Mahatma Gandhi quotes:

Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.

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

If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.

Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.

Only he can take great resolves who has indomitable faith in God and has fear of God.

A policy is a temporary creed liable to be changed, but while it holds good it has got to be pursued with apostolic zeal.

I did once seriously think of embracing the Christian faith. The gentle figure of Christ, so full of forgiveness that he taught his followers not to retaliate when abused or struck, but to turn the other cheek - I thought it was a beautiful example of the perfect man.

Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plan living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. Man's happiness really lies in contentment.

I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

Fear of death makes us devoid both of valour and religion. For want of valour is want of religious faith.

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.

The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart.

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.

I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.

Non-violence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.

Intolerance betrays want of faith in one's cause.

Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.

But for my faith in God, I should have been a raving maniac.

Faith... must be enforced by reason... when faith becomes blind it dies.

Non-violence is the article of faith.

What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.

Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.

Peace is its own reward.

If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.

You must be the change you wish to see in the world.

Fear has its use but cowardice has none.

God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.

Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.

Unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.

There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.

Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.

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

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

Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

Religion is a matter of the heart. No physical inconvenience can warrant abandonment of one's own religion.

A religion that takes no account of practical affairs and does not help to solve them is no religion.

Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophical comparison.

Gentleness, self-sacrifice and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.

I believe in the fundamental truth of all great religions of the world.

The essence of all religions is one. Only their approaches are different.

One's own religion is after all a matter between oneself and one's Maker and no one else's.

My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray.

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

Every formula of every religion has in this age of reason, to submit to the acid test of reason and universal assent.

All the religions of the world, while they may differ in other respects, unitedly proclaim that nothing lives in this world but Truth.

It is easy enough to be friendly to one's friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.

If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.

Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.

I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

When restraint and courtesy are added to strength, the latter becomes irresistible.

Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.

Morality is contraband in war.

It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.

God is, even though the whole world deny him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.

Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.

I have worshipped woman as the living embodiment of the spirit of service and sacrifice.

Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being.

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problems.

Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one's weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.

Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him.

I took the vow of celibacy in 1906. I had not shared my thoughts with my wife until then, but only consulted her at the time of making the vow. She had no objection.

A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.

I think it is the height of ignorance to believe that the sexual act is an independent function necessary like sleeping or eating. Seeing, therefore, that I did not desire more children, I began to strive after self-control. There was endless difficulty in the task.

I will far rather see the race of man extinct than that we should become less than beasts by making the noblest of God's creation, woman, the object of our lust.

I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.

I know, to banish anger altogether from one's breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God's grace.

A principle is the expression of perfection, and as imperfect beings like us cannot practise perfection, we devise every moment limits of its compromise in practice.

Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.

Purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.

Ours is one continued struggle against degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the European, who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir, whose occupation is hunting and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with, and then pass his life in indolence and nakedness.

Sense perceptions can be and often are false and deceptive, however real they may appear to us. Where there is realization outside the senses, it is infallible. It is proved not by extraneous evidence but in the transformed conduct and character of those who have felt the real presence of God within.

Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.

Let not the 12 million Negroes be ashamed of the fact that they are the grandchildren of slaves. There is dishonor in being slave-owners.

The law of sacrifice is uniform throughout the world. To be effective it demands the sacrifice of the bravest and the most spotless.

Partition is bad. But whatever is past is past. We have only to look to the future.

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.

Increase of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, does not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.

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

Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served. But all other pleasures and possessions pale into nothingness before service which is rendered in a spirit of joy.

The main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.

Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.

When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I do all the evil I can before I learn to shun it? Is it not enough to know the evil to shun it? If not, we should be sincere enough to admit that we love evil too well to give it up.

I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.

As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.

Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.

Where love is, there God is also.

The greatness of a nation can be judged by the way its animals are treated.

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.

I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth.

Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained.

Prayer is a confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness.

We may stumble and fall but shall rise again; it should be enough if we did not run away from the battle.

We do not need to proselytise either by our speech or by our writing. We can only do so really with our lives. Let our lives be open books for all to study.

An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.

There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.

God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.

We should meet abuse by forbearance. Human nature is so constituted that if we take absolutely no notice of anger or abuse, the person indulging in it will soon weary of it and stop.

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.

I would heartily welcome the union of East and West provided it is not based on brute force.

I am in the world feeling my way to light 'amid the encircling gloom.'

It may be possible to gild pure gold, but who can make his mother more beautiful?

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.

Glory lies in the attempt to reach one's goal and not in reaching it.

A vow is a purely religious act which cannot be taken in a fit of passion. It can be taken only with a mind purified and composed and with God as witness.

If I had no sense of humor, I would long ago have committed suicide.

A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.

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.

Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame.

Nearly everything you do is of no importance, but it is important that you do it.