When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible.
Don't take rest after your first victory because if you fail in second, more lips are waiting to say that your first victory was just luck.
Humankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter - hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free. Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls. Where words come out from the depth of truth, where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection. Where the clear stream of reason has not lost it's way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit. Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action. In to that heaven of freedom, my father, LET MY COUNTRY AWAKE!
If we were to drive out the English with the weapons with which they enslaved us, our slavery would still be with us even when they have gone.
I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice.
Nonviolence is a plant of slow growth, it grows imperceptibly but surely.
I was willing to accept what I couldn't change.
Human nature will find itself only when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal.
It is not a mistake to commit a mistake, for no one commits a mistake knowing it to be one. But it is a mistake not to correct the mistake after knowing it to be one. If you are afraid of committing a mistake, you are afraid of doing anything at all. You will correct your mistakes whenever you find them.
We have to practice to become perfect.
The vapour becomes snow, then water, then Ganga; but when it is vapour, there is no Ganga, and when it is water, we think of no vapour in it. The idea of creation or change is inseparably connected with will. So long as we perceive this world in motion, we have to conceive will behind it.
Everything we do is futile, but we must do it anyway.
The cow is the purest type of sub-human life.
The world sympathizes only with strong and powerful.
Be proud that thou art an Indian, and proudly proclaim, "I am an Indian, every Indian is my brother." Say, "The ignorant Indian, the poor and destitute Indian, the Brahmin Indian, the Pariah Indian, is my brother."
Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and performed their duties came naturally by their rights.
Remember the only sign of life is motion and growth.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.
An opponent is entitled to the same regard for his principles as we would expect others to have for ours. Non-violence demands that we should see every opportunity to win over opponents.
A man of truth must ever be confident, if he has also equal need to be diffident.
The real work is in the practice.
All society is held together by nonviolence even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation.
Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them.
Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
True ahimsa lay in running into the mouth of himsa.
Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having.
The only test of goods things is that they make us strong.
A thorn can only be extracted if you know where it is.
Mind you, there is no value in learning. You are all mistaken in learning. The only value of knowledge is in the strengthening, the disciplining, of the mind.
This earthly existence of ours is more brittle that the glass bangles that ladies wear.
Love requires that true education should be easily accessible to all and should be of use to every villager in this daily life. The emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one's life usefully is the best education for citizenship.
To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.
The process of learning should be as far as possible a pleasurable one and not laborious
When I stand before thee at the day's end, thou shalt see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healing.
Let new India arise out of peasants' cottage, grasping the plough, out of huts, cobbler and sweeper.
Poems On Time The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough. Time is a wealth of change, but the clock in its parody makes it mere change and no wealth. Let your life lightly dance on the edges of Time like dew on the tip of a leaf.
Watch people do their most common actions; these are indeed the things that will tell you the real character of a great person.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain but for the heart to conquer it.
Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour.
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior.
Freedom battles are not fought without paying heavy prices.
Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it be after his heart. But the intelligent man is he who can convert every work into one that suits his taste. No work is petty. Everything in this world is like a banyan seed, which, though appearing tiny as a mustard seed, has yet the gigantic banyan tree latent with it. He indeed is intelligent who notices this and succeeds in making all work truly great.
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.
This craving for health, wealth, long life, and the like - the so - called good - is nothing but an illusion.
Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil.
An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity.
Nothing once begun should be abandoned, unless it is proved to be morally wrong.
Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.
Spurious fame spreads from tongue to tongue like the fog of the early dawn before the sun rises.
With every true friendship we build more firmly the foundations on which the peace of the whole world rests. Thought by thought and act by act, with every breath we build more firmly the kingdom of non-violence that is the true home of the spirit of humanity.
If India becomes the slave of the machine, then, I say, heaven save the world.
I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.
Research has shown that it takes 31 days of conscious effort to make or break a habit. That means, if one practices something consistently for 31 days, on the 32nd day it does become a habit. Information has been internalised into behavioural change, which is called transformation.
What is imprisonment to the man who is fearless of death itself?
Non-violence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave.
Man's upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed.
Science is global. Einstein's equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.
The word 'defeat' is not to be found in my dictionary, and everyone who is selected as a recruit in my army may be certain that there is no defeat for a satyagrahi.
