Ethicist Quotes

“It will profit you nothing to remember old wrongs and nurse old enmities.”

“There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness.”

“As the elephant is powerless to think in the terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in the terms of, or legislate for, the Indian.”

“Rights of true citizenship accrue only to those who serve the State to which they belong.”

“The still small voice within you must always be the final arbiter when there is a conflict of duty.”

“I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics.”

“Indeed, these errors and my prompt confessions have made me surer, if possible, of my insight into the implications of truth and ahimsa.”

“Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain.”

“I do believe that where there is a choice between cowardice and non-violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.”

“The only difference between man and man all the world over is one of degree, and not of kind, even as there is between trees of the same species. Where in is the cause for anger, envy or discrimination?”

“Fear gone, there can be no hatred.”

“To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect, and their oneness.”

“The message of khaddar can penetrate to the remotest villages if we only will that it shall be so.”

“There are a lot of ways to become a failure, but never taking a chance is the most successful. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.”

“The votaries of nonviolence cannot harbour violence even in thought, let alone the question of doing it.”

“If light can come out of darkness, then alone can love emerge from hatred.”

“Disobedience that is wholly civil should never provoke retaliation.”

“Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.”

“If fighting for the legislatures meant a sacrifice of truth and nonviolence, democracy would not be worth a moment's purchase.”

“When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is to stop the war.”

“True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind.”

“No matter how insignificant the thing you have to do, do it as well as you can, give it as much of your care and attention as you would give to the thing you regard as most important. For it will be by those small things that you shall be judged.”

“In the midst of darkness, light persists.”

“Nonviolence is a plant of slow growth, it grows imperceptibly but surely.”

“We cannot, in a moment, get rid of habits of a lifetime.”