Woman is more fitted than man to make explorations and take bolder action in ahimsa.

Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men.

In a self-respecting India, is not every woman's virtue as much every man's concern as his own sister's?

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

The only way by which you and I can wean orthodox Hindus from their bigotry is by patient argument and correct conduct.

All the four stages in a man's life are devised by the seers in Hinduism for imposing discipline and self-restraint.

Men like me feel that untouchability is no integral part of Hinduism, it is an excrescence.

When we fear God, then we shall fear no man, however high-placed he may be.

What is impossible with man is child's play with God.

I know that I have still before me a difficult path to traverse. I must reduce myself to zero. So long as a man does not of his own free will put himself last among his fellow creatures, there is no salvation for him. Ahimsa is the farthest limit of humility.

Withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.

Life is but an endless series of experiments.

We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor.... Millions will always remain poor.

Freedom is never dear at any price. It is the breath of life. What would a man not pay for living?

What distinguishes man from the brute is his conscious striving to realise the spirit within.

Those who know how to think need no teachers.

To have a happy ending, choose a happy moment and call it 'the ending'. Honesty is incompatible with the amassing of a large fortune.

Old as I am in age, I have no feeling that I have ceased to grow inwardly or that my growth will stop at the dissolution of the flesh. What I am concerned with is my readiness to obey the call of Truth, my God, from moment to moment, no matter how inconsistent it may appear. My commitment is to Truth, not to consistency.

As a splendid palace deserted by its inmates looks like a ruin, so does a man without character, all his material belongings notwithstanding.

It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress toward peace. ... Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?

Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world.

Man's happiness really lies in contentment.

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.