EPIGRAMS FROM GANDHIJI

Compiled by: S.R. Tikekar

First Edition: 1971

Published by:

Publications Division Ministry of Information & Broadcasting.

CONTENTS

| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | R | S | T | U | V | W | Y |

A

Abstinence | Abuse | Action | Administration | Advaita | Affliction | Africa| Aggressor | Agriculture | Ahimsa |America | Anekantvada | Anger | Angle | Appeasement | Armaments| Army | Art | Asceticism | Astrology | Atheist | Atom Bomb | Autocracy

B

Banker| Basic Education | Beast | Beauty | Bhagwad Gita (Gita) | Birth | Birth Control | Blame | Bone | Boycott| Brahmins-Brahminism | Brave- Bravery | Brother-Brotherhood | Brute-Brute Force | Buddha- Buddhism

C

Calamity | Capital-Capitalism | Castles in Air | Cattle | Celibacy | Changeless | Character | Charkha (Spinning Wheel) | Chastity | Children | Christ-Christianity | Citizenship | Civil Disobedience | Civilization |

Civil-Resistance | Cleanliness | Coercion | Communism-Bolshevism | Compromise | Compulsion | Concentration | Conduct | Confession | Conscience | Constructive Programme | Contentment | Control | Conversion | Cooperation | Copyright | Correction | Corruption | Cottage Industry | Courage | Cow | Coward-Cowardice | Creator | Crime | Criticism | Cruel| Culture

D

Daridranarayana | Death | Debt | Deception | Defeat | Defence |

Democracy | Dependence | Desire | Despair | Destiny |

Devotee-Devotion (Bhakti) | Diagnosis | Dignity | Diplomacy | Disarmament | Discipline | Disease | Dishonesty | Distinction | Distrust | Divine Rights | Divinity | Doctor | Dominion Status | Dream | Drink | Duty

E

Earning | Earth | Earthquake | Eating | Economics | Education | Effort | Ego | Employment | Enemy | Englishmen-English Language | Equality | Ethics | Euclid | Europe | Evil | Evolution | Experiment | Exploitation

F

Faith | Fast-Fasting | Fear-Fearless | Fight | Fire | Flag | Flattery | Force | Foreign-Cloth | Forgiveness |Freedom | Friends-Friendship

G

Gandhism | Gentleness | Germany | Gifts | God | Gold | Golden Rule | Good-Goodness | Goondas | Government of India | Grave | Gravitation | Greatness

H

Handicraft | Handsome | Hanuman | Happiness | Harijan | Haste | Hate-Hatred | Health| Helplessness |Himalayas | Hindi | Hindu-Hinduism | History | Hitler | Honesty | Hope | Hostility | Human Dignity | Human Family | Humanity | Human Nature | Humility | Hunger | Hunger-Strike | Hypocrisy

I

Ideal | Idleness | Idol-Idolatry | Ignorance | Illiteracy | Imitation | Immoral | Immortal | Impatience | Imperialists-Imperialism | Imposition | Impossible | Impression | Independence | India-Indians | Indiscipline | Individualism | Inequality | Inheritance | Injustice | Inner Voice | Innocent | Interdependence | Internationalism | Intolerance | Iron | Islam

J

Japan | Jealousy | Journalism | Joy | Justice

K

Karma Yoga | Khadi-Khaddar | Kisan | Knowledge

L

Labour | Language | Law | Leaders | Learning | Legislatures |  Liberation| Liberty | Life | Lions | Literacy |Literature | Lokmanya Tilak | Love

M

Machine-Machinery | Mahabharata | Mahatma | Majority |

Man-Mankind | Marriage | Masses | Military-Militarization | Millions | Mind | Minority | Misdeeds | Missionary | Mistrust | Mobs-Mobocracy | Moral Force-Morality | Mortification | Mother-Motherhood | Mother-Tongue | Murder | Museums | Music

N

Narcotics | Nation-National-Nationalism | Nature | Nature Care |

Non-Cooperation | Nonviolence

O

Obedience | Ocean | Oppression | Optimist | Organisation | Orthodox

P

Parliament | Passion | Passive Resistance | Patience | Patient | Patriotism | Peace | People | Perfect-Perfection | Picketing | Pledge | Poetry | Police | Politics-Political | Pomp | Poor- Poverty | Possible | Power | Prayer | Preaching | Prison | Progress | Prohibition | Promise | Propaganda | Prophets | Public Opinion | Punishment | Pure-Purity-Purification

R

Rama-Ramayana-Ram Raj | Rationalism | Reading | Realization | Reason | Rebellion | Reform- Reformer | Regularity | Religion | Renunciation| Repose | Repression | Research | Resolution | Responsibility | Restraint | Retaliation | Retirement | Revolutionary | Reward | Rich | Ridicule | Right | Right Angle | Risk | Rome | Rose

S

Sacrifice | Sad | Saint | Salt | Salvation | Sanitation | Sanskrit | Satan | Satyagraha-Satyagrahi | Scavenger | Schools | Science | Scriptures | Self | Self-Confidence | Self-Control | Self-Defense | Self-Determination | Self-Government | Self-immolation | Self-indulgence | Selflessness | Self-Pity | Self-Realization | Self-Reliant | Self-Respect | Self-Restraint | Self- Righteousness | Self-Rule | Self-Sacrifice | Self- Suffering | Self-Supporting| Self-Surrender | Service | Silence | Simplicity | Slave-Slavery |

Small Things | Smoking | Socialism | Society | Soldier| Sorrow |

Soul-Soul-Force | Spiritual-Spiritualism | Starvation | State | Strikes | Strong-Strength | Struggle | Student | Success | Suffering | Superiority | Superman | Superstition | Supreme Judge | Swadeshi | Swaraj | Sword

T

Taboo | Taxation | Teacher | Temples | Temptation | Terrorism | Thinking | Thoughts | Time | Tolerance-Toleration | Tolstoy | Tools | Tragedy | Treachery | Trust | Truth

U

Undertaking | Unity | Universal | University | Untouchability | Untruth | Utility

V

Vaccination | Varnasharam Dharma | Vedas | Vegetarianism | Vice | Victory | Villages | Violence-Himsa | Virtue | Vow

W

War | Waste | Wealth | Welfare | Widow-Widowhood | Woman | Work | World | Worship | Wrong

Y

Yajna | Youth

A

Abstinence

- Abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature. T-2-4

Abuse

- The best way of losing a cause is to abuse your opponent and to trade upon his weakness. T-51

Action

- Action for one’s own self binds, action for the sake of others delivers from bondage. T-2-278

- My Gita tells me that evil can never result from good action. XXV-520

- What is faith worth if it is not translated into action? T-5-180

Administration

- You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. T-3-26

Advaita

- I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and, for that matter, of all that lives. XXV-390

Affliction

- Every affliction has its own rich lesson to teach, if we would learn it. T-8-24

Africa

- The commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of the Western exploiters.T-7-46

Aggressor

- The aggressor always had a purpose behind his attack; he wanted something to be done, some object to be surrendered by the defender.  T-8-86

Agriculture

- To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.MM-364

- Weeding is as necessary to agriculture as sowing. MM-182

- Agricultural colleges to be worthy of the name must be self-supporting. EWE-26

Ahimsa

- Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly T-7-128.

- Ahimsa is the eradication of the desire to injure or to kill.XIV-463

- Ahimsa is not a matter of mere dietetics: it transcends it.MM-117

- Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practice it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence. T-7-61

- Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. MM-295

- Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and ahimsa don’t go together any more than water and fire. T-5-83

- Ahimsa in theory no one knows. It is as indefinable as God.T-5-248

- The highest religion has been defined by a negative word: ahimsa. MM-425

- Ahimsa is one of the world’s great principles, which no power on earth can wipe out.MM-147

- Dharma is one and one only. Ahimsa means moksha, and moksha is the realization of Truth.MOG-117

- Love and ahimsa are matchless in their effect. TIG-57

- Love in the sense of ahimsa has only a limited number of votaries in the world. T-3-144

- Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practised by everybody in all the affairs of life. MM-24

- Ahimsa is the strongest force known. T-5-307

- Ahimsa is the height of Kshatriya dharma as it represents the climax of fearlessness. XXV-563

- The fullest application of ahimsa does make life impossible. XXVI-335

- The most distinctive and largest contribution of Hinduism to India’s culture is the doctrine of ahimsa. T-2-341

- True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. T-2-318

- Ahimsa and love are one and the same thing. TIG-19

- Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. TIG-37

- Ahimsa is my God, and Truth is my God. MM-24

- Truth and ahimsa will never be destroyed.T-5-245

- The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody. TIG-36

- Ahimsa calls for the strength and courage to suffer without retaliation, to receive blows without returning any. T-7-75

- Ahimsa can be practiced only towards those that are inferior to you in every way. XIV-463

- Ahimsa was preached to man when he was in full vigor of life and able to look his adversaries straight in the face. XIV-476

- The greater the realization of truth and ahimsa, the greater the illumination. XXV-521

- The path of Truth is as narrow as it is straight. Even so is that of ahimsa. TIG-36

- Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with ahimsa, reject as non-Hindu. XXVI-374

- The removal of untouchability is one of the highest expressions of ahimsa. T-4-239

- Cow-protection can only be secured by cultivating universal friendliness, i.e. ahimsa. XXV-520

- Ahimsa is a science. The word ‘failure’ has no place in the vocabulary of science. T-5-81

- Ahimsa magnifies one’s own defects, and minimizes those of the opponent. It regards the mole in one’s own eye as a beam and the beam in the opponent’s eye as a mole. T-5-91

- Ahimsa must be placed before everything else while it is professed. Then alone it becomes irresistible. T-5-127

- Ahimsa must express itself through acts of selfless service of the masses. T-5-81

- Ahimsa is no mere theory with me, but it is a fact of life based on extensive experience. T-7-402

- My ahimsa is my own. I am not able to accept in its entirety the doctrine of non-killing of animals. MM-429

- What is it but my ahimsa that draws thousands of women to me in fearless confidence? T-5-291

- Truth is my religion and ahimsa is the only way of its realization. T-4-250

- Truth and ahimsa demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be. XXVI-374

- One who hooks his fortune to ahimsa, the law of love, daily lessens the circle of destruction and to that extent promotes life and love. T-4-33

- My anekantavada is the result of the twin doctrines of satya and ahimsa. TIG-12

- When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is to stop the war. TIG-40

- My ahimsa would not tolerate the idea of giving a free meal to a healthy person who has not worked for it in some honest way. MM-194

- Ahimsa and Truth are my two lungs. I cannot live without them. MM-425

- My errors have been errors of calculation and judging men, not in appreciating the true nature of truth and ahimsa or in their application. T-2-204

- Indeed, these errors and my prompt confessions have made me surer, if possible, of my insight into the implications of truth and ahimsa. T-2-204

- All my experiments in Ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body. T-5-225

- Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been. T-7-147

- True ahimsa should wear a smile even on a deathbed brought about by an assailant. It is only with that ahimsa that we can befriend our opponents and win their love. T-5-243

- If our ahimsa is not of the brave but of the weak, and if it will bend the knee before himsa, Gandhism deserves to be destroyed. T-5-242

- The alphabet of ahimsa is best learnt in domestic school and I can say from experience that if we secure success there, we are sure to do so everywhere else. T-5-304

- A votary of ahimsa always prays for ultimate deliverance from the bondage of the flesh. MM-425

- A steadfast pursuit of ahimsa is inevitably bound to truth-not violence. MM-118

- I see a clear breach of ahimsa even in driving away monkeys; the breach would be proportionately greater if they have to be killed. T-2-322

- A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal. TIG-139

- Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. (Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering.) T-5-227

- Woman is more fitted than man to make explorations and take bolder action in ahimsa. MM-294

- Unless the charkha adds to your ahimsa and makes you stronger every day, your Gandhism is of little avail.T-5-242

- Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity.T-4-21

- In Swaraj, based on ahimsa, people need not know their rights, but it is also necessary for them to know their duties. MM-135

- No power on earth can subjugate you when you are armed with the sword of ahimsa. It ennobles both the victor and the vanquished. T-7-11

- The votary of ahimsa has only one fear, that is, of God. MM-12

- A votary of ahimsa must cultivate the habit of unremitting toil, sleepless vigilance, ceaseless self-control. T-5-80

- It is against the spirit of ahimsa to overawe even one person into submission. T-7-388

- The richest grace of ahimsa will descend easily upon the owner of hard discipline. MM-127

- Love, otherwise ahimsa, sustains this planet of ours. MM-127

- In an atmosphere of ahimsa, one has no scope to put his ahimsa to the test. It can be tested only in the face of himsa. T-5-90

- A soldier fights with an irresistible strength when he has blown up his bridges and burnt his boats. Even so, it is with a soldier of ahimsa. T-5-127

- Man lives freely by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. MM-122

- The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die. T-3-3

- If the lambs of the world had been willingly led, they would have long ago saved themselves from the butcher’s knife. T-2-52

- If the circulation of blood theory could not have been discovered without vivisection, the human kind could well have done without it. MM-426

- The scriptures of Christians, Mussalmans and Hindus are all replete with the teaching of ahimsa. XXV-521

- By ahimsa we will be able to save the cow and also win the friendship of the English. XXV-520

Anekantavad

- My anekantavad is the result of the twin doctrine of satya and ahimsa. TIG-12

Anger

- Fasts could not be undertaken out of anger. Anger was a short madness. T-8-5

- True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. T-2-318

- The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice. XXVI-159

Angle

- Rectify one angle of a square and the other angles will be automatically right. MM-91

Appeasement

- A friendly approach is not one of appeasement. An appeasement is possible between enemies. T-8-4

- In no case can there be any appeasement at the cost of honour. Real appeasement is to shed all fear and do what is right at any cost. T-7-29

Armaments

- If the mad race for armaments continues, it is bound to result in a slaughter such as has never occurred in history. MM-4

- For India to enter into the race for armaments is to court suicide. T-5-178

Army

- The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force. T-4-252

- What faith can you place in a general or a soldier who lacks resolution and determination, who says ‘I shall keep guard as long as I can’? T-2-365

- No general ever won a victory by following the principle of ‘being vigilant so long as he could’. T-2-365

Art

- Art to be art must soothe. MM-56

- All true art must help the soul to realize its inner self. XXV-248

- Purity of life is the highest and truest art. MM-57

- True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors. T-2-56

- True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind. MM-56

- The art that is in the machine-made article appeals only to the eye, the art in khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye. T-3-292

- The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely. TIG-109

- A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy. MOG-21

- Whatever can be useful to those starving millions is beautiful to my mind. MM-56

- I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little children and making it the beginning of learning. T-4-164

- A semi-starved nation can have neither religion nor art nor organization. T-2-251

- Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself? T-4-93

- Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective. T-2-215

- To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul. T-2-159

Asceticism

- By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount, but then you will have to take sackcloth and ashes. T-2-296

Astrology

- I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence. T-2-314

Atheist

- God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.TIG-10

Atom Bomb

- The atom bomb brought an empty victory to the Allied armies, but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. TIG-142

- So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. TIG-1

Autocracy

- Mobocracy is autocracy multiplied a million times. XXV-531

B

Banker

- Even as a banker cannot run a bank if he has nothing in his chest, so can a general not lead a battle if he has no soldiers on whom he can rely implicitly. T-5-31

Basic Education

- Basic education links children, whether of cities or villages, to all that is best and lasting in India. EWE-24

- The object of basic education is the physical, intellectual and moral development of children through the medium of handicraft. EWE-24

Beast

- Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow. T-3-280

Beauty

- The beauty of poetry is that the creation transcends the poet. MOG-15

- When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. T-2-160

- All truths, not merely ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs, are highly beautiful. T-2-159

- To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul. T-2-159

- People generally fail to see beauty in truth, the ordinary man runs away from it and becomes blind to the beauty in it. T-2-159

- Truth is the first thing to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be added unto you. XXV-255

Bhagavadgita (Gita)

- The Gita is not for those who have no faith. T-2-312

- The Gita distinguishes between the powers of light and darkness and demonstrates their incompatibility. MM-94

- The Gita is not an aphoristic work, it is a great religious poem.T-2-312

- Salvation of the Gita is perfect peace.T-2-309

- A literal interpretation of the Gita lands one in a sea of contradictions.XXVI-289

- The renunciation of the Gita is the acid test of faith.T-2-310

- The sanyasa of the Gita is all work and yet no work.T-2-312

- The sanyasa of the Gita will not tolerate complete cessation of activity.T-2-31

- Devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness.T-2-309

- The Bible is as much a book of religion with me as the Gita and the Koran.MM-98

- Self-realization is the object of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures.MOG-4

- The object of the Gita appears to me to be that of showing the most excellent way to attain self-realization.TIG-98

- The message of the Gita is to be found in the second chapter of the Gita where Lord Krishna speaks of the balanced state of mind, of mental equipoise.T-5-21

- Time is wealth, and the Gita says the Great Annihilator annihilates those who waste time. T-2-274

- According to the letter of the Gita, it is possible to say that warfare is consistent with renunciation of fruit.T-2-312

- The path of bhakti, karma and love as expounded in the Gita leaves no room for the despising of man by man.T-2-278

- I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-to-day practice cannot be called religion. T-2-311

- My Gita tells me that evil can never result from a good action. XXV-520

- The Gita is not only my Bible and my Koran, it is more than that, it is my mother. MM-95

- I find a solace a in the Bhagavadgita and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount. MM-94

- The Gita has become for me the key to the scriptures of the world. T-4-76

- Let the Gita be to you a mine of diamonds, as it has been to me; let it be your constant guide and friend on life’s way. T-2-307

- My life has been full of external tragedies and if they have not left any visible effect on me, I owe it to the teaching of the Bhagavadgita. MOG-40

- In the characteristics of the perfected man of the Gita, I do not see any to correspond to physical warfare. MOG-3

- I still somehow or other fancy that "my philosophy" represents the true meaning of the teaching of the Gita. XXVI-140

- Untouchability, I hold, is a sin, if Bhagavadgita is one of our Divine Books. XXVI-349

- In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place. T-2-309

- The lives of Zoroaster, Jesus and Mohammed, as I have understood them, have illumined many a passage in the Gita. T-3-181

- The Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified, but the picture is imaginary. TIG-98

- A devotee of Rama may be said to be the same as the steadfast one (sthitaprajnya) of the Gita. TIG-111

- The seeker is at liberty to extract from this treasure any meaning he likes, so as to enable him to enforce in his life the central teaching. T-2-312

- To one who reads the spirit of the Gita, it teaches the secret of nonviolence, the secret of realizing self through the physical body. MOG-16

- What the Sermon* describes in a graphic manner, the Bhagavadgita reduces to a scientific formula. MM-68

* The Sermon on the Mount

Birth

- Birth and death are no two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state. XXV-333

- The whole world is in the throes of new birth. Anything done for temporary gain would be tantamount to an abortion. T-5-273

Birth Control

- Self-control is the surest and the only method of regulating the birthrate. Birth control by contraceptives is race suicide. T-2-226

Blame

- Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fall into the clutches of the wolf. T-5-10

Bolshevism

See Communism

Bone

- Every bone picked up is valuable raw material from which useful articles can be made or which can be crushed into rich manure. T-4-17

Boycott

- Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as boycott brought about by hand spinning and khaddar. XXV-475

- So long as we have to rely on the pins and the needles, figurative and literal, we cannot bring about a complete boycott of foreign goods. T-2-14

- I boycott foreign goods, not foreign ability. Bunch-268

- We are aware that the business of Swaraj will thrive only if the boycott of foreign cloth is successful. XXV-578

- If the people resolve and carry out this programme of boycott and swadeshi, they would not have to wait for Swaraj even for a year. T-2-27

Brahmins-Brahminism

- The Brahmin is the finest flower of Hinduism and humanity. I will do nothing to whither it. XXVI-331

- Brahmins are born, not so Brahminism. It is a quality open to be cultivated by the lowliest or the lowest among us. XXVI-331

- A true Brahmin should be the very image of humility and not be proud of his knowledge or wisdom. T-3-270

- A Brahmin is hardly worth the name, if he did not have the courage of his convictions. T-3-270

- The Brahmin’s duty is to look after the sanitation of the soul, the bhangi’s that of the body of society. T-4-104

- Where is the real Brahmin today, content with a bare living and giving all his time to study and teaching? T-5-97

- I have the highest reverence for Brahminism, under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty. T-3-195

- I would not have the non-Brahmins to rise on the ruin of the Brahmins. XXVI-331

- Swear all you are worth, if you like, against Brahmins, but never against Brahminism. T-2-283

- The ideal bhangi of my conception would be a Brahmin par excellence, possibly even excel him. T-4-104

Brave-Bravery

- Bravery is not man’s monopoly. MM-297

- Bravery is not a quality of the body, it is of the soul. MM-61

- Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. T-2-131

- Bravery on the battlefield is impossible for us. Bravery of the soul still remains open to us. T-5-128

- I see neither bravery nor sacrifice in destroying life or property for offence or defence. T-6-67

- Mere brave speech without action is letting off useless steam. T-2-325

- True paurusha, true bravery, consists in driving out the brute in us. XV-157

- Unexampled bravery, born of nonviolence, coupled with strict honesty shown by a fair number of Muslims, was sure to infect the whole of India. T-8-176

- The art of dying bravely and with honour does not need any special training, save a living faith in God. MM-302

- For thousands to do to death a few hundreds is no bravery. It is worse than cowardice. It is unworthy of nationalism, of any religion. T-4-252

- Active nonviolence of the brave puts to flight thieves, dacoits, murderers, and prepares an army of volunteers ready to sacrifice themselves in quelling riots, in extinguishing fires and feuds, and so on. T-4-257

- Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and the bravest. T-4-253

- There can be no friendship between cowards, or cowards and brave men. XXV-436

- The man or the woman who can display this nonviolence of the brave can easily stand against an external invasion. T-5-298

- Those who are truthful, nonviolent and brave do not cease to be so because of the stupidity of their leader. T-5-128

- Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and ahimsa don’t go together any more than water and fire. T-5-189

- Ahimsa is the highest ideal. It is meant for the brave, never for the cowardly. T-7-128

- The history of the world is full of instances of men who rose to leadership by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity. T-3-23

- A straight fight in an equal battle takes some bravery, but braver is he who, knowing that he would have to sacrifice ninety-five as against five of the enemy, faces death. T-5-111

British - See Englishman

Brother – Brotherhood

- All the great religions of the world inculcate equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of tolerance. T-3-257

- A teetotaler would regard it as his duty to associate with his drunkard brother for the purpose of weaning him from the evil habit. XXVI-65

- The khadi spirit means fellow feeling with every human being on earth. T-2-282

- I have never in my life regarded anyone as my servant, but as a brother or a sister. T-2-279

Brute – Brute Force

- Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle. T-5-105

- The only thing that separates us from the brute, with which we have so much in common, is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. T-4-158

- The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. T-2-5

- True paurusha, true bravery, consists in driving out the brute in us. XV-157

- We are no better than the brutes until we have purged ourselves of the sins we have committed against our weaker brethren. T-2-3

- ‘Tit for tat’ is the law of the brute of the unregenerate man. T-8-14

- To answer brutality with brutality is to admit to one’s moral and intellectual bankruptcy. T-7-399

- Human nature will only find itself when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal. T-4-279

- The Germans were defeated not because they were necessarily in the wrong, but because the allied powers were found to possess greater brute strength. T-2-20

- Brute is the only test the West has hitherto recognized. T-2-20

Buddha – Buddhism

- Buddha never rejected Hinduism, but he broadened its base. He gave it a new life and a new interpretation. T-2-292

- Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth. T-2-295

- Buddha emphasised and re-declared the eternal an unalterable existence of the moral government of this universe. He unhesitatingly said that the law was God Himself. T-2-293

- For Asia to be not for Asia but the whole world, it has to re-learn the message of the Buddha and deliver it to the world. MM-433

- I know that Buddhism is to Hinduism what Protestantism is to Roman Catholicism, only in a much stronger light, in a much greater degree. T-2-352

- If there was any teacher in the world who insisted upon the inexorable law of cause and effect, it was Gautama, and yet my friends, the Buddhists outside India, would, if they could, avoid the effects of their own acts. T-2-293

- Buddhism is one long prayer. T-5-148

C

Calamity

- There is a divine purpose behind every physical calamity. TIG-24

Capital – Capitalism

- No doubt, capital is lifeless, but not the capitalists who are amenable to conversion. T-4-159

- I do not regard capital to be enemy of labour. T-2-257

- I am convinced that the capitalist, if he follows the Samurai of Japan, has nothing really to lose and everything to gain. T-2-380

- I can no more tolerate the yoke of Bolshevism as described by Mr. Roy * than of capitalism. XXV-531 * M. N. Roy radical humanist (1889-1954)

- What the two hands of the labourer could achieve, the capitalist would never get with all his gold and silver. T-7-33

- Labour, because it chose to remain unintelligent, either became subservient or insolently believed in damaging the capitalists’ goods and machinery or even in killing the capitalists. T-8-97

Castles In The Air

- A cave-dweller can build castles in the air, whereas a dweller in a palace like Janak* has no castles to build. MM-7

*Janak, philosopher-king of Videha, father of Sita.

Cattle

- The half-starved condition of the majority of our cattle is a disgrace to us. T-2-132

Celibacy

- Celibacy is a great help, inasmuch as it enables one to lead a life of full surrender to God.XXV-252

- What is brahmacharya? It is a way of life, which leads us to Brahma (God). T-8-1

- Brahmacharya means control of the senses in thought, word and deed. TIG-126

- Grihasthashrama is the fair fruit of brahmacharya in life for a series of years. XXVI-375

Changeless

- To me I seem to be constantly growing. I must respond to varying conditions, and yet remain changeless within. T-2-265

Character

- Character alone will have real effect on the masses. T-3-243

- Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self-controlled. XXVI-297

- What will tell in the end will be character and not a knowledge of letters. XXVI-294-5

- A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers. EWE-18

- Men of stainless character and self-purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them. TIG-57

- Sorrow and suffering make for character if they are voluntarily borne, but not if they are imposed. T-3-122

- A dissolute character is more dissolute in thought than in deed, and the same is true of violence. T-5-116

- If you have no character to lose, people will have no faith in you. T-3-234

- The real property that a parent can transmit to all equally is his or her character and educational facilities. T-2-367

- A vow imparts stability, ballast and firmness to one’s character. T-2-364

- If you will express the requisite purity of character in action, you cannot do it better than through the spinning wheel. T-2-377

- All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions. T-2-376

- In times to come people will not judge us by the creed we profess or the label we wear or the slogans we shout, but, by our work, industry, sacrifice, honesty and purity of character. T-8-8

- Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in this country. T-2-352

Charkha (Spinning Wheel)

- Charkha is an instrument of service. T-2-253

- The Charkha in the hands of a poor widow brings a paltry price to her, in the hands of Jawaharlal; it is an instrument of India’s freedom. T-6-32

- The Charkha is an outward symbol of truth and nonviolence. T-5-265

- The Charkha is intended to realize the essential and living oneness of interest among India’s myriads. T-2-215

- The Charkha is the symbol of nonviolence on which all life, if it is to be real life, must be based. MM-405

- The Charkha is the symbol of sacrifice, and sacrifice is essential for the establishment of the image of the deity. T-2-277

- The Charkha supplemented the agriculture of the villagers and gave it dignity. MM-408

- Seek ye first the Charkha and its concomitants and everything else will be added unto you. T-2-263

- The Charkha, which is the embodiment of willing obedience and calm persistence, must therefore succeed before there is civil disobedience. XXV-587

- Unless the charkha adds to your ahimsa and makes you stronger every day, your Gandhism is of little avail. T-5-24

- The turning of the charkha in a lifeless way will be like the turning of the beads of the rosary with a wandering mind turned away from God. T-5-242

- I believe that the yarn we spin is capable of mending the broken warp and woof of our life. MM-405

- I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. T-2-63

- I crave to die with my hand at the spinning wheel. MM-406

- I have called spinning the yajna of this age of India. XXVI-298

- If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed. T-5-242

- I have pinned my faith to the spinning wheel. On it, I believe, the salvation of this country depends. XXV-523

- In my dream, in my sleep, while eating, I think of the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel is my sword. To me it is the symbol of India’s liberty. XXV-351

- My heart is drawn backwards and forwards between the spinning wheel and books. T-2-108

- For every minute that I spin, there is in me the consciousness that I am adding to the nation’s wealth. T-3-5

- The spinning wheel and the spinning wheel alone will solve, if anything will solve, the problem of the deepening poverty of India. XXVI-292

- The spinning wheel means national consciousness and a contribution by every individual to a definite constructive national work. XXVI-49

- The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me. T-5-290

- He who spins before the poor, inviting them to do likewise, serves God as no one else does. TIG-136

- I would like to assure those who would serve Daridranarayana that there is music, art, economy and joy in the spinning wheel. T-2-275

- The spinning wheel is not meant to oust a single man or woman from his or her occupation. T-3-5

- The spinning wheel is as much a necessity of Indian life as air and water. T-2-38

- The spinning wheel is the one thing to which all must turn to in the Indian clime for the transition stage at any rate and the vast majority must for all time. T-2-63

- The spinning wheel is itself an exquisite piece of machinery. My head daily bows in reverence to its unknown inventor. XXV-476

- The spinning wheel for us is the foundation for all public corporate life. XXV-74

- The spinning wheel is the auspicious symbol of sharir yajna, body labour. XXV-56

- There is no better way of industrializing the villages of India than the spinning wheel. T-2-246

- If you will express the requisite purity of character in action, you cannot do it better than through the spinning wheel. T-2-377

- Every woman will tell the curious that with the disappearance of the spinning wheel vanished India’s happiness and prosperity. T-2-38

- There is no "playing with truth" in the Charkha programme, for satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth. XXV-587

- The socialism that India can assimilate is the socialism of the spinning wheel. T-3-284

- The study of Indian economics is the study of the spinning wheel. XXV-561

- The yajna of our age and for us is the spinning wheel. T-2-247

- The foundation of service and your real training lie in spinning khaddar. XXVI-378-9

- The restoration of spinning to its central place in India’s peaceful campaign for deliverance from the imperial yoke gives her women a special status. T-5-206

- Without proper, careful organisation of the spinning wheel and khaddar, there is absolutely no civil disobedience. XXVI-246

- There is a vital connection between satyagraha and charkha, and the more I find that belief challenged, the more I am confirmed in it. T-5-264

- The music of the spinning wheel will be as balm to your soul. MM-405

- Every widow I have met has recognized in the wheel a dear forgotten friend. T-2-38

- It was our love of foreign cloth that ousted the wheel from its position of dignity. T-2-63

- When the wheel was accepted as part of the national flag, it was surely implied that the spinning wheel would hum in every household. T-3-300

- Hand-spinning is designed to put millions of rupees in the hands of the poor villagers. MM-409

- If hand-spinning is an effective method of making India self-supporting, it must be made part of the franchise. XXV-317

- My Swaraj takes note of bhangis, dheds, dublas and the weakest of the weak, and except the spinning wheel I know no other thing which befriends all these. XXV-564

- A plea for the spinning wheel is a plea for recognizing the dignity of labour. T-2-63

- Hunger is the argument that is driving India to the spinning wheel. T-2-63

- India as a nation can live and die only for the spinning wheel. T-2-38

- Just as there are signs by which you can recognize violence with the naked eye, so is the spinning wheel to me a decisive sign of nonviolence. T-5-277

- Nothing can so quickly put the masses on their legs as the spinning wheel and all it means. XXVI-538

- Restore the spinning wheel to its place and you will solve the problem of poverty. XXVI-292

- The cause of the spinning wheel is too great and too good to have to rest on mere hero-worship. T-2-229

- If the poet* spun for half an hour daily, his poetry would gain in richness. T-2-215 (The reference here is to poet Rabindranath Tagore).

- If we are true servants of the masses, we would take pride in spinning for their sake. T-3-300

- One hour spent in spinning should be an hour of self-development for the spinner. T-7-381

- There is no yajna (sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student’s mind, to spiritualize his life. XXV-577

Chastity

- Chastity is one of the greatest disciplines without which the mind cannot attain requisite firmness. X-52

- Chastity is not a hothouse growth. T-2-249

Children

- Children wrapped up in cotton wool are not always proof against all temptation of contamination. MM-281

- Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. EWE-20

- Basic education links children, whether of the cities or villages, to all that is best and lasting in India. EWE-24

- The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children. MM-423

- The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we should learn not from the grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children. T-3-137

Christ-Christianity

- Jesus was the most active resister known perhaps to history. His was nonviolence par excellence. MGCG-301

- Once Jesus had blazed the trail, his twelve disciples could carry on his mission without his presence. MM-133

- Jesus never uttered a loftier or a grander truth than when he said that wisdom cometh out of the mouths of babes. MM-421

- Jesus, to me, is a great world teacher among others. T-4-75

- The message of Jesus has proved ineffective because the environment was unready to receive it.T-2-237

- Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule. T-2-341

- It is a first class human tragedy that people of the earth who claim to believe in the message of Jesus, whom they describe as the Prince of Peace, show little of that belief in actual practice. TIG-145

- Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian. TIG-68

- If I had to face only the Sermon on the Mount and my own interpretation of it, I should not hesitate to say, ‘O yes, I am a Christian.' T-2-29

- I do not accept the orthodox teaching that Jesus was or is God incarnate in the accepted sense or that he was or is the only son of God. XXV-85

- I love Christianity, Islam and many other faiths – through Hinduism. BUNCH-110

- The scriptures of Christians, Mussalmans and Hindus are all replete with the teaching of ahimsa. XXV-521

- The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwar of Hindus. T-4-252

Citizenship

- Education in the understanding of citizenship is a short-term affair if we are honest and earnest. MM-378

- The emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one’s life usefully is the best education for citizenship and, incidentally, it makes basic education self-sufficient. EWE-24

Civil Disobedience

- Civil disobedience is the assertion of a right which law should give but which it denies. T-6-13

- Civil disobedience can never be in general terms, such as for independence. T-6-31

- Civil disobedience is a stimulation for the fighters and a challenge to the opponent, in the present instance, authority. T-6-31

- Civil disobedience presupposes willing obedience of our self-imposed rules, and without it civil disobedience would be a cruel joke. T-5-96

- Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion. T-3-153

- Civil disobedience is the inherent right of a citizen. MM-166

- Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state has becomes lawless or, which is the same thing, corrupt. T-2-76

- Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and purity. T-2-76

- Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering. T-2-84

- Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing. XXV-365

- Civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence, directly or indirectly. XXVI-538

- Civil disobedience and excitement and intoxication go ill together. XXVI-246

- Individual civil disobedience was everybody’s inherent right, like the right of self-defence in normal life. T-7-34

- Mass civil disobedience was for the attainment of independence. T-7-34

- Mass civil disobedience is like an earthquake, a sort of general upheaval on the political plane. T-2-66

- Complete civil disobedience is a state of peaceful rebellion, a refusal to obey every single state-made law. T-2-52

- Aggressive civil disobedience should be confined to a vindication of the right of free speech and free association. T-2-76

- In placing civil disobedience before constructive work I was wrong and I did not profit by the Himalayan blunder that I had committed. T-5-291

- Disobedience, to be civil, has to be open and nonviolent. T-2-52

- Disobedience, to be civil, implies discipline, thought, care, attention.XXVI-246

- Disobedience that is wholly civil should never provoke retaliation. T-3-304

- Before civil disobedience can be practised on a vast scale, people must learn the art of civil or voluntary obedience. T-4-10

- Active nonviolence is necessary for those who will offer civil disobedience but the will and proper training are enough for the people to co-operate with those who are chosen for civil disobedience. T-5-281

- Non co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha. XXV-489

- The Charkha, which is the embodiment of willing obedience and calm persistence, must therefore succeed before there is civil disobedience. XXV-587

- Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience. T-5-69

- Satyagraha, of which civil resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life. T-3-298

- When neglect of the call means a denial of God, civil disobedience becomes a peremptory duty. T-2-52

- Indeed, a civil resister offers resistance only when peace becomes impossible. T-3-218

- Ours is a civil fight, and imprisonment as a civil prisoner has got to be earned by the strict observance of the programme. T-5-261

- If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done. XXV-365

- For satyagraha and its offshoots, non co-operation and civil resistance are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. T-2-5

- The privilege of resisting or disobeying a particular law or order accrues only to him who gives willing and unswerving obedience to the laws laid down for him. T-5-99

Civilization

- Civilizations have come and gone and, in spite of our vaunted progress, I am tempted to ask again and again, ‘To what purpose? T-2-29

- Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. X-21

- Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. X-37

- Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. MM-189

- This civilization is such that one has only to be patient and it will be self-destroyed. X-21

- Is a civilization worth the name, which requires, for its existence the very doubtful prop of a racial legislation and a lynch law? T-7-141

- Modern civilization has taught us to convert night into day and golden silence into brazen din and noise. TIG-60

- The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing. XXVI-258

- Further march of civilization seems to employ increasing domination of man over beast, together with a growingly humane method of using them. MM-426

- The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between the modern civilization, which is the kingdom of Satan, and the ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God. X-189

- I want co-operation between nations for the salvaging of civilization, but co-operation presupposes free nations worthy of co-operation. MM-316

- Civilization based on nonviolence must be different from that organised on violence. T-5-209

Civil Resistance

- In mass civil resistance leadership is essential; in individual civil resistance every resister is his own leader. T-3-310

Cleanliness

- It does not require money to be neat, clean and dignified. MM-356

- Members of a family will keep their house clean, but they will not be interested in the neighbour’s. T-4-17

Coercion

- Coercion cannot but result in chaos in the end. T-7-61

- The man who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. T-7-61

- Since satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction, it seeks never to use the slightest coercion. XXVI-267

- My method is conversion, not coercion; it is self-suffering, not the suffering of the tyrant. T-2-327

Communism-Bolshevism

- Communism, as I have understood it, is a natural corollary of socialism. MM-256

- The socialistic conception of the West was born in an environment reeking with violence. MM-251

- Our socialism or communism should be based on nonviolence and on harmonious co-operation of labour and capital, landlord and tenant. MM-255

- I claim to be a foremost communist although I make use of cars and other facilities offered to me by the rich. MM-248

- I can no more tolerate the yoke of Bolshevism (as described by Mr. Roy*) than of capitalism. XXV-531

*M. N. Roy- Radical Humanist

Compromise

- The essential condition of a compromise is that there should be nothing humiliating and nothing panicky about it. T-3-67

Compulsion

- Compulsion means submission of Protestants to the thing they oppose under pain of being fined or imprisoned. XXV-316

Concentration

- Counting beads with the name of Allah on one’s lips whilst the mind wanders in all directions is worse than useless. TIG-52

Conduct

- The safest rule of conduct is to claim kinship when we want to do service, and not to insist on kinship when we want to assert a right. MM-418

- I am painfully aware of the fact that conduct everywhere falls far short of belief. T-2-294

Confession

- Confession of error is like a broom that sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface cleaner than before. T-2-84

- Prayer is a confession of one’s unworthiness and weakness. TIG-48

- Indeed, the errors and my prompt confessions have made me surer, if possible, of my insight into the implications of truth and ahimsa. T-2-2

Conscience

- Conscience can reside only in a delicately tuned breast. XXV-24

- 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. TIG-29

Constructive Programme

- Remember that no political programme can stand without the constructive programme. T-4-156

Contentment

- I would like people to compete with me in my contentment. It is the richest treasure I have won. XXVI-662

Control

- If my nonviolence is to be contagious and infectious, I must acquire greater control over my thoughts. MM-277

Conversion

- Conversion is a matter of the heart and reason. An appeal to the heart and reason can only be made through conduct. XXVI-342

- Conversion without a clean heart is a denial of God and religion. T-4-79

- Conversion without cleanness of heart can only be a matter of sorrow, not joy, to a godly person. T-4-79

- Surely conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows His creatures’ hearts. T-4-79

- I believe in conversion of mankind, not its destruction. XXV-531

Co-operation

- I was a co-operator too in the sense that I non-co-operated for co-operation, and even then I said that if I could carry the country forward by co-operation I should co-operate. T-4-155

- My non-co-operation is a token of my earnest longing for real heart co-operation in the place of co-operation falsely so called. T-2-382

- Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as co-operation with good. T-2-45

- At times, non-co-operation becomes as much a duty as co-operation. T-5-276

- Nonviolent action without the co-operation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended result. T-5-132

- The nation’s non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to co-operate within on its own terms, as is every nation’s right and every good government’s duty.T-2-46

- A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed. T-2-45

- Drops in separation could only fade away, drops in co-operation made the ocean, which carried on its broad bosom the ocean greyhounds. T-8-97

- A drop torn from the ocean perishes without doing any good. T-7-343

Copyright

- Copyright is not a natural thing. It is a modern institution, perhaps desirable to a certain extent. T-2-223

- Writings in the journals which I have the privilege of editing must be common property. T-2-223

Correction

- Error ceases to be error when it is corrected. T-5-245

Corruption

- Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today. T-3-301

Cottage Industry

- The cottage industry of India had to perish in order that Lancashire might flourish. T-3-71

Courage

- Human dignity demands the courage to defend oneself. XXVI-220

- Ahimsa calls for the strength and courage to suffer without retaliation, to receive blows without returning any. T-7-75

Cow

- The cow to me is a sermon on pity. XXVI-545

- The cow is the purest type of sub-human life. MM-387

- Mother cow is as useful dead as when she is alive. MM-387

- Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain. MM-387

- Mother cow is in many ways better than the mother who gave us birth. MM-387

- Man, through the cow, is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. T-2-51

- Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world. T-2-51

- Cow protection to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in the human evolution.T-2-51

- We cry for cow protection in the name of religion, but we refuse protection to the human cow in the shape of the girl widow. T-2-277

- Cow protection can only be secured by cultivating universal friendliness, i.e. ahimsa. XXV-520

- Cow protection means protection of the weak, the helpless, the dumb and the deaf. XXVI-545

- Cow protection to me is infinitely more than mere protection of the cow. XXVI-545

- The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection. MM-388

- Cow preservation is an article of faith in Hinduism. T-3-290

- The only way Hindus can convert the whole world to cow protection is by giving an object-lesson in cow protection and all it means. XXV-436

- My religion teaches me that I should, by my personal conduct, instill into the minds of those who might hold different views, the conviction that cow-killing is a sin. XXV-518

- By ahimsa we will be able to save the cow and also win the friendship of the English. XXV-520

- When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat; it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world. XXV-459

- If I were overfull of pity for the cow, I should sacrifice my life to save her but not to take my brother’s. X-30

- Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion two sides of the same coin. XXV-519

- Cow-slaughter can never be stopped by law. MM-388

- The cow can be saved only if buffalo-breeding is given up. T-2-267

- It is no part of religion to breed buffaloes or, for that matter, cows. T-2-267

- Nowhere in the world you find such skeletons of cows and bullocks as you do in our cow-worshipping India. XXV-518

Coward-Cowardice

- Cowardice is incompatible with divine wisdom. T-3-270

- Cowardice is no sign of belief in God. T-4-252

- Better by far than cowardice is killing and being killed in battle. MOG-17

- Could there be a greater proof of our cowardice than fighting amongst ourselves? T-7-167

- No police or military in the world can protect people who are cowards. T-7-255

- There can be no friendship between cowards, or cowards and brave men. XXV-436

- It was the cowards who died many times before their death. T-7-110

- It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and sin against God. T-2-85

- Nonviolence is the virtue of the manly. The coward is innocent of it. XXV-138

- Nonviolence and cowardice go ill together. T-5-131

- Between violence and cowardly flight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. T-2-131

- Nonviolence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon of the brave. T-7-30

- To change one’s religion under the threat of force was no conversion, but rather cowardice. T-7-274

- To retaliate against the relatives of the co-religionists of the wrong-doer is a cowardly act. MM-399

- I can no more preach nonviolence to a cowardly man than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. T-2-131

- Far better than emasculation would be the bravery of those who use physical force. Far better than cowardice would be meeting one’s death fighting. T-4-237

- 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. T-2-4

- The truth is that cowardice itself is violence of a subtle type and therefore dangerous and far more difficult to eradicate than the habit of physical violence. XXV-437

- Running away for fear of death, leaving one’s dear ones, temples or music to take care of themselves, is irreligion; it is cowardice. XXV-138

- Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. T-2-4

- Ahimsa is an attribute of the brave. Cowardice and ahimsa don’t go together any more than water and fire. T-5-189

- For thousands to do to death a few hundreds is no bravery. It is worse than cowardice. It is unworthy of nationalism, of any religion. T-7-252

Creator

- Religion is the tie that binds one to one’s Creator, and whilst the body perishes, as it has to, religion persists even after death. T-4-41

- When I admire the wonder of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in worship of the Creator. T-2-160

Crime

- Crime is like a disease, like any other malady, and is a product of the prevalent social system. MM-160

- Surrender is no mitigation of the crime. It may easily be simple bravado. XXV-442

Criticism

- Healthy, well-informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life. T-4-206

- Volunteers should regard criticism as the food on which they live. XXV-600

- I would like to say that even the teaching of the Koran cannot be exempt from criticism. XXVI-226

- Intolerance of criticism, even of what one may prize as dear as life itself, is not conducive to the growth of public corporate life.XXVI-234

- Surely, Islam has nothing to fear from criticism even if it is unreasonable. XXVI-227

Cruel

- God cannot be so cruel and unjust as to make distinctions of high and low between man and man, and woman and woman. T-3-234

Culture

- A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. T-5-10

- Mutual courtesy and respect is the foundation of culture. T-3-258

- No culture can live if it attempts to be exclusive. EWE-20

- It is my firm opinion that no culture has treasures as rich as ours has. MM-430

- The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing. XXVI-258

- The ideal is a synthesis of the different cultures that have come to stay in India, that have influenced Indian life, and that, in their turn, have themselves been influenced by the spirit of the soil. T-2-23

- I claim to represent all the cultures, for my religion, whatever it may be called, demands the fulfillment of all the cultures. T-5-272

D

Daridranarayana

- Daridranarayana is insatiable and there is room enough in his belly for all the money and ornaments you can give. T-2-272

- The real Daridranarayana even I have not seen, but know only through my imagination. T-2-272

- I would like to assure those who would serve Daridranarayana that there is music, art, economy and joy in the spinning wheel. T-2-275

- Of all the myriad of Gods, Daridranarayana is the most sacred, inasmuch as it represents the untold millions of poor people as distinguished from the few rich people. T-2-377

- It is my great misfortune that I have to measure your love by the money and gifts you give for Daridranarayana. T-2-354

Death

- Death is at any time blessed, but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause, that is, truth. T-2-237

- Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. T-2-237

- Death on the battlefield is welcome to a soldier. XXV-329

- To die in the act of killing is, in essence, to die defeated. MM-169

- Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state. XXV-333

- It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. T-3-4

- A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect. MM-462

- Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy. T-8-205

- If love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. TIG-18

- True ahimsa should wear a smile even on a deathbed brought about by an assailant. It is only with that ahimsa that we can convert our opponents and win their love. T-5-243

- It was the cowards who died many times before their death. T-7-110

- If we weep for all the deaths in our country, the tears in our eyes would never dry. TIG-147

- Running away for fear of death, leaving one’s dear ones, temples or music to take care of themselves, is irreligion; it is cowardice. XXV-138

- Where death without resistance or death after resistance is the only way, neither party should think of resorting to law-courts or help from the government. XXV-138

- What is imprisonment to the man who is fearless of death itself? T-2-65

- I came alone in this world, I have walked alone in the valley of the shadow of death, and I shall quit alone when the time comes. T-7-147

- Only my death will determine whether I am ‘Mahomed Gandhi’, Jinnah’s slave, destroyer of the Hindu religion or its true servant and protector.T-7-370

- I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the supreme good.T-2-313

- You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, and I am dead.TIG-35

- It is much more difficult to live for nonviolence than to die for it.T-5-4

- History is replete with instances of men, who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents. T-3-3

Debt

- In the billiard room and on the tennis-court think of the big debt that is being piled against you from day to day. T-2-272

- What God may have enabled me to do is but a repayment of debt, and he who repays a debt deserves no praise.T-4-257

Deception

- Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak.T-2-20

Defeat

- Heroes are made in the hour of defeat. Success is, therefore, well described as a series of glorious defeats. XXV-588

- Never own defeat in a sacred cause and make up your minds henceforth that you will be pure and that you will find a response from God. TIG-58

- Defeat has no place in the dictionary of nonviolence. T-4-139

Defence

- It is the Maginot Line* that has made the Siegfried Line** necessary and vice versa. T-5-178

* For defence of France constructed by France on her frontier

**For defence of Germany constructed by Germany on her frontier

- Whether one or many, I must declare my faith that it is better for India to discard violence altogether even for defending her borders.T-5-178

Democracy

- Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war of the knife between different ideas.T-3-291

- Democracy can only represent the average if not less than the average. MM-343

- The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation. T-5-75

- Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine. T-5-104

- Democracy demands patient instruction on it before legislation. MM-344

- Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world. MM-338

- Democracy and dependence on the military and police are incompatible. MM-347

- Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable to be greatly abused. MM-345

- Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all, but let not democracy degenerate into mobocracy. MM-345

- Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep. MM-341

- Democracy and violence can ill go together. MM-347

- Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side. MM-342

- The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within. T-3-301

- In the days of democracy there is no such thing as active loyalty to a person. You are, therefore, loyal or disloyal to institutions. T-3-25

- Democracy will break under the strain of apron strings. It can exist only on trust. MM-339

- Islam was nothing if it did not spell complete democracy. T-7-312

- My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. T-5-277

- To safeguard democracy people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness. MM-339

- What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education. T-7-209

- Intolerance, discourtesy and harshness are taboo in all good societies and are surely contrary to the spirit of democracy. MM-342

- The line of demarcation between democracy and monocracy is often thin, but rigid and stronger than unbreakable steel. MM-346

- In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself. MM-338

- The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular. MM-347

- The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of heart. MM-338

- People in a democracy should be satisfied with drawing the Government’s attention to a mistake, if any. MM-341

- You have to uphold democracy, for, democracy and dependence on the military and the police are incompatible. T-7-284

- Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded. MM-341

- No perfect democracy is possible without perfect nonviolence at the back of it. MM-348

- The only force at the disposal of democracy is that of public opinion. T-8-100

- True democracy is not inconsistent with a few persons representing the spirit, the hope and the aspirations of those whom they claim to represent. T-3-301

- The voice of the people may be said to be God’s voice, the voice of the Panchayat. MM-340

- A born democrat is a born disciplinarian. T-5-104

- A democrat must be utterly selfless. He must think and dream not in terms of self or of party, but only of democracy. T-5-104

- 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. MM-347

- A democratic organization has to dare to do the right at all costs. MM-346

- Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.T-3-301

Dependence

- No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts imposed by the conquering nation. T-2-13

Desire

- When there is no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or himsa. T-2-311

Despair

- "Despair" is a term which does not occur in my dictionary. XXVI-266

- I shall despair when I despair of myself, of God and humanity. XXVI-266

Destiny

- Man is the maker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny. XXVI-294

- To find Truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, to become perfect.T-2-73

Devotee – Devotion (Bhakti)

- Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our effusiveness. TIG-20

- Devotion required by the Gita is not soft-hearted effusiveness. T-2-309

- Without devotion, action and knowledge are cold and dry, and may even become shackles.MOG-26

- A devotee may use, if he likes, rosaries, forehead marks, make offerings, but these things are not a test of his devotion.T-2-309

- A devote of Rama may be said to be the same as the steadfast one (sthitaprajnya) of the Gita.TIG-111

- The path of bhakti, karma, love, as expounded in the Gita, leaves no room for the despising of man by man. T-2-278

- Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire. TIG-99

- Renunciation is the central sun, around which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. TIG-99

- In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place.T-2-309

Diagnosis

- A correct diagnosis is three-fourths the remedy. T-5-129

Dignity

- The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not c1othing.XXVI-258

Diplomacy

- I know no diplomacy save that of truth.XXV-423

Disarmament

- A free India will throw all her weight in favour of world disarmament and should herself be prepared to give a lead in this.T-5-319

Discipline

- True discipline gives enthusiastic obedience to instructions even though they do not satisfy the reason. T-5-266

- A disciplined army of a few hundred picked men has routed countless undisciplined hordes. XXVI-564

- Conscience is the ripe fruit of strictest discipline. XXV-23

- A student’s life has been rightly likened to the life of a sanyasi. He must be the embodiment of simple living and high thinking. He must be discipline incarnate. His pleasure is derived from his studies. T-8-71

- Unless discipline is rooted in nonviolence, it might prove a source of infinite mischief. T-4-256

- For winning Swaraj one requires iron discipline. XXV-5

- A born democrat is a born disciplinarian. T-5-104

- A man who would interpret the scriptures must have spiritual discipline. MOG-13

- Chastity is one of the greatest disciplines without which the mind cannot attain requisite firmness. X-52

- I have not known of a war gained by a rabble, but I have known of wars gained by disciplined armies. T-2-13

- Non-co-operation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opponents views.T-2-12

Disease

- We are like the nurses, who may not leave their patients because they are reported to have an incurable disease.T-4-73

Dishonesty

- A businessman who lies and cheats his simple minded and ignorant customers cannot hope to be saved.T-7-124

Distinctions

- Labour is a great levelers of all distinctions. T-8-97

Distrust

- It is weakness which breeds fear, and fear breeds distrust.T-2-123

Divine Rights

- There is no such thing as the divine right of the kings to rule and the humble duty of the ryots to pay respectful obedience to their masters.T-8-31

Divinity

- Divine knowledge is not borrowed from books. It has to be realized by oneself. TIG-94

- The meaning of prayer is that I want to evoke that Divinity without me. T-5-147

- The Divine Radio is always singing, if we could only make ourselves ready to listen to it, but it is impossible to listen without silence. TIG-60

- There is a divine purpose behind every physical calamity. TIG-24

- I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is as divine as Krishna or Rama or Muhammad or Zoroaster. TIG-78

- My belief in the Hindu scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired. TIG-75

Doctor

- A doctor who uses his talent to pander to the vice of his patient degrades himself and his patient. TIG-114

Dominion Status

- Dominion status is nothing if it does not mean the ability of the dominion in question to stand by itself. T-5-254

- My conception of dominion status implies present ability to sever the British connection if I wish to. T-2-382

Dream

- Close the day with prayer so that you may have a peaceful night free from dreams and nightmares. TIG-43

Drink

- Drink makes a man forget himself. He ceases to be a man for the time being. He becomes less than a beast. XXVI-350

- It is wrong and immoral for a nation to supply intoxicating liquor to those who are addicted to drink.XXV-474

Duty

- Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. X-37

- A duty religiously performed carries with it several other important consequences. T-3-225

- A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction. T-2-324

- Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty. TIG-37

- Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practise it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence. T-7-61

- Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms. X-37

- Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and performed their duties came naturally by their rights. XXV-573

- A pure fast, like duty, is its own reward. T-8-247

- The true source of rights is duty. T-2-179

- A teetotaler would regard it as his duty to associate with his drunkard brother for the purpose of weaning him from the evil habit. XXVI-65

- If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o’-the-wisp. TIG-152

- If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. XXV-564

- A wretched parent who claims obedience from his children, without first doing his duty by them, excites nothing but contempt. T-8-31

- He who is ever brooding over result often loses nerve in the performance of his duty. T-2-310

- No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who thought of duties. XXV-573

- You cannot neglect the nearer duty for the sake of a remote. XXV-160

- Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties. T-4-13

- In my humble opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good. T-2-100

- I know, too, that performance of one’s duty should be independent of public opinion. T-2-320

- I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it. T-2-26222

- No displeasure, even of the dearest friends, can put me off the duty I see clearly in front of me. T-5-296

E

Earth

- This little globe of ours is not a toy of yesterday. MM-286

Earthquake

- A man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake (Earthquake in Bihar, 15th January, 1934) is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins. T-3-247

Economics

- Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore sinful. MM-263

- That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values. XXV-475

- The study of Indian economics is the study of the spinning wheel. XXV-561

- We can try to canalize economic trends, we can’t run against them in a head-on collision. T-7-185

Education

- An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer. T-5-43

- Education should be so revolutionized as to answer the wants of the poorest villager, instead of answering those of an imperial exploiter. T-4-182

- Education in the understanding of citizenship is a short-term affair if we are honest and earnest. MM-378

- Basic education links children, whether of the cities or the villages, to all that is best and lasting in India. T-6-23

- Is not education the art of drawing out full manhood of the children under training? XXVI-275

- Literacy in itself is no education. MM-379

- Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning. EWE-22

- Literary education should follow the education of the hand - the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. EWE-21

- Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated. EWE-32

- True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth. XXVI-275

- What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education. T-7-209

- National education to be truly national must reflect the national condition for the time being. XXVI-275

- The function of Nayee-Talim is not to teach an occupation, but through it to develop the whole man. T-7-384

- I believe that religious education must be the sole concern of religious associations. EWE-30

- By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man-body, mind and spirit. MM-379

- By spiritual training I mean education of the heart. EWE-21

- Experience gained in two schools under my control has taught me that punishment does not purify, if anything, it hardens children. T-2-218

- I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little children and making it the beginning of learning. T-4-164

- I do regard spinning and weaving as a necessary part of any national system of education. XXVI-275

- The aim of university education should be to turn out true servants of the people who will live and die for the country’s freedom. MM-381

- A balanced intellect presupposes a harmonious growth of body, mind and soul. MM-379

- Love requires that true education should be easily accessible to all and should be of use to every villager in his daily life. MM-381

- The notion of education through handicrafts rises from the contemplation of truth and love permeating life’s activities. MM-381

- Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisites for acquiring learning of any kind. MM-377

- If we want to impart education best suited to the needs of the villagers, we should take the vidyapith to the villages. T-4-163

- In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a tenfold return to the people even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop.EWE-28

- All education in a country has got to be demonstrably in promotion of the progress of the country in which it is given. MM-381

- Schools and colleges are really a factory for turning out clerks for the Government. T-2-13

- The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English. EWE-11

- Emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one’s life usefully is the best education for citizenship. EWE-24

Effort

- Pleasure lies in making an effort, not in its fulfillment. T-5-174

Employment

- Khadi will cease to have any value in my eyes if it does not usefully employ the millions. T-7-187

Enemy

- I recognise no one as my enemy on the face of the earth. XXVI-268

- In the dictionary of satyagraha, there is no enemy. T-5-162

- No man could look upon another as his enemy unless he first became his own enemy. T-7-204

Englishman-English Language

- Englishmen must learn to be Brahmins, not banias. MM-325

- Civilization is not an incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it. X-21

- Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land. T-2-40

- Swaraj means, a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English. T-2-19

- However virile the English language may be, it can never become the language of the masses of India. T-7-51

- The English language is so elastic that you can find another word to say the same thing. T-5-150

- If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide. T-7-51

- We, the English educated Indians, often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indians is the whole of India. T-2-326

- 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. MM-322

- I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage. XX-159

- My love of the British is equal to that of my own people. MM-323

- My mission is to convert every Indian, every Englishman and finally the world to nonviolence for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic, social or religious. T-5-221

- My personal religion enables me to serve my countrymen without hurting the English or, for that matter, anybody else. MM-322

- My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper. T-8-128

- If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian. X-41

- Personally I crave not for ‘independence’, which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke. T-2-326

- By patriotism I mean the welfare of all people, and if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them. X-41

- Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner. T-2-327

- To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj. EWE-46

- A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women. XIV-46

- Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English. EWE-9

- This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has unfitted us for true national service. EWE-8

- Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought. EWE-10

- The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English. EWE-11

- We Hindus and Mohamedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed them to put us asunder. X-30

- It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment. T-2-18

- My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica. T-2-201

- Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule. T-2-341

- No matter what the cause was and wherever it was, Indian governments must never requisition the services of British soldiers to deal with civil disturbances. T-7-359

- There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before a proper settlement is arrived at. XXVI-233

- Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds. XXV-397

- The Britisher is the top dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country. T-3-71

- That I want to destroy British imperialism is another matter, but I want to do so by converting those who are associated with it. T-4-93

- India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before. T-2-100

- The British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe. T-5-192

- My conception of dominion status implies present ability to severe the British connection if I wish to. T-2-382

- The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers. T-2-20

- My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention." XXVI-233

- Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy? T-5-167

- Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as such boycott brought about by hand-spinning and khaddar. XXV-475

- I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India. XXV-489

- The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners. T-5-255

- What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of the British or foreign rule. T-7-194

- Our nonviolence vis-à-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak. MM-349

- I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers. XXV-489

- The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions. T-5-237

- The collectors of revenue and the policeman are the only symbols by which millions in India’s villages know British rule. T-7-215

- It was not through democratic methods that Britain bagged India. T-5-277

- For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of English or the disappearance of Englishmen. T-2-200

- It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity of India, to entertain for one single moment hatred towards Englishmen. T-2-199

- If you must kill English officials, why not kill me instead? T-3-102

- I am just not thinking of India’s deliverance. It will come, but will it be worth if England and France fall, or if they come out victorious over Germany ruined and humbled? T-5-161

- I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people. T-5-295

- My attitude towards the British is one of utter friendliness and respect. XXVI-52

- I may fight the British ruler, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary treasures. T-4-93

- By ahimsa we will be able to save the cow and also win the friendship of the English. XXV-520

Equality

- Equality of sexes does not mean equality of occupations. MM-296

- Economic equality of my conception does not mean that everyone will literally have the same amount. MM-267

- The real meaning of economic equality is "To each according to his need." MM-267

- What is equality of rights between a giant and a dwarf? T-3-71

- Economic equality is the master-key to nonviolent independence. MM-257

- The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince’s head. MM-248

- No two leaves were alike, and yet there is no antagonism between them or between the branches on which they grow. T-7-115

- Under ideal conditions, the barrister and the bhangi (sweeper) should both get the same payment. T-8-63

- If a single man demanded as much as a man with a wife and four children, then that would be a violation of the concept of economic equality. T-7-47

- "All men are born equal and free" is not Nature’s law in the literal sense. MM-350

- My idea of society is that while we are born equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportunity, all have not the same capacity. MM-266

- Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper, by saying that the former need more. T-7-47

- The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural needs and no more. MM-268

- The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality. T-7-47

- No man is a true believer unless he desireth for his brother that which he desireth for himself. T-7-309

- How can I even secretly harbour the thought that my neighbour’s faith is inferior to mine? T-3-257

Ethics

- Teaching of fundamental ethics is undoubtedly a function of the state. TIG-151

- By religion I have not in mind fundamental ethics but what goes by the name of denominationalism. EWE-31

- To me God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality; God is fearlessness. TIG-10

Euclid

- Euclid’s line is one without breadth, but no one has so far been able to draw it and never will. MM-131

- If Euclid’s point, thought incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. MM-372

- Absolute trusteeship is an abstraction like Euclid’s definition of a point, and its equally unattainable. MM-372

Europe

- Europe is today only nominally Christian. It is really worshipping Mammon. TIG-143

- European civilization is no doubt suited for the Europeans but it will mean ruin for India, if we endeavour to copy it. T-3-94

- An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity. T-2-46

- A free India will claim to examine every European interest on its merits and that which conflicts with the national interest will go by the board. T-5-192

Evil

- Not until we have reduced ourselves to nothingness can we conquer the evil in us. TIG-56

- He who has a living faith in God will not do evil deeds with the name of God on his lips. T-4-252

- Non-co-operation is a protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil. T-2-45

- Nonviolence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not human beings themselves. T-8-281

- Real non-co-operation is non-co-operation with evil and not with the evildoer. T-2-200

- In a strictly scientific sense God is at the bottom of both good and evil. TIG-25

- Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil.TIG-66

Evolution

- Like man, the meaning of great writings suffers evolution. T-2-311

- The religion of our conception, thus imperfect, is always subject to a process of evolution and re-interpretation. TIG-65

Experiments

- My experiments I hold to be infinitely more important than the best equipped Himalayan expeditions. MM-8

Exploitation

- The divorce of intellect from body labour has made us perhaps the shortest-lived, most resourceless and most exploited nation on earth. T-3-289

- Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war. T-7-2

- Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner. T-2-327

F

Faith

- Faith becomes lame, when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason. T-7-36

- A faith gained in strength only when people were willing to lay down their lives for it. T-7-386

- Faith is like the Himalaya mountains which cannot possibly change. T-3-244

- Faith is not a delicate flower which would wither away under the slightest stormy weather. T-3-244

- Robust faith in oneself and brave trust of the opponent, so called or real, is the best safeguard. T-8-133

- Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to truth and love. T-2-313

- A living faith cannot be manufactured by the rule of majority. MM-341

- What is faith worth if it is not translated into action? T-5-180

- If you have faith in the cause and the means and in God, the hot sun will be cool for you. T-2-182

- It is poor faith that needs fair weather for standing firm. That alone is true faith that stands the foulest weather. XXV-337

- Nothing can be more hurtful to an honourable man than that he should be accused of bad faith. XX-160

- Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart. TIG-70

- Every living faith must have within itself the power of rejuvenation if it is to live. TIG-73

- Work without faith is like an attempt to reach the bottom of a bottomless pit. MM-5

- A man with a grain of faith in God never loses hope, because he ever believes in the ultimate triumph of Truth. XXV-188

- A man of faith does not bargain or stipulate with God. XXV-88

- Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs the matchless and pure strength of faith. TIG-112

- Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God. T-5-14

- A satyagrahi should have a living faith in God. T-5-92

- The Gita is not for those who have no faith. T-2-2

- I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith. T-5-222

- I have made the world’s faith in God my own and as my faith is effaceable, I regard that faith as amounting to experience. TIG-4

- I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence. T-2-314

- It is the faith and perseverance and single-mindedness with which Hitler has perfected his weapons of destruction that commands my admiration. T-5-291

- God’s word is: ‘He who strives never perishes’. I have implicit faith in that promise. TIG-4

- My effort should never be to undermine another’s faith but to make him a better follower of his own faith. T-2-343

- My faith in non-co-operation is as bright as ever. XXV-336

- My faith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness. MM-132

- My faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, ‘God is, was and ever shall be’. TIG-13

- The only tyrant I accept in this world is the ‘still small voice’ within. MM-14

- My implicit faith in nonviolence does mean yielding to minorities when they are really weak. MM-343

- Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. T-2-97

- With me the connection between the cosmic phenomena and human behaviour is a living faith that draws me nearer to God, humbles me and makes me readier for facing Him. T-3-251

- Without a belief in my programme and without an acceptance of my condition, you will ruin me, ruin yourselves and ruin the cause. T-5-265

- All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect and liable to error. TIG-65

- Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one’s own. TIG-64

- What faith can you place in a general or a soldier who lacks resolution and determination, who says, ‘I shall keep guard as long as I can’? T-2-365

- Can a general fight on the strength of soldiers, who, he knows, have no faith in him? T-5-266

- Decency requires that when a programme is approved by the majority, all should carry it out faithfully. T-5-225

- Even as a tree has a single trunk, but many branches and leaves, there is one religion but any number of faiths. TIG-65

- He who would in his own person test the fact of God’s presence can do so by a living faith.T-2-213

- If you have no character to lose, people will have no faith in you. T-3-34

- Khaddar is an activity that can absorb all the time of all available men and women and grown-up children, if they have faith. XXV-365

- Legal imposition avoids the necessity of honour or good faith. XXVI-162

- Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within. TIG-55

- The renunciation of the Gita is the acid test of faith. T-2-310

- Those who are lacking in bhakti (devotion), lacking in faith, are ill qualified to interpret the scriptures. TIG-96

Fast – Fasting

- Fasting and prayer are common injunctions in my religion. T-2-152

- Fasting for light and penance is a hoary institution. T-3-165

- A pure fast, like duty, is its own reward. T-8-247

- Fasting is an institution as old as Adam. It has been resorted to for self-purification or for some ends, noble as well as ignoble. T-5-61

- A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer. MM-35

- A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free. MM-35

- Fasts should not be undertaken out of anger. Anger is a short madness. T-8-5

- All fasting and all penance must, as far as possible, be secret. T-2-86

- What the eyes are for the outer world, fasts are for the inner. T-2-218

- A fast to be true must be accompanied by a readiness to receive pure thoughts and determination to resist all Satan’s temptations. TIG-52

- When a man fasts, it is not the gallons of water he drinks that sustains him, but God. T-8-108

- My fast is, among other things, meant to qualify me for achieving that equal and selfless love. T-2-151

- My fast is a matter between God and myself. T-2-150

- My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one can not remove, one must fast and pray. T-2-148

- My austerities, fasting and prayers are, I know, of no value, if I rely upon them for reforming me. TIG-153

Fear – Fearless

- Fear is a disease worse than malaria or kalaazar; these diseases kill the body, fear kills the soul. T-2-304

- Fear of disease kills more men than disease itself. T-7-110

- A fear-stricken person can never know God, and one who knows God will never fear the mortal man. T-2-304

- The fear of the judge within is more terrible than that of the one without. T-2-47

- Where there is fear, there is no religion. T-2-230

- There is always the fear of self-righteousness possessing us, the fear of arrogating to ourselves a superiority that we do not possess. T-5-243

- It is weakness which breeds fear, and fear breeds distrust. T-2-133

- There would be no one to frighten you if you refuse to be afraid. T-2-302

- The man who fears man falls from the estate of man. Fear God alone. T-2-302

- The greatest help you can give me is to banish fear from your hearts. T-7-260

- External fears cease of their own accord when once we have conquered these traitors within the camp. MM-60

- For a nonviolent person the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him. T-5-304

- Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. XXV-563

- Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. XXV-563

- A man who throws himself on God ceases to fear man. T-2-369

- It needs more than a heart of oak to shed all fear except the fear of God. T-4-33

- You will find that God is always by the side of the fearless. Therefore, we should fear Him alone and seek His protection. T-7-273

- The golden rule is to act fearlessly upon what one believes to be right. MM-60

- Fearlessness presupposes calmness and peace of mind. MM-60

Fight

- I am convinced that the masses do not want to fight if the leaders do not. MM-400

- My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity. T-3-168

Fire

- An incendiary uses fire for destructive and nefarious purposes, a housewife makes daily use of it in preparing nourishing food for mankind. MM-448

Flag

- A national spirit is necessary for national existence. A flag is a material aid to the development of such a spirit. XXVI-544

Flattery

- Flattery and anger are the two sides of weakness, one the obverse, other the reverse. The reverse – anger – is worse than the obverse – flattery. XXV-574

Force

- Love is the subtlest force in the world. XXV-392

- The force of nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the material forces of nature, like electricity. T-3-112

- The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms invented by man’s ingenuity. T-5-281

- The truth is that God is the force. He is the essence of life. He is pure and undefiled consciousness. He is eternal. TIG-84

- To conquer subtle passions, seems to me, to be harder by far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. TIG-58

- The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is. XXV-392

Foreign Cloth

- Love of foreign cloth has brought foreign domination, pauperism and, what is worst, shame to many a home. T-2-55

- Untouchability of foreign cloth is as much a virtue with all of us as untouchability of the suppressed classes must be a sin with every devout Hindu. T-2-53

- In burning my foreign cloths, I burn my shame. T-2-64

Forgiveness

- Forgiveness is the quality of the brave, not of the cowardly. MM-473

- Forgiveness is a quality of the soul and therefore a positive quality. MM-420

- The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. MM-421

- A definite forgiveness would mean a definite recognition of our strength. T-2-5

- A mouse hardly forgives a cat when it allows itself to be torn to pieces by her. T-24

- Forgiveness adorns a soldier. T-4-2

- With enlightened forgiveness must come a mighty wave of strength in us, which would make it impossible for a Dyer and a Frank Johnson to heap affront on India’s devoted head. T-2-4

Freedom

- Freedom of a nation cannot be won by solitary acts of heroism, though they may be of the true type, never by heroism so called. T-2-333

- Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves. MM-311

- Freedom of worship, even of public speech, would become a farce if interference became the order of the day. T-8-132

- Freedom received though the efforts of others, however benevolent, cannot be retained when such effort is withdrawn. T-5-276

- Freedom battles are not fought without paying heavy prices. T-5-57

- No charter of freedom will be worth looking at which does not ensure the same measure of freedom for the minorities as for the majority. T-5-201

- No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will. T-7-113

- No society can possibly be built on a denial of individual freedom. MM-312

- When freedom is in jeopardy, non-co-operation may be a duty and prison may be a palace. XXV-393

- God demands nothing less than complete self – surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. TIG-57

- Is it not possible for us all to realize that the masses will never mount to freedom through murder? T-5-258

- True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will, anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. T-2-318

- Bomb–throwers have discredited the cause of freedom, in whose name they threw the bombs. T-2-357

- There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it. T-7-95

- Freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth. TIG-37

- Freedom of India will demonstrate to all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is very near. TIG-7-2

- India’s freedom will not be won by violence but only by the purest suffering without retaliation. XXV-277

- We want freedom for our country, but not at the expense or exploitation of others, not so as to degrade other countries. T-2-200

- I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be swept off my feet by any of them. EWE-11

- If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian. X-41

- I would far rather that India perished than that she won freedom at the sacrifice of truth. T-3-133

- I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning freedom for India. T-3-113

- My interest in India’s freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise. T-2-126

- For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of England or the disappearance of Englishmen. T-2-200

- Through realization of freedom of India, I hope to realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of man. T-2-353

- 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. T-5-193

- Though we are politically free, we are hardly free from the subtle domination of the West. EWE-28

- Nothing depends upon the death of an individual, be he ever so great, but much depends upon the freedom of India. T-2-314

- A slave has not the freedom even to do the right thing. T-2-6

- A slave– holder, who has decided to abolish slavery, does not consult his slaves whether they desire freedom or not. T-5-201

Friends – Friendship

- Friends to be friends are not called upon to agree even on most points. T-2-214

- Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony. T-2-237

- It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancour left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends. T-4-291

- My attitude towards the English is one of utter friendliness and respect. XXVI-52

G

Gandhism

- If Gandhism means simply mechanically turning the spinning wheel, it deserves to be destroyed. T-5-241

- What is Gandhism but winning Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence? T-3-78

- There is no such thing as 'Gandhism', and I do not want to leave any sect after me. T-4-54

- If our ahimsa is not of the brave, and if it will bend the knee before himsa, Gandhism deserves to be destroyed. T-5-242

- They might kill me but they cannot kill Gandhism. If truth can be killed, Gandhism can be killed. T-3-78

- Unless the charkha adds to your ahimsa and makes you stronger every day, your Gandhism is of little avail. T-3-78

- There is already enough superstition in our country. No effort should be spared to resist further addition in the shape of Gandhi worship. XXV-334

- Though a non-co-operator, I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me mahatma and to touch my feet. T-2-257

- Was it that you wanted to pull my leg by transporting me to the frozen Himalayan heights of ‘mahatmaship’ and claiming for yourself absolution from having to follow my precepts? T-2-3

Gentleness

- Nonviolent acts exert pressure far more effectively than violent acts for that pressure comes from good-will and gentleness. XXV-473

Germany

- Germans were defeated not because they were necessarily in the wrong, but because the allied powers were found to possess greater brute strength. T-2-20

- I am not just now thinking of India’s deliverance. It will come, but what will it be worth if England and France fall, or if they come out victorious over Germany ruined and humbled. T-5-161

- I must refuse to believe that Germans contemplate with equanimity the evacuation of cities like London for fear of destruction to be wrought by man's inhuman ingenuity. T-5-161

Gifts

- I fear the Greeks, especially when they bring gifts. T-5-38

- What we receive must be called a gift; for as debtors we are entitled to no consideration for the discharge of our obligations.MOG-19

God

- God accepts the sacrifice of the pure in heart. T-2-377

- God always saves the world from the consequences of unintended errors of men who live in fear of Him. MM-46

- God alone is immortal, imperishable. MM-72

- God alone is truth, everything else is transitory and illusory. XXVI-265

- God alone knows absolute Truth. MM-72

- God answers prayers in His own way, not ours. MM-91

- God as Truth has been for me a treasure beyond price; may He be so to every one of us. TIG-22

- God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. TIG-57

- God cannot be so cruel and unjust as to make the distinctions of high and low between man and man, and woman and woman. T-3-234

- God cannot be realized through intellect. MM-72

- God chooses as His instrument the humblest and weakest of His creatures to fulfill Himself. T-5-115

- God created man to work for his food and said that those who ate without work were thieves.T-2-63

- God demands nothing less than self – surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. MM-224

- God does not punish directly. His ways are inscrutable. T-2-134

- God gifted man with intellect so that he might know his Maker. Man abused it so that he might forget his Maker. X-28

- God–given religion is beyond all speech. TIG-65

- God has a thousand names, or rather He is Nameless. MM-78

- God has been described by all the scriptures of the world as protector and saviour of the sinner. T-3-230

- God has blessed man with seed that has the highest potency and woman with a field richer than the richest earth to be found anywhere on his globe. T-4-60

- God has blessed me with the mission to place nonviolence before the nation for adoption. T-5-210

- God has enabled man to distinguish between his sister, his mother, his daughter and his wife. MM-272

- God has enabled me to affect the life of the country since 1920 without the necessity of office.T-2-371

- God has given us only a limited sphere of action and a limited vision. T-2-326

- God has His own way of choosing His instruments. T-5-151

- God has made of man and woman one complete whole. In the scheme of nature, both of them are equal.T-7-380

- God has so ordered this world that no one can keep his goodness or badness exclusively to himself. MM-434

- God Himself has reserved no right of revision of His own laws nor is there any need for Him for any such revision. TIG-23

- God is the hardest taskmaster I have known on this earth and He tries you through and through. MM-50

- God is the source of Light and Life and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. XXVI-224

- God is the vital force or spirit which is all–pervading, all–embracing and, therefore, beyond human ken. MM-89

- God is the shield of the nonviolent. MM-126

- God in his wisdom circumscribed man’s vision, and rightly too, for otherwise man’s conceit would know no bounds. T-3-255

- God is always the upholder of justice. T-5-161

- God is certainly one. He has no second. He is unfathomable, unknowable and unknown to the vast majority of mankind. XXV-178

- God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist. TIG-10

- God is continuously in action, without resting for a single moment. TIG-140

- God is Light, not darkness. God is Love, not hate. God is truth, not untruth. God alone is great. XXV-479

- God is not a person. God is an eternal principle. T-3-147

- God is not a Power residing in the clouds. He is an unseen Power residing within us and nearer to us than finger nails to the flesh. TIG-19

- God is not in Kaaba or in Kashi. He is within everyone of us. XXV-451

- God is not outside this earthly case of ours. TIG-33

- God is omnipresent; even a pebble in the Narmada can represent Him and serve as an object of worship. XXVI-309

- God is that indefinable something which we all feel but which we do not know. XXVI-224

- God makes crooked straight for us and sets things right when they seem to go dead wrong. T-7-143

- God never made man that he may consider another man as untouchable. XXVI-354

- God of Truth and Justice can never create distinctions of high and low among His own children. T-3-221

- God resides in every human form, indeed in every particle of His creations, in everything that is on his earth. T-4-124

- God rules even where Satan seems to hold sway, because the latter exists only on God’s sufferance. T-7-147

- God’s grace and revelation are the monopoly of no race or nation. XXV-479

- God’s laws are eternal and unalterable and not separable from God Himself. T-2-293

- God’s time never stops. MM-88

- God’s ways are more than Man’s arithmetic.T-5-151

- God’s word is : He who strives never perishes. TIG-4

- God to be God must rule the heart and transform it. TIG-8

- God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days’ wonder.TIG-144

- God took and needed no personal service. He served His creatures without demanding any service for Himself in return. T-4-304

- God tries his votaries through and through, but never beyond endurance. XXVI-159

- God is known by many names. And in the last analysis God’s names were as many as human beings.T-8-169

- God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one – fifth of our vast population as untouchables. T-3-280

- God will cease to be God, if he brought into being a single person with the hall–mark of inferiority. XXVI-354

- God will not be God, if He allowed Himself to be the object of proof by His creatures. T-3-200

- God will rule the lives of all those who will surrender themselves without reservation to Him. T-3-136

- I am endeavouring to see God through service of humanity; for I know that God is neither in heaven, nor down below, but in everyone. TIG-5

- I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan. X-43

- I believe in absolute oneness of God and, therefore, also of humanity. T-2-149

- I believe in God, not as a theory but as a fact more real than life itself. XXVI-233

- I call God long–suffering and patient precisely because He permits evil in the world. I know that He has no evil in Him and yet if there is evil, He is the author of it and yet untouched by it. T-2-314

- I can neither serve God nor humanity if as an Indian I do not serve India, and as a Hindu I do not serve Indian Mussalmans. XXV-260

- I can see that in the midst of death, life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the Supreme Good. T-2-313

- I claim no perfection for myself. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. T-5-295

- I claim to know my millions. All the hours of the day I am with them. They are my first care and God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. TIG-27

- I do not accept the orthodox teaching that Jesus was or is God incarnate in the accepted sense or that he was or is the only Son of God. XXV-85

- I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded. T-3-219

- If God is not a personal being for me like my earthly father, He is infinitely more. T-3-250

- If God is vast and boundless as the ocean, how can a tiny drop like man imagine what He is? TIG-45

- If God holds me to be a pure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. T-5-213

- If I could persuade myself that I could find Him in a Himalayan cave I would proceed there immediately. TIG-35

- If I had no God to rely upon, I should be, like Timon, a hater of my species. XXV-3900

- If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. T-3-144

- If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the Granth Sahib or the Koran? T-8-269

- If we could all give our own definitions of God, there would be as many definitions as there are men and women. XXVI-224

- If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. TIG-64

- I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without a house of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a synagogue or agiary. T-3-194

- I know that I can never be alone as God is there with me. T-5-290

- I recognise no God except the God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. T-5-58

- I shall despair when I despair of myself, of God and humanity. XXVI-266

- I trust men only because I trust God. XXV-390

- I worship the God that is Truth or Truth which is God through the service of these millions. T-5-58

- By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God. T-2-375

- For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness. T-2-375

- 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. TIG-29

- For me the only certain means of knowing God is nonviolence, ahimsa, love. T-2-126

- If I arrogate to myself the exclusive title of being in the right, I usurp the function of the Deity. XXV-442

- I will not be a traitor of God to please the whole world. MM-18

- It is my conviction that the root of evil is the want of a living God. T-4-40

- It is my unmistakable belief that not a blade of grass moves but by the divine will. T-3-347

- Let me say that God will send me the plan when He gives the word as He has done before now. T-5-224

- Mine is not a religion of the prison-house. It has room for the least among God’s creation. EWE-11

- My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. Truth is my God. Nonviolence is the means of realizing Him. XXV-558

- My religion says that only he who is prepared to suffer can pray to God. T-2-152

- My varnashram refuses to bow the head before the greatest potentate on earth, but my varnashram compels me to bow down my head in all humility before knowledge, purity, before every person where I see God face to face. T-2-283

- My creed is service of God and therefore of humanity. XXV-260

- My faith runs so very much faster than my reason that I can challenge the whole world and say, ‘God is, was and ever shall be.’ TIG-13

- My fast is a matter between God and myself. T-2-150

- My firm belief is that he reveals Himself daily to every human being but we shut our ears to the still small Voice. TIG-34

- My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents, and I lay them both at His feet. T-5-291

- Since nothing else that I see merely through the senses can or will persist, He alone is. T-2-313

- The life of millions is my politics, from which I dare not free myself without denying my life-work and God. MM-103

- The purer I try to become, the nearer I feel to be to God. T-2-314

- To me Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except the way of nonviolence. T-2-236

- To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. XXVI-224

- What God may have enabled me to do is but a repayment of debt, and he who repays a debt deserves no praise. T-4-257

- What I want to achieve, what I have been striving and pining for these thirty years, is self-realization, that is, to see God face to face. T-2-217

- With me the connection between the cosmic phenomena and human behaviour is a living faith that draws me nearer to God, humbles me and makes me readier for facing Him. T-3-2511

- You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, and I am dead. TIG-35

- A fear–stricken person can never know God, and one who knows God will never fear a mortal man. T-2-304

- A mind not set on God is given to wandering and lacks the quality of a temple of worship. MM-74

- Ahimsa in theory, no one knows. It is as indefinable as God. T-5-248

- All of us with one voice call one God differently as Parmatma, Ishwara, Shiva, Vishnu, Rama, Allah, Khuda, Dada-Hormuzda, Jehova, God and an infinite variety of names. TIG-12

- A personal selfish prayer is bad whether made before an image or an unseen God. TIG-90

- All religions enjoined worship of the One God who is all-pervasive. He is present even in a drop of water or in a tiny speck of dust. T-7-115

- All the dry ethics of the world turn to dust because apart from God they are lifeless. MM-72

- All the religions of the world describe God pre-eminently as the Friend of the friendless, Help of the helpless, and Protector of the weak. T-3-192

- A satyagrahi should have a living faith in God. T-5-92

- As soon as we become one with the ocean in the shape of God, there is no more rest for us, nor indeed do we need rest any longer. TIG-141

- Assumption of superiority by any person over any other is a sin against God and man. MM-110

- Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts, but by his intentions. T-5-256

- Buddha emphasized and re-declared the eternal and unalterable existence of the moral government of this universe. He unhesitatingly said that the law was God Himself. T-2-293

- Calling them devadasis we insult God Himself in the name of religion. T-2-280

- Celibacy is a great help, inasmuch as it enables one to lead a life of full surrender to God. XXV-152

- Conversion without a clean heart is a denial of God and religion. T-4-79

- Cowardice is not a sign of belief in God. T-4-252

- "Do not worry in the least about yourself, leave all worry to God" this appears to be the commandment in all religions. MOG-19

- Even the atheists, who have pretended to disbelieve in God, have believed in Truth. T-3-294

- Fight if you must on the path of righteousness and God will be with you. MM-206

- He is no God who merely satisfies the intellect, if He ever does. T-2-313

- He who has a living faith in God will not do evil deeds with name of God on his lips. T-4-252

- He who would, in his own person, test the fact of God's presence can do so by a living faith. T-2-313

- If we have listening ears, God speaks to us in our own language, whatever that language be. T-7-110

- If we will take care of today, God will take care of the morrow. T-2-65

- If you have faith in the cause and the means and in God, the hot sun will be cool for you. T-2-182

- In a strictly scientific sense God is at the bottom of both good and evil. TIG-25

- In His boundless love God permits the atheist to live. XXVI-224

- In the Gita continuous concentration on God is the king of sacrifices. T-2-311

- Its unadulterated belief in the oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those who are nominally within its fold are two distinctive contributions of Islam. T-2-341

- It is better to be charged with cowardice and weakness than to be guilty of denial of our oath and sin against God. T-2-85

- It is impossible that God, who is the God of Justice, could have made the distinctions that men observe today in the name of religion. T-3-236

- It is possible to reason out the existence of God to a limited extent. T-2-312

- It was manly and dignified to rely upon God for the dissolution of all troubles. He was the only infallible help, guide and friend. T-8-97

- Let us fear God and we shall cease to fear man. MM-60

- A living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind. T-4-252

- Meditation is waiting on God. XXV-515

- Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God. T-5-104

- Nonviolence is an attribute of the Almighty whose ways of fulfilling Himself are inscrutable. T-6-12

- Man alone is made in the image of God. MM-424

- Man can only conceive God within the limitation of his own mind. TIG-45

- Man can only describe God in his own poor language. TIG-45

- Man in the flesh is essentially imperfect. He may be described as being made in the image of God but is far from being God. T-7-73

- Man should earnestly desire the well – being of all God’s creations and pray that we may have the strength to do so. MM-434

- No man has ever been able to describe God fully. The same holds true of ahimsa. T-7-73

- The man who eats to live, who is friends with the five powers – earth, water, ether, sun and air – who is a servant of God, the Creator of all these, ought not to fall ill. MM-394

- The man who fears man falls from the estate of man. Fear God alone. T-2-302

- When a man fasts, it is not the gallons of water he drinks that sustains him, but God. T-8-108

- When a man wants to make up with his Maker, he does not consult a third party. T-2-150

- A man cannot serve God and Mammon, nor be "temperate and furious’ at the same time. MM-137

- A man of faith does not bargain or stipulate with God. XXV-88

- A man of God never strives after untruth and therefore he can never lose hope. XXV-188

- A man who is intentionally unarmed relies upon the Unseen Force called God by poets, but called the Unknown by scientists. MM-115

- A man with a grain of faith in God never loses hope, because he ever believes in the ultimate triumph of Truth. XXV-188

- A man who throws himself on God ceases to fear man. T-2-369

- A person who believes in nonviolence believes in a living God. He cannot accept defeat. T-5-16

- Of all the myriads of God, Daridranarayana is the most sacred inasmuch as it represents the untold millions of the poor people as distinguished from the few rich people. T-2-377

- One is ever young in the presence of the God of Truth, or Truth which is God. T-5-71

- Often does good come out of evil. But that is God’s, not man’s plan. TIG-141

- Our prayer is a heart search. It is a reminder to ourselves that we are helpless without His support. TIG-44

- Outward appearance is nothing to Him if it is not an expression of the inner. T-7-50

- Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within. TIG-55

- Punishment is God’s. He alone is the infallible Judge. T-4-299

- Rama, Allah and God are to me convertible terms. XXVI-28

- Religion all the world over offers God as the solace and comfort for all in agony. T-2-212

- Religion is entirely a personal matter. Each one could approach his Creator as he liked. T-8-51

- Satyagraha is search for Truth, and God is Truth. XXV-489

- Search for Truth is search for God. Truth is God. God is because Truth is. XXV-489

- Seeing God face to face is to feel that He is enthroned in our hearts even as a child feels a mother’s affection without needing any demonstration. TIG-92

- Shraddha means self–confidence and self–confidence means faith in God. XXV-88

- Surely, conscience is but a poor and laborious paraphrase of the simple combination of three letters called God. XXVI-224

- Surely, conversion is a matter between man and his Maker who alone knows His creatures’ hearts. T-4-79

- Imperialism is a negation of God. It does ungodly acts in the name of God. XXV-19

- That which impels man to do the right thing is God. XXVI-571

- Undoubtedly, prayer requires a living faith in God. Successful satyagraha is inconceivable without that faith. T-7-95

- The art of dying bravely and with honour does not need any special training, save a living faith in God. MM-302

- The eternal duel between Ormuzd and Ahriman, God and Satan, is raging in my breast, which is one among their billion battlefields. XXV-450

- The idol in the temple is not God. But since God resides in every atom, He resides in that idol too. T-3-219

- The knowledge of the omnipresence of God also means respect for the lives even of those who may be called opponents. MM-114

- The Law and the Lawgiver are one. T-2-313

- The Law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name. T-3-250

- The Law which governs all life is God. T-2-313

- The nonviolent man automatically becomes a servant of God. T-4-257

- The power we call God defies description. TIG-45

- There are innumerable definitions of God because His manifestations are innumerable. MM-42

- There can be in the eyes of God no distinction between man and man, even as there is no distinction between animal and animal. T-3-335

- There is only one God for us all, whether we find him through the Koran, the Zend-Avesta, The Tolmud, or the Gita. T-2-69

- There is no greater spellbinder of peace than the name of God. T-7-41

- The sky may be overcast today with clouds, but a fervent prayer to God is enough to dispel them. T-4-29

- The sum of all that lives is God. XXVI-571

- The sum total of all that lives is God. We may not be God but we are of God even as a little drop of water is of the ocean. TIG-92

- The sum total of karma is God. XXVI-571

- The truth is that God is the force. He is the essence of life. He is pure and undefiled consciousness. He is eternal. TIG-84

- The turning of the charkha in a lifeless way will be like the turning of the beads of the rosary with a wandering mind turned away from God. T-5-242

- The Vedas are as indefinable as God and Hinduism. T-3-181

- This belief in God has to be based on faith which transcends reason. MM-54

- This feeling of helplessness in us has arisen from our deliberate dismissal of God from our common affairs. XX-137

- Though God may be Love, God is Truth above all. T-3-144

- Though philosophical Hinduism has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising as Islam. T-2-341

- To a people famishing and idle, the only acceptable form in which God can dare appear is work and promise of food as wages. T-2-63

- To bear all kinds of tortures without a murmur of resentment is not possible for a human being without the strength that comes from God. T-5-93

- To reject the necessity of temples is to reject the necessity of God, religion and earthly existence. T-3-195

- To say that a single human being, because of his birth, becomes an untouchable, unapproachable or invisible is to deny God. XXVI-373

- Truth is God, and Truth overrides all our plans. The whole Truth is only embodied within the heart of Great Power–Truth. T-7-363

- Truth is the right designation of God. TIG-21

- Waiting on God means increasing purity. XXVI-515

- We do not know the laws of God, nor their working. T-3-250

- What is impossible with man is child’s play with God. T-3-137

- When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is, nonviolence. T-3-144

- When we fear God, then we shall fear no man, however high-placed he may be. MM-308

- Where love is, there God is also. MM-418

- Who is there in the world who can insult the God in the image? T-2-261

- Without living Truth, God is nowhere. T-8-270

- Without an unreserved surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thoughts is impossible. MM-276

- You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer unless you reduce yourself to a cipher. T-5-149

- You will find that God is always by the side of the fearless. T-7-273

- You will not pit one word of God against another word of God. T-4-138

Gold

- If gold were as easily available as iron, it would not, for all its glitter, have the same value that it has today. XXV-298

- Not all our gold and jewellery could satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst. T-4-22

- A regenerate outgrows the original taint, even as purified gold outgrows the original alloy. T-4-76

Golden Rule

- "Judge not lest ye be judged" is a golden rule. XXV-463

Good – Goodness

- The good that man does is more often than not better left unsaid. MM-12

- Although evil seems at times to rule the world, the eternal truth is that the world lives so long as goodness resides even in one person. T-7-377

- In a strictly scientific sense God is at the bottom of both good and evil. TIG-25

- Religion taught us to return good for evil. T-8-120

- Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil. TIG-66

- My purpose is to describe experiments in the science of Satyagraha and not at all to describe how good I am. T-2-217

- A drop torn from the ocean perishes without doing any good. T-7-343

Goondas

- Goondas flourish only in the midst of timid people. T-5-282

- It is we who make the goondas. Without our sympathy and passive support, goondas would have no legs to stand upon. T-8-102

- It is a part of the struggle for liberty, if it is nonviolent, to reclaim even the goondas, whether they are to be found among the people or those in authority. T-5-48

- Intolerance is a form of goondaism (hooliganism). It is no less disgraceful than savagery. T-7-396

- My whole soul rises against the very idea of the custody of my religion passing into the hands of goondas. XXV-169

Govt. – Government of India

- A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed. T-2-45

- A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and hungry millions persists. MM-257

- Government of the people by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great he may be. MM-346

- Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence.T-5-187

- Schools and colleges are really factories for turning out clerks for the Government. T-2-13

- Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion. T-3-154

- I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring ‘satanic’ and I withdraw naught out of it. T-2-200

- The nation’s non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to co-operate with it on its own terms, as is every nation’s right and every good government’s duty. T-2-46

- What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have we not been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren? T-2-36

- Under my plan, the state will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or to force them to do its will. T-7-48

- Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights. XXV-420

- The stability of the State depends upon the readiness of every citizen to subordinate his rights to those of the rest. XXV-420

- No matter what the cause is and wherever it was, Indian governments must never requisition the services of British soldiers to deal with civil disturbances. T-7-359

- Do not concentrate on showing the misdeeds of the government, for we have to convert and befriend those who run it.T-5-265

Grave

- We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability. T-3-233

Gravitation

- The law of love will work just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not. T-3-11

Greatness

- The greatest to be great has to be lowliest by choice. MM-381

- God alone is the judge of true greatness because He knows men’s hearts. MM-474

- God is Light, not darkness, God is love, not hate, God is Truth, not untruth. God alone is great. XXV-479

H

Handicraft

- He who runs, may see, if he would also think, that the future lies with handcraftsmanship. XIV-465

Handsome

- Handsome is not he who is handsomely clothed; handsome is he who handsome does.XXVI-258

Hanuman

- Rama was not only on the lips of Hanuman, He was enthroned in his heart. He gave Hanuman exhaustless strength.TIG-48

Happiness

- True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors.TIG-109

Harijan

- Harijan service is a duty the caste Hindus owe to themselves. T-3-203

- It is absurd for a single individual to talk of taking all Harijans with himself. Are they all bricks that they can be moved from one structure to another? T-4-97

Haste

- The principle of ahimsa is hurt by every evil thought, by undue haste, by lying, by hatred, by wishing ill to anybody. TIG-36

Hate – Hatred

- Hatred is not essential for nationalism. Race hatred will kill the national spirit. T-2-200

- The hater hates not for the sake of hatred but because he wants to drive away from his country the hated being or beings. T-7-144

- Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as depth of hatred. T-7-144

- I would rather drown myself in the waters of the Sabarmati than harbour hate or animosity in my heart. XXV-89

- The world is weary of hate. We see the fatigue overcoming the Western nations. T-2-199

- Harshness is conquered by gentleness, hatred by love, lethargy by zeal and darkness by light. XIV-402

- Retaliation is counter–poison, and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of Love alone can destroy the poison of hate. T-5-241

- It is a heavy downpour of rain which drenches the soil to fullness, likewise only a profuse shower of love overcomes hatred. XIV-402

- Non-co-operation is not a hymn of hate. T-2-2

- Our struggle consists in showing that our nonviolence is neither a cloak to hide our violence or hatred, nor a preparation for violence in the near or distant future. T-6-4

Health

- It is health which is real wealth, not pieces of silver and gold. MM-201

- A diseased person has a prospect of getting well by personal effort. He cannot borrow health from others. T-5-204

Helplessness

- Your trouble is not numerical inferiority but the feeling of helplessness that has seized you and the habit of depending on others. T-7-255

- Even a bloody way is better than utter helplessness and unmanliness. T-2-235

Himalayas

- The Himalayas are spotlessly snow–white in virtue of the spotless glory of the countless sages who laid down their lives performing penance in their caves. T-2-261

- If I could persuade myself that I could find Him in a Himalayan cave, I would proceed there immediately. TIG-35

Hindi

- Highly Sanskritized Hindi is as avoidable as Persianized Urdu. T-2-208

Hindu – Hinduism

- Hinduism dies if untouchability lives, and untouchability has to die if Hinduism is to live. T-3-183

- Hinduism does not rest on the authority of one book or one prophet, nor does it posses a common creed like the Kalma. XXV-516

- Hinduism has absorbed the best of all the faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. T-8-120

- Hinduism has become a conservative religion and, therefore, a mighty force because of the swadeshi spirit underlying it. MM-410

- Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability. T-2-36

- Hinduism is not a codified religion. T-2-285

- Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. In it there is room for the worship of all the prophets of the world. MM-92

- Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal if it closes its temples to Harijans. T-3-195

- Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is to me the most glorious religion in the world. MM-93

- Hinduism would not have been much of a religion if Rama had not steeled his heart against every temptation.T-2-150

- Buddha never rejected Hinduism, but he broadened its base. He gave it a new life and a new interpretation. T-2-292

- Cow preservation is an article of faith in Hinduism. T-3-290

- Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world. T-2-51

- The Vedas are as indefinable as God and Hinduism. T-3-181

- If God gives me the privilege of dying for the Hinduism of my conception, I shall have sufficiently died for the unity of all and even for Swaraj. T-3-187

- If I know Hinduism at all, it is essentially inclusive and ever–growing, ever-responsive. It gives the freest scope for imagination, speculation and reason. XXV-178

- I have nothing of the communalist in me because my Hinduism is all inclusive. T-3-187

- I know of no system other than Hinduism under which a class has been set apart from generation to generation for the exclusive pursuit of divine knowledge and consigned to voluntary poverty. T-3-195

- I know that Buddhism is to Hinduism what Protestantism is to Roman Catholicism, only in a much stronger light, to a much greater degree. T-2-352

- I must rebel against the idea that millions of Indians, who were Hindus, the other day, changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion. T-5-271

- I would far rather that Hinduism died than that untouchability lived. T-3-128

- My Hindu instinct tells me that all religions are more or less true. T-2-132

- My Hinduism must be a very poor thing if it cannot flourish even under the most adverse influence. T-2-151

- My life is dedicated to the service of Indians through the religion of nonviolence which I believe to be the root of Hinduism. T-2-6

- My respectful study of other religions has not abated my reverence for or my faith in the Hindu scriptures. T-2-230

- My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. T-5-271

- Men like me feel that untouchability is no integral part of Hinduism, it is an excrescence. T-3-183

- Only my death will determine whether I am ‘Mohamed Gandhi’, Jinnah’s slave, destroyer of the Hindu religion or its servant and protector. T-7-370

- The more I study Hindu scriptures, and the more I discuss them with Brahmins, the more I feel convinced that untouchability is the greatest blot upon Hinduism.T-3-196

- Idolatry is permissible in Hinduism when it sub serves an ideal. T-2-78

- If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood.T-2-227

- If Hinduism teaches hatred of Islam or of non–Hindus, it is doomed to destruction. XXV-137

- The removal of untouchability is a question of the purification of Hinduism. T-2-342

- The untouchability of Hinduism is probably worse than that of the modern imperialists. XXV-397

- Untouchability is a blot on Hinduism. It is a canker eating into its vitals. T-3-223

- To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves. XXV-479

- Harijan service is a duty the caste Hindus owe to themselves. T-3-203

- The most distinctive and the largest contribution of Hinduism to India’s culture is the doctrine of ahimsa. T-2-341

- For Hindus to expect Islam, Christianity or Zoroastrianism to be driven out of India is as idle a dream as it would be for Mussalmans to have only Islam of their imagination rule the world. XXV-179

- There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British before a proper settlement is arrived at. XXVI-233

- So long as untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility. T-2-183

- Though philosophical Hinduism has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising as Islam. T-2-341

- Touch–me–notism that disfigures the present day Hinduism is a morbid growth. T-3-257

- In Hinduism we have got an admirable foot-rule to measure every shastra and every rule of conduct, and that is truth. T-2-285

- It is impossible to wait and weigh, in golden scales, the sentiments of prejudice and superstition that have gathered round the priests who are considered to be the custodians of Hinduism. T-2-286

- All the four stages in a man’s life are devised by the seers in Hinduism for imposing discipline and self-restraint. XXVI-375

- Being dissatisfied and properly dissatisfied with the husk of Hinduism, you are in danger of losing even the kernel, life itself. T-2-286

- Nonviolence which to me is the glory of Hinduism, has been sought to be explained away by our people as being meant for the sanyasis only. T-7-272

- No stone should be left unturned to bring home to the family members that untouchability is a sin and a blot on Hinduism. T-4-158

- The scriptures of Christians, Mussalmans and Hindus are all replete with the teaching of ahimsa. XXV-521

- 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. XXV-436

- Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth. XXVI-158

- Hindus, if they want unity among different races, must have the courage to trust the minorities. T-2-133

- Dining and marriage restrictions stunt Hindu society. T-3-180

- The only way by which you and I can wean orthodox Hindus from their bigotry is by patient argument and correct conduct. XXV-514

- The sacred thread and the tuft of hair without a pure heart and a spirit of toleration do not make a Hindu. T-7-413

- Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion. MM-299

- A Swaraj government means a government established by the free joint will of Hindus, Mussalmans and others. XXV-478

- By Ram Raj, I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, The Kingdom of God. For me, Ram and Rahim are one and the same deity. T-2-375

- Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with ahimsa, reject as non-Hindu. XXVI-374

History

- History is a record of perpetual wars, but we are now trying to make new history. T-4-165

- History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul. MM-419

- I disbelieve history so far as details of acts of heroes are concerned. XXVI-491

- I positively refuse to judge men from the scanty material furnished to us by history. XXVI-491

- Does not the history of the world show that there would have been no romance in life if there had been no risks? MM-166

- The history of Islam, if it betrays aberrations from the moral height, has many a brilliant page. T-2-124

- History is replete with instances of men who, by dying with courage and compassion on their lips, converted the hearts of their violent opponents. T-3-3

Hitler

- Herr Hitler is awake all the twenty–four hours of the day in perfection of his sadhana. T-5-291

- Rightly or wrongly, and irrespective of what the other powers have done before under similar circumstances, I have come to the conclusion that Herr Hitler is responsible for the war. T-5-162

Honesty

- Honesty has never been so much proved to be the best policy as it is now for those who do not or cannot back their dishonesty with gun powder and poison gas. T-4-269

- Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that, what appear to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree. TIG-21

- The only real reliable guarantee for khadi would be the honesty, truthfulness and sincerity of khadi workers. T-7-20

Hope

- The method of satyagraha requires that the satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it. T-5-235

Hostility

- Differences of opinion should never mean hostility. MM-10

Human Dignity

- It is beneath human dignity to lose one’s individuality and become a mere cog in the machine. T-5-9

Human Family

- Once we recognize the common parent stock from which we are all sprung, we realize the basic unity of the human family, and there is no room left for enmities and unhealthy competition. T-5-16

Humanity

- I am endeavouring to see God through service of humanity, for I know that God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone. TIG-5

- I hold that proselytizing under the cloak of humanitarian work is, to say the least, unhealthy. TIG-69

- What… does Jesus mean to me? To me, He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had. TIG-79

Human Nature

- Human nature will only find itself when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal. T-4-279

- Dignity of human nature requires that we must face the storms of life. T-3-130

- Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace is to disbelieve in the godliness of human nature. TIG-144

Humility

- True humility means strenuous and constant endeavour entirely directed to the service of humanity. TIG-140

- Nonviolence is impossible without humility. T-5-12

- Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature. TIG-33

- I am gifted with enough humility to look even to babes and sucklings for help. T-3-60

Hunger

- Hunger is the argument that is driving India to the spinning wheel. T-2-63

- Not all our gold and jewellery could satisfy our hunger and quench our thirst. T-4-22

- A science to be science must afford the fullest scope for satisfying the hunger of body, mind and soul. T-4-119

Hunger – Strike

- A hunger–strike loses its force and dignity, when it has any, if the striker is forcibly fed. T-5-156

- Hunger–strike has become such a nuisance that it will be as well for the committee to adopt measures to check it before it assumes dangerous proportions. T-5-156

Hypocrisy

- Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currents under the name of religion. T-7-128

- Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today. T-3-301

- Hypocrisy has acted as an ode to virtue but it could never take its place. T-7-67

- Nakedness is itself a virtue as distinguished from hypocrisy. T-7-193

I

Ideal

- The ideal will cease to be one if it becomes possible to realize it. T-5-174

- The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections. T-4-33

- An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain; the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. T-2-333

- Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plain living and high thinking the moment he multiplies his daily wants. MM-490

Idleness

- Idleness is the great plague of India. XXV-601

Idol – Idolatry

- The idol in the temple is not God. But since God resides in every atom, He resides in an idol. T-3-219

- Idols became what the devotees made of or imputed to them. T-7-50

- When image worship degenerates into idolatry and becomes encrusted with false beliefs and doctrines, it becomes a necessity to combat it as a gross social evil. T-2-366

Ignorance

- Age–hardened ignorance cannot yield to a few months’ object–lessons. T-4-26

- My greatest worry is the ignorance and poverty of the masses of India and the way in which they have been neglected by the classes, especially the neglect of the Harijans by the Hindus. T-4-102

Illiteracy

- Mass illiteracy is India’s sin and shame and must be liquidated. EWE-29

Imitation

- No country can become a nation by producing a race of imitators. EWE-474

Immoral

- It is wrong and immoral for a nation to supply intoxicating liquor to those who are addicted to drink. XXV-474

- Not even self–immolation can be allowed to support a bad or an immoral cause. XXV-442

- I call the Lancashire trade immoral because it was raised and is sustained on the ruin of millions of India’s peasants. XXV-474

Immortal

- Science has not so far discovered any recipe for making the body immortal. TIG-113

Impatience

- Impatience will blur the revolutionary’s vision and lead him astray. XXVI-141

- If we must be impatient, we must be impatient with ourselves, not with the wrongdoer. XXVI-295

Imperialists – Imperialism

- The greatest menace to the world today is the growing, exploiting irresponsible imperialism. XXV-19

- Violent nationalism, otherwise known as imperialism, is a curse. XXV-369

- Between the two, the nationalist and the imperialist, there is no meeting ground. T-5-238

- Imperialism is a negation of God. It does ungodly acts in the name of God. XXV-19

- No empire intoxicated with the red wine of power and plunder of weaker races has as yet lived long in this world. T-2-90

- The untouchability of Hinduism is probably worse than that of the modern imperialists. XXV-397

Imposition

- Legal imposition avoids the necessity of honour or good faith. XXVI-162

Impossible

- We are daily witnessing the phenomenon of the impossible of yesterday becoming the possible of today. XXVI-68

Impression

- What passes for facts are only the impressions or estimates of things, and estimates vary. T-7-209

Independence

- I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term. T-3-299

- Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law. T-8-100

- Independence of my conception means nothing less than the realisation of the "Kingdom of God" within you and on this earth. MM-314

- Complete independence does not mean arrogant isolation or a superior disdain for all help. T-3-7

- When real independence comes to India, the Congress and the League will be nowhere unless they represent the real opinion of the country. T-5-256

- The fire of independence is burning just as bright in my breast as in the most fiery breast in this country, but ways and methods differ. T-2-334

- Personally I crave not for ‘independence’, which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke. T-2-326

- We cannot have real independence unless the people banish the touch-me-not spirit from their hearts. T-4-1

- We must learn to be self–reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we seek to end, if it will not mend. T-2-32

- If it is man’s privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter–dependent. T-2-361

- Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent. T-2-361

- Civil disobedience can never be in general terms, such as for independence. T-6-31

- Swaraj means, even under dominion status, the capacity to declare independence at will. T-2-240

- Mass civil disobedience was for the attainment of independence. T-7-34

India – Indians

- India must learn to live before she can aspire to die for humanity. MM-335

- India is essentially a karmabhumi (land of duty) in contradistinction to bhogabhumi (land of enjoyment). MM-335

- India has the right, if she only knew, of becoming the predominant partner by reason of her numbers, geographical position and culture inherited for ages. T-2-327

- India has an unbroken tradition of nonviolence from times immemorial. MM-335

- India must protect her primary industries even as a mother protects her children against the whole world without being hostile to it. XXV-369

- India as a nation can live and die only for the spinning wheel. T-2-38

- India will not be a helpless partner in her own exploitation and foreign domination. T-5-252

- India unarmed would not require to be destroyed through poison gas or bombardment. T-5-178

- India is one vast prison with high walls of suppression clothing her mind and her body. T-4-185

- India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before. T-2-100

- If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim verity for my picture in which the last is equal to the first or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last. T-7-169

- An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to a groaning world. MM-335

- An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity. T-2-46

- An India free from exploitation from within and without must prosper with astonishing rapidity. T-3-72

- For India to enter into the race for armaments is to court suicide. T-5-178

- If India is not to declare spiritual bankruptcy, religious instruction of its youth must be held to be at least as necessary as secular instruction. EWE-30

- If India takes up the doctrine of sword, she may gain momentary victory. Then India will cease to be the pride of my heart. T-2-6

- On India rests the burden of pointing the way to all the exploited races of the earth. MM-335

- If India becomes the slave of the machine, then, I say, heaven save the world. MM-404

- India’s freedom must revolutionize the world’s outlook upon Peace and War. MM-316

- India’s freedom will not be won by violence but only by the purest suffering without retaliation. XXV-277

- In India there is a common saying that the way to Swaraj is through Mandalay.* T-2-355

* Mandalay in Burma where Indian leaders goaled by British authorities were kept in the old palace serving as goal. Lokmanya B. G. Tilak was imprisoned at Mandalay during 1908 – 14.

- India’s acceptance of the doctrine of the sword will be the hour of my trial. T-2-6

- India’s coming into her own will mean every nation doing likewise. T-2-327

- India’s way is not Europe’s. India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in her seven hundred thousand villages. XXVI-286

- Whatever else India may not be, she is at least one thing, She is the greatest storehouse of spiritual knowledge. XXVI-333-4

- For a fallen India to aspire to move the world and protect the weaker races is seemingly an impertinence. T-2-327

- Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind. T-2-56

- In a self-respecting India, is not every woman’s virtue as much every man’s concern as his own sister’s? T-2-51

- In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village. MM-340

- I do not want India to rise on the ruin of other nations. XXVI-279

- I must not refrain from saying that India can gain more by waiving the right of punishment. T-2-5

- I would rather have India without education, if that is the price to be paid for making it dry. T-2-280

- I would far rather that India perished than that she won Her freedom at the sacrifice of truth. T-3-113

- 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 dishonor. T-2-4

- I would rather have India reduced to a state of pauperism than have thousands of drunkards in our midst. T-2-280

- I would not flinch from sacrificing even a million lives for India’s liberty. T-3-152

- Through realization of freedom of India, I hope to realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of man. T-2-253

- I want India to come into her own and that state cannot be better defined by any single word than Swaraj. T-2-327

- Freedom of India will demonstrate to all the exploited races of the earth that their freedom is very near. T-27

- To gain India’s freedom, the capacity for suffering must go hand in hand with the capacity for ceaseless labour. T-4-285

- I want for India complete independence in the full English sense of that English term. T-3-299

- I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning the freedom of India. T-3-128

- I can neither serve God nor humanity if as an Indian I do not serve India, and as a Hindu I do not serve the Indian Mussalmans. XXV-260

- I would bend the knee before the poorest scavenger, the poorest untouchable in India for having participated in crushing him for centuries; I would even take the dust off his feet. T-3-114

- My varnashram dharma teaches me that there must be some significance in the fact of my being born in India instead of in Europe. XX-49

- I am not just now thinking of India’s deliverance. It will come, but what will it be worth if England and France fall, or if they come out victorious over Germany, ruined and humbled? T-5-161

- I am wedded to India because I owe my all to her. T-2-6

- Even if the whole of India, ranged on one side, were to declare that Hindu-Muslim unity is impossible, I will declare that it is perfectly possible. T-2-236

- I hold too that whatever may be true of other countries, a bloody revolution will not succeed in India. XXVI-140

- I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers. XXV-4-9

- I call the Lancashire trade immoral, because it was raised and is sustained on the ruin of millions of India’s peasants. XXV-474

- I must fight unto death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India. XXV-489

- There is nothing on earth that I would not give up for the sake of the country, excepting, of course, two things and two only, namely, truth and nonviolence. T-2-235

- If as a member of a slave nation I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from my own, I would do so today. But it is an impossible task. T-2-6

- My nationalism is as broad as my swadeshi, I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit. XXVI-27

- It is my unshakable belief that India’s destiny is to deliver the message of nonviolence to mankind. T-4-4

- My swadeshi chiefly centers round the handspun khaddar and extends to everything that can be and is produced in India. XXVI-279

- My mission is to convert every Indian, even Englishmen and finally the world, to nonviolence for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic, social or religious. T-5-2

- My interest in India’s freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise. T-2-126

- In my dream, in my sleep, while eating, I think of the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel is my sword. To me it is the symbol of India’s liberty. XXV-351

- I have called spinning the yajna of this age of India. XXVI-298

- Disorder and violence are, in fact, things that might check the pace of India’s progress. T-7-22

- All I want to say, with the utmost emphasis at my command, is that the description of India as a military country is wrong. T-5-171

- Through the deliverance of India I seek to deliver the so – called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation. MM-315

- I must declare that it is better for India do discard violence altogether even for defending her borders. T-5-178

- Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive. T-2-64

- Urbanization in India is a slow but sure death for her villages and villagers. T-3-291

- The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners. T-5-255

- A free India will throw all her weight in favour of world disarmament and should herself be prepared to give a lead in this. T-5-319

- God forbid that India should ever become a military nation, which would be a menace to the peace of the world, and yet if things went on as they were doing, what hope was there for India and, therefore, for the world? T-7-387

- If the Commander-in-Chief will look beyond the defence forces, he will discover that the real India is not military but peace-loving. T-5-171

- In the case of the Indian villager, an age-old culture is hidden under entrustment of crudeness. MM-362

- Before we can aspire to guide the destinies of India, we shall have to adopt the habit of fearlessness. MM-308

- The cottage industry of India had to perish in order that Lancashire might flourish. T-3-71

- It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes so utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment. T-2-18-19

- Drink is not a fashion in India, as it is in the West. T-2-228

- The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between modern civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God. X-189

- The unparalleled extravagance of English rule has demented the rajas and the maharajas who, unmindful of consequences, ape it and grind their subjects to dust. T-2-327

- It would be a blunder of the first magnitude for the British to be a party, in any way whatsoever, to the division of India. MGCG-247

- It was not through democratic methods that Britain bagged India. T-5-277

- The Britisher is the top-dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country. T-3-71

- British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe. T-5-192

- The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal division. T-5-237

- It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity of India, to entertain for one single moment hatred towards Englishmen. T-2-199

- The collector of revenue and the policemen are the only symbols by which millions in India’s villages know British rule. T-7-215

- Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule. T-2-341

- Half-a-dozen or twenty cities of India alone working together cannot bring Swaraj. XXVI-244

- Nonviolent non-co-operators can only succeed when they have succeeded in attaining control over the hooligans of India. T-2-83

- Nowhere in the world would you find such skeletons of cows and bullocks as you do in our cow-worshipping India. XXV-518

- The charkha in the hands of a poor widow brings paltry price to her; in the hands of Jawaharlal, it is an instrument of India’s freedom. T-6-32

- The charkha is intended to realize the essential and living oneness of interest among India’s myriads. T-2-215

- The socialism that India can assimilate is the socialism of the spinning wheel. T-3-284

- The Khaddar of my conception is that handspun cloth entirely takes the place of mill cloth in India. T-7-380

- Khaddar has the greatest organizing power in it because it has itself to be organized and because it affects all India. T-2-256

- The spinning wheel is as much a necessity of Indian life as air and water. T-2-3

- Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, of its economic freedom and equality and, therefore, ultimately, in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘the livery of India’s freedom’. T-6-20

- Hunger is the argument that is driving India to the spinning wheel. T-2-63

- The restoration of spinning to its central place in India’s peaceful campaign for deliverance from the imperial yoke gives her women a special status. T-5-206

- The spinning wheel and the spinning wheel alone will solve, if anything will solve, the problem of the deepening poverty of India. XXVI-292

- There is no better way of industrializing the villages of India than the spinning wheel. T-2-246

- The most distinctive and the largest contribution of Hinduism to India’s culture is the doctrine of ahimsa. T-2-341

- The fragrance of nonviolence was never sweeter than it was today amidst the stink of violence of the most cowardly type that was being displayed in the cities of India. T-8-27

- The way to Indian independence lay not through the sword but through mutual friendship and adjustment. T-7-323

- Jail-going is only the beginning, not the end of satyagraha. The acme of satyagraha for us would be to lay down our lives for the defence of India’s just cause. T-7-194

- The mentality which made one section of the Indians look upon another as enemies was suicidal; it could only serve to perpetuate their slavery. T-7-352

- Our non-co-operation is with the system the English have established in India, with the material civilization and its attendant greed and exploitation of the weak. T-2-64

- Nothing depends upon the death of an individual, be he ever so great, but much depends upon the freedom of India. T-2-314

- The whole of India was the home of every Indian who considered himself as one and behaved as such, no matter to what faith he belonged. T-8-46

- Many persons claiming different faiths make us one and an indivisible nation. All these have an equal claim to be the nationals of India. T-8-65

- The states can make the finest contribution to the building of India’s future independence if they set the right example in their own territories. T-7-174

- It is the absolute right of India to misgovern herself. T-2-201

- The ideal is a synthesis of the different cultures that have come to stay in India, that have influenced Indian life, and that, in their turn, have themselves been influenced by the spirit of the soil. T-2-23

- Unity among the different races and the different religions of India is indispensable to the birth of national life. XXVI-241

- Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister. T-2-51

- Let us remember that we are all Indians eating Indian grain and salt, and living on the dumb Indian masses. T-3-247

- Final Satyagraha is inconceivable without an honorable peace between the several communities composing the Indian nation. T-5-130

- The West has yet to discover anything so hygienic as the Indian toothstick. T-3-288

- Idleness is the great plague of India. XXV-601

- Mass illiteracy is India’s sin and shame and must be liquidated. EWE-29

- There is every reason for being cautious about founding new universities till India has digested Her newly acquired freedom. EWE-29

- Basic education links children, whether of the cities or villages, to all that is best and lasting in India. EWE-24

- Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy of thought. EWE-10

- If there was any teacher in the world who insisted upon the inexorable law of cause and effect, it was Gautam, and yet my friends, the Buddhists outside India, would, if they could, avoid the effects of their own acts. T-2-293

- In this, of all the countries in the world, possession of inordinate wealth by individuals should be held as a crime against Indian humanity. T-4-174

- We must break through the provincial crust if we are to reach the core of all-India nationalism. EWE-49

- The commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of the manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of the Western exploiters. T-7-46

- If untouchability lives, Hinduism perishes and even India perishes, but if untouchability is eradicated from the Hindu heart, root and branch, then Hinduism has a definite message for the world. T-4-99

- We Indians are one as no two Englishmen are. X-27

- The way to Indian independence lay not through the sword but through mutual friendship and adjustment. T-7-323

Indiscipline

- Indiscipline will surely mean disaster, and make one like me, who is pining to see Swaraj in his lifetime, perish in sorrow and grief. T-3-64

Individualism

- Unrestricted individualism is the law of the beast of the jungle. MM-312

Inequality

- The world ‘inequality’ has a bad odour about it, and it has led to arrogance and inhumanities both in the East and West. MM-419

- Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability. T-3-230

Inheritance

- Those sons of millionaires, who are of age and yet inherit their parents’ wealth, are losers for the very inheritance. T-4-175

Injustice

- To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to women. T-3-33

- Agitation against every form of injustice is the breath of political life. T-5-225

Inner Voice

- Penances with me are no mechanical acts. They are done in obedience to the inner voice. T-3-79

Innocent

- The willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God or man. XXVI-141

- For infallible guidance man has to have a perfectly innocent heart incapable of evil. MM-70

Interdependence

- Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. Only a Robinson Crusoe can afford to be all self-sufficient. MM-439

Internationalism

- Internationalism is possible only when nationalism becomes a fact. MM-436

Intolerance

- All criticism is not intolerance. I have criticized the revolutionary because I have felt for him. He has the same right to hold me to be in error as I believe him to be in error. XXVI-141

- Intolerance of criticism, even of what one may prize as dear as life itself, is not conducive to the growth of public corporate life. T-3-64

Iron

- If gold were as easily available as iron, it would not, for all its glitter, have the same value that it has today. XXV-298

Islam

- Islam stands for the unity and brotherhood of mankind, and not for disrupting the oneness of the human family. T-7-221

- Islam was born in an environment where the sword was and still remains the supreme law. T-2-237

- Islam was nothing if it did not spell complete democracy. T-7-312

- Its unadulterated belief in the oneness of God and a practical application of the truth of the brotherhood of man for those who are nominally within its fold are two distinctive contributions of Islam. T-2-341

- The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence. T-5-172

- Surely Islam has nothing to fear from criticism even if it be unreasonable. XXVI-227

- Though philosophical Hinduism has no other god but God, it cannot be denied that practical Hinduism is not so emphatically uncompromising as Islam. T-2-341

- The early Mussalmans accepted Islam not because they knew it to be revealed but because it appealed to their virgin reason. XXVI-226

- A perfect Muslim is he from whose tongue and hands mankind is safe. T-7-309

- I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are. TIG-80

- I must rebel against the idea that millions of Indians who were Hindus the other day changed their nationality on adopting Islam as their religion. T-5-271

- I would like to say that that even the teachings of the Koran cannot be exempted from criticism. XXVI-451

- My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. T-5-271

J

Japan

- I am convinced that the capitalist, if he follows the Samurai of Japan, has nothing really to lose and everything to gain. T-2-380

- Let no one run away with the idea that I wish to put in a defence of Japanese misdeeds in pursuance of Japan’s unworthy ambition. TIG-14222

Jealousy

- Jealousy presupposes the possibility of rivalry. T-2-214

- Bury jealousies underground or cremate them wherever you like. XXV-510

Journalism

- Journalism has become the art of "intelligent anticipation of events." T-7-209

- The sole aim of journalism should be service. MM-479

- Journalism should never be prostituted for selfish ends or for the sake of merely earning a livelihood or, worse still, for amassing money. XXVI-371

- Journalism has a distinct place in familiarizing and expressing public opinion. XXVI-370

- A journalist’s peculiar function is to read the mind of the country and to give definite and fearless expression to that mind. XXVI-369

- The newspaperman has become a walking plague. He spreads the contagion of lies and calumnies. T-2-238

- Newspapers today have almost replaced the Bible, the Koran, the Gita and other religious scriptures. T-7-314

- The press is called the Fourth Estate. It is definitely a power, but, to misuse that power is criminal. T-7-375

- Newspapers should be read for the study of facts. They should not be allowed to kill the habit of independent thinking. T-7-116

- In the East, as in the West, newspapers are fast becoming people’s Bible, Koran, Zend-Avesta and Gita all rolled into one. T-7-209

- Freedom of the press is a precious privilege that no country can forego. MM-480

- Newspapers have become more important to the average man than the scriptures. T-7-375

Joy

- A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy. MOG-21

Justice

- Justice should become cheap and expeditious. Today it is the luxury of the rich and the joy of the gambler. T-4-182

- Justice does not help the ones who slumber but helps only those who are vigilant. XIV-177

- The first condition of nonviolence is justice all round, in every department of life. T-5-278

- It is open to a war-resister to judge between two combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. T-5-197

K

Karma Yoga

- This dharma in the original (Gita) refers to karma yoga, and the karma yoga of our age is the spinning wheel. BUNCH-25

- The biggest of karmayogis never gives up devotional songs or worship. TIG-137

Khadi – Khaddar

- Khadi is the sun of the village solar system. T-4-4

- Khaddar was conceived with a much more ambitious object, that is, to make our villages starvation-proof. T-3-292

- The khadi spirit means fellow-feeling with every human being on earth. T-2-281

- The khadi spirit means also an infinite patience. T-2-2811

- Khaddar delivers the poor from the bonds of the rich and creates a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and the masses. T-2-255

- Khaddar does not displace a single cottage industry. T-2-255

- Khaddar brings a ray of hope to the widow’s broken-up home. T-2-256

- Khaddar has the greatest organizing power in it because it has itself to be organized and because it affects all India. T-2-256

- Khaddar is an activity that can absorb all the time of all available men and women and grown-up children, if they have faith. XV-365

- Khadi service, village service and Harijan service are one in reality, though three in name. T-4-39

- Khadi will be the sun of the whole industrial solar system. T-4-7

- Khadi mentality means decentralization of the production and distribution of the necessaries of life. MM-406

- Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity. T-4-217

- I would ask you to come in Khadi, for Khadi links you with the fallen and the down-trodden. T-2-269

- Even if masses of people were to burn khadi publicly and say that it is an insane programme, I will declare that those people have gone mad. T-2-236

- My swadeshi chiefly centers round the hand-spun khaddar and extends to everything that can be and is produced in India. XXVI-279

- Khaddar of my conception is that hand-spun fabric which takes entirely the place of mill cloth in India. T-7-380

- Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, of its economic freedom and equality and, therefore, ultimately, in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, ‘the livery of India’s freedom’. T-6-20

- Khadi will cease to have any value in my eyes if it does not usefully employ the millions. T-7-187

- All the other industries will receive warmth and sustenance from khadi industry. T-4-7

- Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as such boycott brought about by hand spinning and khaddar. XXV-475

- Coal is not dear for the coal-miner who can use it there and then, nor is khadi dear for the villager who manufactures his own khadi. T-4-3

- Even as satyagraha is a weapon unique of its kind and not one of the ordinary weapons used by people, so is Khadi, a unique article of commerce which will not, cannot, succeed on terms common to other articles. T-2-282

- For a firm believer in swadeshi, there need be no Pharisaical self-satisfaction in wearing khadi. T-2-56

- If we have the khadi spirit in us, then we should surround ourselves with simplicity in every walk of life. T-2-281

- Organization of khaddar is infinitely better than co-operative societies or any other form of village organization. XXV-474

- The art that is in the machine-made article, appeals only to the eye; the art in Khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye. T-3-292

- The foundation of service and your real training lie in spinning khaddar. XXVI-378

- Khadi work without the mastery of the science of khadi will be love’s labour lost in terms of Swaraj. T-7-36

- The message of khaddar can penetrate to the remotest villages if we only will that it shall be so. T-2-244

- The only real and reliable guarantee for khadi would be honesty, truthfulness and sincerity of khadi workers. T-7-20

- The singular secret of khaddar lies in its salability in the place of its production and use by the manufacturers themselves. T-3-293

- Through Khadi we teach the people the art of civil obedience to an institution which they have built up for themselves. T-4-10

- Without proper careful organization of the spinning wheel and khaddar, there is absolutely no civil disobedience. XXVI-246

Kisan

- No one tells the cultivator to take breathing exercises or to work his muscles. MM-199

- The Congress is nothing if it does not represent the kisans. T-3-104

Knowledge

- Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire. T-2-309

- Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the test of renunciation of the fruits of action. T-2-309

- True knowledge gives a moral standing and moral strength. MM-368

- The dry knowledge of the three R’s is not even now, it can never be, a permanent part of the villagers’ life. EWE-29

- Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified; but the picture is imaginary. MOG-4

- What will tell in the end will be character and not a knowledge of letters. XXVI-294-5

- Without devotion, action and knowledge are cold and dry and many even become shackles. 1

- Knowledge of the tallest scientist or the greatest spiritualist is like a particle of dust. MM-77

- In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place. T-2-308

- Renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. T-2-308

L

Labour

- Capital exploits the labour of a few to multiply itself.MM-339

- Every labourer is worthy of his hire. No country can produce thousands of unpaid whole-time workers. XXV-485

- Is not labour, like learning, its own reward? T-3-300

- Labour has its unique place in a cultured human family. MM-373

- Labour is priceless, not gold. T-8-97

- Labour is a great leveler of all distinctions. T-8-97

- No labour is too mean for one who wants to earn an honest penny. MM-204

- There is a world-wide conflict between capital and labour, and the poor envy the rich. MM-199

- The saving of labour of the individual should be the object and honest humanitarian considerations, and not greed, the motive. XXV-252

- Unless our hands go hand in hand with our heads, we will be able to do nothing whatsoever. XXVI-302

- Useful manual labour, intelligently performed, is the means par excellence for developing the intellect. MM-379

- I do not regard capital to be the enemy of labour. T-2-257

- I call myself a labourer because I take pride in calling myself a spinner, weaver, farmer and scavenger. XXVI-379

- A labourer cannot sit at the table and write, but a man who has worked at the table all his life can certainly take to physical labour. T-2-63

- A plea of the spinning wheel is a plea for recognizing the dignity of labour. T-2-63

- A scavenger who works in His service shares equal distinction with a king who uses his gifts in His name and is a mere trustee. MM-202

- A true and nonviolent combination of labour would act like a magnet attracting to it all the needed capital. T-8-97

- A worker’s capital is inexhaustible, incapable of being stolen, and bound to pay him a generous dividend all the time. XIV-217

- Each and every one of you should consider himself to be a trustee for the welfare of the rest of his fellow labourers and not be self-seeking. T-2-297

- If everybody lives by the sweat of his brow, the earth will become a paradise. MM-200

- It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt. EWE-20

- Labour, because it chose to remain unintelligent, either became subservient, or insolently believed in damaging the capitalists’ goods and machinery or even in killing the capitalists. T-8-97

- Mere mental, that is, intellectual labour, is for the soul and has its own satisfaction. T-4-36

- Nothing will demoralize the nation so much as that we should learn to despise labour. EWE-25

- Our children should not be so taught as to despise labour. EWE-20

- Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society. MM-200

- Employers ganging up against workers is like raising an army of elephants against ants. XX-333

- The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society. MM-271

- This mad rush for wealth must cease and the labourer must be assured not only of a living wage but, also a daily task that is not mere drudgery. T-2-161

- What the two hands of the labourer can achieve, the capitalist will never get with all his gold and silver. T-7-33

- Where there are millions upon millions of units of idle labour, it is no use thinking of labour-saving devices. T-4-24

Language

- A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers. EWE-13

- Language is at best an imperfect medium of expression. No man can fully express in words what he feels or thinks. T-7-145

- The language of a people who produce hard workers, literary experts, businessmen and enterprising persons, spreads and is enriched. T-7-51

- It is rarely that language succeeds as a vehicle of thought. More often than not it conceals thought. Always language circumscribes thought. XX-5

- There never was a greater superstition, than, that a particular language can be incapable of expansion or expressing abstruse or scientific ideas. EWE-12

- Man can only describe God in his own poor language. TIG-45

- If we have listening ears, God speaks to us in our own language, whatever that language be. T-7-110

- What we start receiving education through our own language, our relations in the home will take on a different character. XIV-20

Law

- The law which governs all life is God. T-2-313

- The law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name. T-3-250

- The Law and the Lawgiver are one. T-2-313

- Affection cannot be manufactured or regulated by law. T-2-100

- The laws of nature are changeless, unchangeable, and there are no miracles in the sense of infringement or interruption of Nature’s law. MM-77

- A satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong. XXV-163

- Where death without resistance or death after resistance is the only way, neither party should think of resorting to law-courts or help from the government. XXV-138

- The recognition of the golden rule of never taking the law into one’s own hands has no exceptions.T-8-103

- Independence means voluntary restraint and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law. T-8-100

- When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books. T-2-62

Leaders

- An institution that suffers from a plethora of leaders is surely in a bad way. T-7-218

Learning

- Learning takes us through many stages in life but it fails us utterly in the hours of danger and temptation. XXVI-28

- Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisites for acquiring learning of any kind. MM-377

- In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a ten-fold return to the people, even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop. T-8-165

Legislatures

- Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, legislatures can be the means of achieving concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence. T-4-161

Liberty

- Liberty is a dearly bought commodity and prisons are factories where it is manufactured. XXV-212

- Liberty never meant the license to do anything at will. T-8-100

- A rose will smell as sweet by any other name, but it must be the rose of liberty that I want and not the artificial product.T-3-129

- We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere lip homage to truth and non-violence. T-2-85

- No power on earth can resist the lovers of liberty who are ready not to kill opponents, but be killed by them. T-7-326

- Individual liberty is allowed to man only to a certain extent. He cannot forget that he is a social being and his individual liberty has to be curtailed at every step. T-5-120

- Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. T-7-37

- The one condition for fighting for peace and liberty is to acquire self-restraint. XXVI-45

- In my dream, in my sleep, while eating, I think of the spinning wheel. The spinning wheel is my sword. To me it is the symbol of India’s liberty.XXV-351

Life

- A life without vows is like a ship without an anchor or like an edifice that is built on sand instead of a solid rock. T-2-364

- Life is greater than all art. MM-56

- Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy. T-8-205

- Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection which is self-realization. T-4-33

- A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy. MOG-21

- Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory. MM-39

- Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth, and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height. TIG-61

- The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice. T-7-27

- A true life lived amongst the people is in itself an object-lesson that must produce its own effect upon immediate surroundings. MM-366

- What is life worth without trials and tribulations which are the salt of life. T-3-4

- The Enlightened one has told you in never-to-be-forgotten words that this little span of life is but a passing shadow, a fleeting thing. T-2-295

- I believe in God, not as a theory but as a fact more real than that of life itself. XXVI-233

- I want to realize brotherhood and identify not merely with the beings called human, but I want to realize identity with all life, even with such beings that crawl on earth. T-2-253

- If I were over full of pity for the cow, I should sacrifice my life to save her but not take my brother’s. X-30

- My dharma teaches me to give my life for the sake of others without even attempting to kill. XXV-437

- My faith in truth and nonviolence is ever growing, and as I am ever trying to follow them in my life, I too am growing every moment. T-4-154

- My religion and my patriotism derived from my religion, embrace all life. T-2-353

- Let the Gita be to you a mine of diamonds, as it has been to me, let it be your constant guide and friend in life’s way. T-2-307

- Domestic matters are trifles for us. But they occupy the principal part of my life. They teach me to know my limitations. XXV-302

- The only praise I would like and treasure is the promotion of the activities to which my life is dedicated. T-5-176

- The first condition of nonviolence is justice all round, in every department of life. T-5-278

- Absolute calm is not the law of ocean. And it is the same with the ocean of life. T-7-190

- Healthy, well-informed, balanced criticism is the ozone of public life. T-4-206

- If love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. TIG-18

- It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin. T-3-4

- Every single act of one who would lead a life of purity should be in the nature of yajna. MOG-19

- The secret of a happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation is life. MM-192

- Man is sent into the world to perform his duty even at the cost of his life. T-7-155

- To know music is to transfer it to life. T-2-230

- The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death. T-7-143

- Every calamity should lead to a thorough cleansing of individual as well as social life. T-3-258

- Does not the history of the world show that there would have been no romance in life if there had been no risks? MM-166

- This earthly existence of ours is more brittle that the glass bangles that ladies wear. TIG-23

- Let us give today first the vital things of life and all the grace and ornaments of life will follow. T-2-162

- Dignity of human nature requires that we must face the storms of life. T-3-130

- Individual liberty and interdependence are both essential for life in society. T-7-37

- Every reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life. T-2-227

- The truth is that God is the force. He is the essence of life. He is pure and undefiled consciousness. He is eternal. TIG-84

- Ahimsa is no mere theory with me, but it is a fact of life based on extensive experience. T-7-402

- Celibacy is a great help inasmuch as it enables one to lead a life of full surrender to God. XXV-2

- That Law which governs all life is God. TIG-7

- One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.MM-440

Lions

- Can it be ever dangerous for a lion to tell a number of other lions, who in their ignorance, consider themselves to be merely lambs, that they, too, are not lambs but lions? X-249

Literacy

- Literacy in itself is no education. MM-379

- Literacy is not the end of education, nor even the beginning. EWE-22

- Literacy must be one of the many means for intellectual development, but we have had in the past intellectual giants who were unlettered. T-4-145

Literature

- Literature, full of the virus of self-indulgence, served out in attractive forms, is flooding this country from the West, and there is the greatest need for our youth to be on their guard. T-2-319

Lokamanya Tilak

- The Lokmanya spoke more eloquently from the Mandalay fortress than through the columns of the printed Kesari. T-2-77

- With Lokmanya (Tilak) alive, I had only him to convert or to be converted by him. T-2-145

- I am but the heir of Lokmanya and if I do not add to the patrimony he has left me, I would not be a worthy son of a worthy father. T-2-263

- Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer, and Lokmanya Tilak would have been a greater scholar, if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English. EWE-9

Love

- Love and ahimsa are matchless in their effect. TIG-57

- Love and exclusive possession can never go together. T-4-11

- Love based upon indulgence of animal passion, is at best a selfish affair, and likely to snap under the slightest strain. T-2-225

- Love can never express itself by imposing sufferings on others. It can only express itself by self-suffering, by self-purification. T-3-221

- Love in the sense of ahimsa has only a limited number of votaries in the world. T-3-144

- Love is a rare herb that makes a friend even of a sworn enemy and this herb grows out of nonviolence. XIV-209

- Love is no love which asks for a return. XIV-402

- Love is the basis of our friendship as it is of religion. MM-404

- The law of love knows no bounds of space or time. MM-398

- Love is the subtlest force in the world. XXV-392

- The law of love will work, just as the law of gravitation will work, whether we accept it or not. T-3-112

- Love is needed to strengthen the weak; love becomes tyrannical when it exacts obedience from an unbeliever. T-2-62

- Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. MM-295

- Ahimsa and love are one and the same thing. TIG-19

- If love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death. TIG-18

- Where love is, there God is also. MM-418

- Where there is love, there is life; hatred leads to destruction. MM-417

- The only way love punishes is by suffering. T-2-87

- Whenever there are wars, whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. MM-417

- Though God may be Love, God is Truth, above all. T-3-144

- Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. MM-344

- If light can come out of darkness, then alone can love emerge from hatred. MM-417

- My fast is, among other things, meant to qualify me for achieving that equal and selfless love. T-2-151

- My freedom from hatred – I would even claim for myself individually, my love – for those who consider themselves to be my enemies, does not make me blind to their faults. T-2-199

- My goal is friendship with the world and I can combine the greatest love with the greatest opposition to wrong. MM-424

- My love of nationalism is that my country may become free, and if need be, the whole of the country die, so that the human race may live. T-2-200

- My nonviolence demands universal love, and you are not a small part of it. T-5-295

- My only sanction is the love and affection in which you hold me. But it has its weaknesses, as it has its strengths. T-5-260

- My religion teaches me to love all equally. XXV-202

- I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man. MM-422

- True ahimsa should wear a smile even in a death-bed state brought about by an assailant. It is only with that ahimsa that we can befriend our opponents and win their love. T-5-243

- I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light, He is Love. He is the supreme Good. T-2-313

- Having flung aside the sword, there is nothing except the cup of love which I can offer to those who oppose me. MM-422

- It is my great misfortune that I have to measure your love by the money gifts you give for Daridranarayana. T-2-354

- For me the only certain means of knowing God is non-violence, ahimsa, love. T-2-126

- Free, open love I have looked upon as dog’s love. Secret love is, besides, cowardly. T-5-196

- The path of bhakti, karma and love, as expounded in the Gita, leaves no room for the despising of man by man. T-2-278

- Of what avail is my love if it be only so long as I trust my friend? MM-421

- The Law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not a mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and million things that human ingenuity can name. T-3-250

- Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination, summarily, to reject all that is contrary to Truth and Love. TIG-9

- God is Light, not darkness. God is love, not hate. God is Truth, not untruth. God alone is Great. XXV-479

- Hatred can be overcome only be love. Counter-hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. T-7-144

- True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. T-2-318

- It is a heavy downpour of rain which drenches the soil to fullness; likewise only a profuse shower of love can overcome hatred. XIV-402

- Jesus lived and died in vain if He did not teach us to regulate the whole of life by the eternal Law of Love. T-5-18

- When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is nonviolence. T-3-144

- One who hooks his fortune to ahimsa, the law of love, daily lessens the circle of destruction and to that extent promotes life and love. T-4-33

- Our peaceful non-co-operation must be constructive, non-destructive. Poison should not emerge from the throes of love. XXV-139

- Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. XXV-563

- Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. XXV-563

- Retaliation is counter-poison, and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of love alone can destroy the poison of hate. T-5-241

- A seeker after truth, a follower of the law of Love, cannot hold anything against tomorrow.MM-188

- The call of the spinning wheel is the noblest of all. Because it is the call of love. And love is Swaraj. T-2-63

M

Machine - Machinery

- The spinning wheel is in itself an exquisite piece of machinery. My head daily bows in reverence to its unknown inventor. XXV-476

- Machines should not be allowed to cripple the limbs of man. T-2-162

- Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. T-2-161

- My machinery must be of the most elementary type which I can put in the homes of the millions. T-3-135

- I would not weep over the disappearance of machinery or consider it a calamity. MM-234

- What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such. T-2-161

Mahabharata

- The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare, on the contrary he has proved its futility. TIG-97

- The immortal but unknown author of the Mahabharata weaves into his story sufficient of the supernatural to warn you against taking him literally. XXV-128

- I look upon Gibbon and Motley as inferior editions of the Mahabharata. XXV-128

- I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. MOG-17

Mahatma

- I have never, even in my dream, thought that I was mahatma and that others were alpatma (little soul). T-5-161

Majority

- A minority does not always fear majority because it is a majority. XXVI-161

- The principle of majority does not work when differences on fundamentals are involved.XXV-140

- To say that there was danger in numbers was as true as to say that there was safety in numbers. T-8-33

Man – Mankind

- A man who throws himself on God ceases to fear man. T-2-369

- Man believes and lives. T-4-244

- Man can only conceive God within the limitation of his own mind. TIG-45

- Man can only describe God in his own poor language. T-4-244

- The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world. TIG-43

- Man is sent into the world to perform his duty even at the cost of his life. T-7-115

- Man will ever remain imperfect, and it will always be his part to try to be perfect. T-4-11

- Man’s triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by a struggle for mutual service. T-4-36

- Man’s nature is not essentially evil, brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love. T-4-296

- Man lives freely by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. TIG-39

- Men aspiring to be free can hardly think of enslaving others. MM-314

- Man does not live by destruction. TIG-17

- A man of faith does not bargain or stipulate with God. XXV-88

- Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. MOG-4

- A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. TIG-96

- Man is neither mere intellect not the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. EWE-222

- Man cannot breathe with borrowed lungs. XXV-275

- Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food. XXVI-66

- Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them. TIG-57

- Man becomes not the lord and master of all creation but he is its servant. XXVI-545

- Man is the maker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny. XXV-I294

- Man has always desired power. Ownership of property gives this power. Man hankers also after posthumous fame based on power. T-2-367

- Man the law-giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he has imposed upon the so called weaker sex. XXVI-516

- Man in the flesh is essentially imperfect. He may be described as being made in the image of God but is far from being God. T-7-73

- The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it. T-7-61

- A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect. MM-462

- The man who fears man, falls from the estate of man. Fear God alone. T-2-302

- Nonviolence is the virtue of the manly. The coward is innocent of it. XXV-138

- Bravery is not man’s monopoly. MM-297

- A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction. T-2-324

- Man is not to drown himself in the well of the Shastras, but he is to dive in their broad ocean and bring out pearls. T-7-324

- Man is oftentimes weak-minded enough to be caught in the snare of greed and honeyed words. MM-169

- A man or a woman who serves the country with all his or her heart stands on par with the tallest Congress-man. T-7-139

- Man is born of woman, he is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. T-2-300

- Men to be men must be able to trust their womenfolk, even as the latter are compelled to trust them. T-2-249

- God has made of man and woman one complete whole. In the scheme of nature, both of them are equal. T-7-380

- If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. T-3-33

- Man has regarded woman as his tool. She has learnt to be his tool and in the end found it is easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall, the descent is easy.T-4-45

- No man could look upon another as his enemy, unless he first became his own enemy. T-7-204

- Man cannot be transformed from bad to good overnight. MM-75

- The man who eats to live, who is friends with the five powers – earth, water, ether, sun and air and who is a servant of God, the creator of all these, ought not to fall ill. MM-394

- It is for you and me to show that no vice is inherent in man. XXVI-294

- Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plain living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. MM-490

- I must refuse to believe that the Germans contemplate with equanimity the evacuation of cities like London for fear of destruction to be wrought by man’s inhuman ingenuity. T-5-161

- I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man. MM-422

- Truth and ahimsa demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be. XXVI-374

- My own opinion is that just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problems must be one in essence. T-5-226

- The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s Swaraj. T-3-65

- It is my firm faith that man is by nature going higher. T-5-305

- I can neither serve God nor humanity, if as an Indian I do not serve India, and as a Hindu I do not serve the Indian Mussalmans. XXV-260

- I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him, and if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent. XXV-390

- I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives. XXV-390

- I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it. TIG-143

- If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by any human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. T-7-169

- I believe in conversion of mankind, not its destruction. XXV-531

- If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. T-3-144

- I hold no man to be indispensable for the welfare of the country. T-2-137

- I cannot picture to myself a time when all mankind will have one religion. XXVI-285

- I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. MOG-17

- I have discovered that man is superior to the system he propounds. T-2-49

- I trust men only because I trust God. XXV-390

- If I am true to myself, if I am true to mankind, if I am true to humanity, I must understand all the faults that human flesh is heir to. T-2-199-200

- I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward. XXV-475

- My creed is service of God and therefore of humanity. XXV-260

- A man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins. T-3-247

- My errors have been errors of calculation and judging men, not in appreciating the true nature of truth and ahimsa or in their application. T-2-204

- Mankind is one, seeing that all are equally subject to the moral law. All men are equal in God’s eyes. MM-459

- It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity of India, to entertain for one single moment hatred towards Englishmen. T-2-199

- So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. TIG-142

- God’s ways are more than man’s arithmetic. T-5-151

- Some form of common worship and a common place of worship appear to be a human necessity. MM-105

- Man’s upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed. MM-286

- God is certainly one. He has no second. He is unfathomable, unknowable and unknown to the vast majority of mankind. XXV-178

- Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have. MM-199

- A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution. T-3-140

- All the great religions of the world inculcate equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of toleration. T-3-257

- I believe in absolute oneness of God, and, therefore, also of humanity. T-2-149

- A man who wants to control his animal passions easily does so if he controls his palate. MM-306

- Through realization of freedom of India, I hope to realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of man. T-2-353

- An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity. T-2-46

- No two men are absolutely alike, not even twins, yet there is much that is indispensably common to all mankind. T-2-216

- Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind. T-2-56

- Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. T-7-144

- A living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind. T-4-252

- Human dignity demands courage to defend oneself. XXVI-220

- The golden way is to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family like the members of one family. T-7-250

- A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good he has done to his fellowmen. T-7-341

- The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal. MM-417

- By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man – body, mind and spirit. MM-379

- That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God. XXVI-571

- That which impels man to do the right is God. XXVI-571

- The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death. T-7-143

- What distinguishes man from the brute is his conscious striving to realise the spirit within. MM-168

- Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and to be self-contained. T-2-361

- If it is man’s privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter – dependent. T-2-361

- A man of truth must ever be confident, if he has also equal need to be diffident. T-2-204

- 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. T-3-138

- Man has the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman is supremest among men.T-8-44

- Man, through the cow, is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives.T-2-51

- When a man wants to make up with his maker, he does not consult a third party. T-2-150

- The path of bhakti, karma and love, expounded in the Gita, leaves no room for the despising of man by man. T-2-278

- God cannot be so cruel and unjust as to make the distinction between man and man, even as there is no distinction between animal and animal. T-3-235

- There can be, in the eyes of God, no distinction between man and man, even as there is no distinction between animal and animal. T-3-235

- Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways. MM-77

- Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory. MM-39

- A man without religion is like a ship without a rudder. T-3-223

- That which is inherent in man is his virtue. XXVI-294

- God in His wisdom has circumscribed man’s vision, and rightly too, for otherwise man’s conceit would know no bounds. T-3-255

- Men are good. But they are poor victims making themselves miserable under the false belief that they are doing good. X-127

- Truth is superior to man’s wisdom. T-2-143

- Imperfect men have no right to judge other imperfect men. T-8-162

- The woman has circumvented man in a variety of ways in her unconsciously subtle ways, as the man has vainly and equally consciously struggled to thwart the woman in gaining ascendancy over him. T-2-367

- It is degrading both for man and woman that woman should be called upon or induced to forsake the hearth and shoulder the rifle for the protection of that hearth.T-5-227

- God has blessed man with seed that has the highest potency; and woman with a field richer than richest earth to be found anywhere on this globe. T-4-60

- To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. T-3-33

- If we could all give our own definitions of God, there would be as many definitions as there are men and women. XXVI-224

- The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary. XXV-450

- Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced, exquisite consideration for one’s neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration. T-2-354

- Khaddar is an activity that can absorb all the time of all available men and women and grown-up children, if they have faith. XXV-365

- The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms invented by man’s ingenuity. T-5-281

- Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion two sides of the same coin. XXV-519

- Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world. T-5-273

- To bear all kinds of tortures without a murmur of resentment is not possible for a human being without the strength that comes from God. T-5-98

- What is impossible with man is child’s play to God. T-3-137

- Often does good come out of evil. But that is God’s, not man’s plan. TIG-141

- God gifted man with intellect that he might know his Maker. X-28

- Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian. TIG-68

- If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm? XXV-509

- Literary education should follow the education of the land – the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. EWE-21

- All great religions have rightly regarded kama as the arch-enemy of man, anger or hatred coming only in the second place. MM-299

- Unlike the animal, God has given man the faculty of reason. MM-429

- Study not man in his animal nature – man following the laws of the jungle – but study man in all his glory. T-3-138

- He who runs may see that opium and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man’s soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts. XXV-555

- Repression does for a true man or a nation what fire does for gold. XXV-487

- We are all very imperfect and weak things, and if we are to destroy all whose ways we do not like, there will be not a man left alive. XXV-531

- All the four stages in a man’s life are devised by the seers in Hinduism for imposing discipline and self-restraint. XXVI-375

- The field of research in the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man’s life must not be frequent. T-3-297

- Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow. T-3-280

- No one should dogmatize about the capacity of human nature for degradation or exaltation. T-5-278

- Study men laying down their lives without hurting anyone else in the cause of their country’s freedom. T-3-138

- We burn the evil men do with their mortal remains. We treasure the memory of the good they do, and distance magnifies it. T-3-201

- Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy. MM-462

- A fear-stricken person can never know God, and one who knows God will never fear a mortal man. T-2-304

Marriage

- Marriage is a natural thing in life and to consider it derogatory in any sense is wholly wrong. MM-278

- Marriage is a matter if choice. XXVI-286

- Marriage is not an act of service. It is a comfort man or a woman seeks for himself or herself. XXVI-285

- Marriage loses its sanctity when its purpose and highest use is conceived to be the satisfaction of the animal passion without contemplating the natural result of such satisfaction. T-4-60

- Undefiled love between husband and wife takes one nearer God than any other love. MM-279

- Those marriages which are undertaken for the sake of joint service carry their own blessings. MM-279

- With me marriage is no necessary test of friendship even between husband and wife, let alone their respective clans. XXVI-285

- There is an indissoluble marriage between matter and spirit. Our ignorance of the results of the union makes it a profound mystery and inspires awe in us but it cannot undo them. T-3-251

Masses

- Nothing can so quickly put the masses on their legs as the spinning wheel and all it means. XXVI-538

- A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses. XXVI-140

- Character alone will have real effect on the masses. T-3-234

- A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a mass scale. XXVI-140

- If we are true servants of the masses, we would take pride in spinning for their sake. T-3-300

- Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me. T-3-136

- An organization, which looks to money for everything, can never serve the masses. T-7-52

- I defy anyone to give for independence a common Indian word intelligible to the masses. T-2-326

- I am myself an insignificant being, but I am supposed to have some hold over the dumb millions. T-5-232

- How to link the classes with the masses is for me one of the greatest problems. XXVI-379

- Those who play upon the passions of the masses injure them and the country’s cause. T-5-225

- Slow and inglorious self-imposed starvation among the starving masses is every time more heroic than the death of the scaffold under false exaltation. XXVI-14

Military – Militarization

- Militarization of India will mean her own destruction as well as of the whole world. MM-156

- All I want to say, with the utmost emphasis at my command, is that the description of India as a military country is wrong. T-5-171

- A general is none the worse for the realization of his weaknesses and for atoning for his sins. T-5-112

- If the Commander-in-Chief will look beyond the defence forces, he will discover that real India is not military but peace-loving. T-5-171

- To refuse to render military service when a particular time arrives is to do the thing after all the time for combating the evil is gone. T-3-145

Millions

- I claim to know my millions. All the hours of the day I am with them. They are my first care and last because I recognise no God except that God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. TIG-27

- The hungry millions ask for one poem, invigorating food. T-2-65

- It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that the millions have ceased to use their hands as hands. T-2-251

- A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. T-6-26

Mind

- A mind that is once hooked to the Star of Stars becomes incorruptible. T-4-52

- Every submission to merited punishment strengthens the mind of man, every avoidance saps it. MM-395

- Mechanical university study deprives us of the desire for originality; years of memorizing causes a fatigue of the mind that makes most of us fit only for clerical work. T-4-166

- Man can only conceive God within the limitations of his own mind. TIG-45

- I always welcome an honest difference of opinion, for I have always an open mind and have no axe to grind. T-2-284

Minority

- A minority does not always fear a majority because it is a majority. XXVI-161

- In a well-ordered society, there should be no minority. T-8-99

- My nonviolence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities. MM-332

- Hindus, if they want unity among different races, must have the courage to trust the minorities. T-2-133

- We, the English-educated Indians, often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indian is the whole of India. T-2-326

Misdeeds

- Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds. XXV-397

Missionary

- This motive of mass proselytization lurking in the background vitiates missionary effort. T-2-342

Mistrust

- Trusting one another, however, can never mean trusting with the lip and mistrusting in the heart. XXV-436

Mobs – Mobocrary

- Mobocracy is autocracy multiplied a million times. XXV-531

- Nothing is so easy as to train mobs, for the simple reason that they have no mind, no meditation. T-2-8

Moral Force – Morality

- Moral result can only be produced by moral restraints. XXVI-280

- Moral restrictions tend to become lax in a foreign country, since the fear of social opinion disappears. XXVI-58

- Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort. MM-458

- True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.MM-485

- To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. X-37

- That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values. XXV-475

- To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. XXVI-224

- Khaddar delivers the poor from the bonds of the rich and creates a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and the masses. T-2-225

- The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private. MM-321

- Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and, therefore, sinful. T-2-63

- If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. T-3-3

- Satan mostly employs comparatively moral instruments and the language of ethics to give his aims an air of respectability. T-2-17

- The object of basic education is the physical, intellectual and moral development of children through the medium of handicraft. EWE-24

- In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected or, are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file. T-4-298

- A country that is governed by its national army can never be morally free and, therefore, its so-called weakest member can never rise to his full moral height. T-7-105

- It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man. XXVI-58

- Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country. T-2-352

- A democrat should not rely upon the force of the arms his state could flaunt in the face of the world, but on the moral force his state could put at the disposal of the world. T-8-40

- A popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to its assistance. T-8-163

Mortification

- Mortification of the flesh has been held all the world over as a condition of spiritual progress. TIG-53

Mother – Motherhood

- Every mother is a scavenger in regard to her own children. T-3-182

- My mother was certainly a scavenger inasmuch as she cleaned me when I was a child. XXVI-152

- Only a prospective mother knows what it is to carry. The onlookers notice her illness and pity her. But she alone knows the travail. T-5-104

Mother – Tongue

- I must cling to my mother-tongue, as to my mother’s breast, in spite of its shortcomings. It alone can give me life-giving milk. EWE-41

Murder

- Is it not possible for us all to realize that masses will never mount to freedom through murder? T-5-258

Museums

- Museums of ancient things which have disappeared from our economic life have their use and place, but not in our programme which concentrates on industries and crafts which are capable of being revived. T-4-56

Music

- The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice. T-7-27

- The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely. TIG-109

- To know music is to transfer it to life. T-2-230

- Work for Swaraj fails to appeals to us because we have no music in us. T-2-231

- There can be no Swaraj where there is no harmony, no music. T-2-230

- Where there is filth, squalor and misery, there can be no music. T-2-231

N

Narcotics

- An opium-eater may argue the advantage of opium-eating from the fact that he began to understand the evil of the opium habit after having eaten it. X-27

- No one who has wisdom will ever touch opium, liquor or any intoxicants.MM-376

- He who runs may see that opium and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man’s soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts. XXV-555

Nation – National – Nationalism

- No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation. T-2-13

- That nation is great which rests its head upon death as its pillow. X-51

- No nation keeps another in subjection without herself turning into a subject nation.T-2-139

- Nations are not formed in a day, the formation requires years. X-12

- No country can become a nation by producing a race of imitators. EWE-9

- Freedom of a nation cannot be won by solitary acts of heroism though they may be of the true type, never by heroism so called. T-2-333

- Repression does for a true man or a nation what fire does for gold. XXV-487

- When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of Ahimsa is to stop the war. TIG-40

- A nation that is unfit to fight cannot, from experience, prove the virtue of not fighting. XIV-463

- I have recognized that the nation has the right, if it so wills, to vindicate her freedom even by actual violence.XXV-336

- Non-co-operation is the nation’s notice that it is no longer satisfied to be in tutelage. T-2-46

- Many persons claiming different faiths make us one and an indivisible nation. T-8-65

- India’s coming to her own will mean every nation doing likewise. T-2-327

- A society or a nation constructed nonviolently must be able to withstand attack upon its structure from without or within. T-6-27

- If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence. T-5-272

- The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation. T-5-75

- We are too near the scene of tragedy to realize that this canker or untouchability has traveled far beyond its prescribed limits and has sapped the very foundation of the whole nation. T-3-182

- My national service is part of my training for freeing my soul from the bondage of the flesh. MM-13

- The spinning wheel means national consciousness and a contribution by every individual to definite constructive national work. XXVI-49

- A national spirit is necessary for national existence. A flag is a material aid to the development of such a spirit. XXVI-544

- Between the two, the nationalist and the imperialist, there is no meeting ground. T-5-238

- Nationalism, like virtue, has its own reward. T-8-98

- National education to be truly national must reflect the national condition for the time being. XXVI-275

- I do regard spinning and weaving as a necessary part of any national system of education. XXVI-275

- Indian nationalism is not exclusive, nor aggressive, nor destructive.T-2-64

- My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual. T-3-72

- My nationalism is as broad as my Swadeshi. I want India’s rise so that the whole world may benefit. XXVI-279

- My love of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be the whole of the country may die so that the human race may live. T-2-200

- Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life. XXVI-369

- Violent nationalism, otherwise known as imperialism, is a curse. XXV-369

- Hatred is not essential for nationalism. Race hatred will kill the real national spirit. T-2-200

Nature

- Nature abhors weakness. T-2-240

- The Laws of Nature are changeless, unchangeable, and there are no miracles in the sense of infringement or interruption of Nature’s laws. TIG-23

- Behind the magnificent and kaleidoscopic variety, one discovers in nature a unity of purpose, design and form which is equally unmistakable. T-2-215

- I refuse to buy from anybody anything, however nice or beautiful, if it interferes with my growth or injures those whom Nature has made my first care. XXVI-279

- Nature has implanted in the human breast ability to cope with any difficulty or suffering that may come to man unprovoked.X-53

- We may utilise the gifts of nature just as we choose but in her books the debits are always equal to the credits. MM-199

Nature Cure

- In nature cure, everybody can be his or her own doctor, not so in the various systems of medicine. TIG-1

- Nature cure implies that the treatment should be the cheapest and the simplest possible. MM-393

- Nature cure does mean a change for the better in one’s outlook on life itself. MM-394

- The man who accepts nature cure never begs. MM-394

Non-Co-Operation

- Non-co-operation is the quickest method of creating public opinion. MM-344

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. XX-34

- Non-co-operation is protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil. MM-179

- Non-co-operation is an attempt to awaken the masses to a sense of their dignity and power.MM-179

- Non-co-operation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for positive views. T-2-11

- Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land. T-2-40

- Non-co-operation is a nation’s determination to improve. T-2-27

- Nonviolent non-co-operation with evil means co-operation with all that is good. T-7-157

- Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice. T-2-25

- Non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as co-operation with good. T-2-45

- Non-co-operation in itself is unnatural, vicious and sinful. T-2-149

- Non-co-operation is the nation’s notice that it is no longer satisfied to be in tutelage. T-2-46

- Non-co-operation intended to pave the way to real honourable and voluntary co-operation based on mutual respect and trust. XX-162

- Non-co-operation in the political field is an extension of the doctrine as it is practised in the domestic field. XX-61

- Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government. XX-131

- When freedom is in jeopardy, non-co-operation may be a duty and prison may be a palace. XXV-393

- It is nonviolent non-co-operation which evokes the highest spirit of self-sacrifice that will wean one from the error of one’s ways. XXV-392

- The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification. XX-17

- The Bhagavadgita is a gospel of non-co-operation between the forces of darkness and those of light.MM-179

- The avowed policy of non-co-operation has been not to make political use of the disputes between labour and capital. XX-17

- Real non-co-operation is non-co-operation with evil and not with the evil-doer. T-2-200

- At times, non-co-operation becomes as much a duty as co-operation. T-5-276

- Total nonviolent non-co-operation becomes as much a duty so co-operation. T-7-149

- Our peaceful non-co-operation must needs be constructive, not destructive. XXV-139

- Our non-co-operation is with the system the English have established in India, with the material civilization and its attendant greed and exploitation of the weak.T-2-64

- The nation’s non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to co-operate with it on its own terms, as is every nation’s right and every good government’s duty. T-2-46

- I isolate this non-co-operation from Sinn Feinism, for it is so conceived as to be incapable of being offered side by side with violence. T-2-6

- Non-co-operation is not a movement of drag, bluster or bluff. T-2-34

- Non-co-operation is not a hymn of hate. T-2-200

- Non-co-operation in an angry atmosphere is an impossibility. T-2-12

- My faith in non-co-operation is as bright as ever. XXV-336

- Behind my non-co-operation there is always the keenest desire to co-operate on the slightest pretext even with the worst opponents. MM-183

- I was a co-operator too in the sense that I non-co-operated for co-operation, and even then I said that if I could carry the country forward by co-operation I should co-operate. T-4-155

- In the very act of my non-co-operation, I am seeking their co-operation in my campaign. T-3-196

- My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. T-2-64

- My non-co-operation is a token of my earnest longing for real heart co-operation in the place of co-operation falsely so called. T-2-382

- Reasoned and willing obedience to the laws of the State is the first lesson in non-co-operation.XXV-560

- I retain the opinion that council entry is inconsistent with non-co-operation as I conceive it. T-2-128

- I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial. T-2-6

- Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times. T-2-149

- Nonviolent non-co-operators can only succeed when they have succeeded in attaining control over the hooligans of India. T-2-83

- Non-co-operators will make a serious mistake if they seek to convert people to their creed by violence.XX-110

- It is the duty of a non-co-operator to preach disaffection towards the existing order of things. Non-co-operators are but giving disciplined expression to a nation’s outraged feelings. XX-128

- We must treat arrest as the normal condition of the life of a non-co-operator. T-2-52

- Though a non-co-operator, I shall gladly subscribe to a bill to make it criminal for anybody to call me mahatma and to touch my feet. T-2-257

- Nonviolent non-co-operation is the only alternative to anarchy and worse. T-2-149

- Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built. T-2-42

- Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. T-2-100

- For satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. T-2-5

- Non-co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha. XXV-489

Nonviolence

- Nonviolence is a universal law acting under all circumstances. T-5-135

- Nonviolence is impossible without humility. T-5-12

- Nonviolence succeeds only when we have a real living faith in God. T-5-14

- Nonviolence is a quality not of the body but of the soul. T-4-294

- Nonviolence or soul force does not need physical aids for its propagation of effect.T-4-290

- Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul force or the power of the godhead within us. T-4-290

- Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. MM-25

- Nonviolence abhors fear and therefore, secrecy. T-5-24

- True nonviolence is mightier than the mightiest violence. T-4-252

- Nonviolence and cowardice go ill together. True nonviolence is an impossibility without the possession of unadulterated fearlessness. T-5-136

- Nonviolence is the summit of bravery. T-2-131

- Perfect nonviolence is difficult. It admits to no weakness. T-5-115

- Nonviolence of the strong is infinitely braver than their violence. T-7-2

- Nonviolence requires great patience. T-5-233

- The common factor of all religions is nonviolence. XXV-169

- Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. TIG-39

- The science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy.MM-131

- There can be no nonviolence offered by the militarily strong. MM-137

- At the centre of nonviolence is a force which is self-acting. T-4-49

- Ours has not been unadulterated nonviolence in thought, word and deed. T-3-298

- Without real nonviolence, there would be perfect anarchy. T-5-224

- The charkha is an outward symbol of truth and nonviolence. T-5-265

- Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and the bravest. T-4-253

- Nonviolence in the sense of mere non-killing does not appear to me, therefore, to be of any improvement on the technique of violence. T-7-67

- God has blessed me with the mission to place nonviolence before the nation for adoption. T-5-210

- Nonviolence is not a cloistered virtue, confined only to the rishi and the cave-dweller. T-5-249

- Nonviolence becomes meaningless if violence is permitted for self-defence. T-5-249

- Nonviolence is an attribute of the Almighty whose ways of fulfilling himself are inscrutable. T-6-12

- In a plan of life based on nonviolence, woman has as much right to shape her own destiny as man has to shape his. T-6-24

- In a society based on nonviolence, the smallest nation will feel as tall as the tallest.MM-132

- Jesus was the most active resister known to history. His was nonviolence par excellence. MGCG-301

- The science of war leads one to dictatorship pure and simple; the science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy. T-4-280

- Unexampled bravery, born of nonviolence, coupled with strict honesty shown by a fair number of Muslims, is sure to infect the whole of India. T-8-176

- You can return blow for blow if you are not brave enough to follow the path of nonviolence. MM-20

- Nonviolence to be a creed has to be all-pervasive. T-4-41

- Nonviolence requires more courage than the soldier of war. XXV-437

- Nonviolence is the virtue of the manly. The coward is innocent of it. XXV-138

- Nonviolence is the means, the end for everyone is complete independence.MM-132

- Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from [the] soul-destroying heat [of violence]. T-3-12

- Mankind has to get out of violence only through nonviolence. T-7-144

- A person who believes in nonviolence believes in a living God. He cannot accept defeat.T-5-16

- Truth (satya) is positive, nonviolence is negative. MOG-14

- Truth stands for the fact, nonviolence negates the fact. MOG-14

- It is much more difficult to live for nonviolence than to die for it. T-5-4

- The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence. T-5-172

- The force of nonviolence is infinitely more wonderful and subtle than the material forces of nature, like electricity. T-3-11

- The propagation of truth and nonviolence can be done less by books than by actually living on those principles. T-5-93

- Nonviolence, in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. T-2-5

- Nonviolence, which is a quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain. T-5-273

- Nonviolence in polities is a new weapon in the process of evolution; its vast possibilities are yet unexplored. T-4-205

- Nonviolence is a plant of slow growth, it grows imperceptibly but surely. T-5-170

- Nonviolence of the strong cannot be a mere policy. It must be a creed, or a passion, if ‘creed’ is objected to. T-5-289

- Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces. T-4-143

- Nonviolence is an attribute of the soul, and, therefore, to be practised by everybody in all the affairs of life. T-5-246

- Nonviolence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon of the brave. T-7-30

- Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used. T-4-141

- Nonviolence, when it becomes active, travels with extraordinary velocity, and then it becomes a miracle. T-4-142

- Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. MM-112

- Nonviolence is the law of the human race and is infinitely greater than and superior to brute force. MM-113

- Nonviolence is a universal principle and its operation is not limited by a hostile environment. T-4-289

- Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has to be pursued even in the face of violence raging around you.T-4-236

- The bravery of the nonviolent is vastly superior to that of the violent. MM-126

- The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it. T-5-256

- There is nothing but nonviolence to fall back upon for retaining our freedom, even as we had to do for gaining it. T-7-95

- You cannot build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. M-369

- If one does not practice nonviolence in one’s own personal relations with others and hopes to use it in bigger affairs, one is vastly mistaken. T-5-11

- The patriotic spirit demands loyal and strict adherence to nonviolence and truth. T-2-92

- If it is by force that we wish to achieve Swaraj, let us drop nonviolence and offer such violence as we may. T-2-92

- Love is a rare herb that makes a friend even of a sworn enemy and this herb glows out of nonviolence. XIV-299

- Self-suppression is often necessary in the interest of truth and nonviolence. T-4-41

- If God holds me to be a pure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. T-5-213

- Just as there are signs by which you can recognize violence with the naked eye, so is the spinning wheel to me a decisive sign of nonviolence. T-5-277

- What can be richer and more fruitful than a greater fulfillment of the vow of nonviolence in thought, word and deed or the spread of that spirit? T-2-86

- Unless discipline is rooted in nonviolence, it might prove to be a source of infinite mischief. T-4-25

- The votaries of nonviolence cannot harbour violence even in thought, let alone the question of doing it.T-7-404

- There is no such thing as compulsion in the scheme of nonviolence. T-4-267

- The first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance and loving kindness.T-4-236

- The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.T-4-252

- Nonviolence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-co-operation with evil. T-2-100

- The first condition of nonviolence is justice all round in every department of life. T-5-278

- The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms invented by man’s ingenuity. T-5-281

- A civilization based on nonviolence must be different from that organized for violence. T-5-209

- The rishis, who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence, were greater geniuses than Newton.T-2-5

- A country whose culture is based on nonviolence will find it necessary to have every home as much self-contained as possible. T-5-214

- Creation of effective public opinion depends on the cultivation of true courage, born of truthfulness and nonviolence. T-8-11

- The man or the woman who can display the nonviolence of the brave can easily stand against as external invasion. T-5-298

- Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent. T-2-52

- If people knew the working of the law of truth and nonviolence, then they would themselves regulate the matter of its shortage. T-8-40

- I hold that without truth and nonviolence there can be nothing but destruction of humanity. T-7-14

- Complete independence will be complete only to the extent of our approach in practice to truth and nonviolence. T-6-17

- Our struggle consists in showing that our nonviolence is neither a cloak to hide our violence or hatred, nor a preparation for violence in the near or distant future. T-6-4

- The meticulous care for the rights of the least among us is the sin qua non of nonviolence. T-5-209

- Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. MM-114

- If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. T-3-33

- Nonviolence is not an easy thing to understand, still less to practice, weak as we are. MM-153

- Appreciation of nonviolence means patient research and still more patient and difficult practice. T-6-29

- Nonviolence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not human beings themselves. T-8-281

- Nonviolence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue to be cultivated like other virtues. T-5-18

- The weapon of nonviolence does not need supermen or superwomen to wield it; even beings of common clay can use it and have used it before this with success. T-4-278

- A person who has truly realized the principle of nonviolence has the God-given strength for his weapon, and the world has not yet known anything that can match it.T-4-297

- We become Godlike to the extent we realize nonviolence, but we can never become wholly God.MM-115

- History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance. MM-149

- 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. T-4-161

- Nonviolence in its dynamic condition means conscious suffering. MM-27

- A little of true nonviolence acts in a silent, subtle, unseen way and leavens the whole society.MM-122

- There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of nonviolence. T-130

- Even a believer in nonviolence has to say between two combatants which is less bad or whose cause is just. XXV-391

- When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is, nonviolence. T-3-144

- Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with ahimsa, reject as non-Hindu. XXVI-374

- Truth and nonviolence are perhaps the activest forces you have in the world. T-3-145

- Truth and nonviolence are no cloistered virtues but are applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the market-place. T-4-161

- We may not go about parroting truth and nonviolence and steering clear of them in our daily life. T-5-180

- The practice of truth and nonviolence melted religious differences, and we learnt to see beauty in each religion. T-5-225

- Active nonviolence is necessary for those who will offer civil disobedience but the will and proper training are enough for the people to co-operate with those who are chosen for civil disobedience. T-5-281

- If fighting for the legislatures meant a sacrifice of truth and nonviolence, democracy would not be worth a moment's purchase. T-4-156

- To one who reads the spirit of the Gita, it teaches the secret of nonviolence, the secret of realizing self though the physical body. MOG-16

- If what passed as nonviolence does not enable people to protect the honour of women, or if it does not enable women to protect their own honour, it is not nonviolence. T-7-30

- It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end enemies are converted into friends.T-4-291

- When nonviolence is accepted as the law of life, it must pervade the whole being and not be applied to isolated acts.MM-113

- An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers.T-5-19

- Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence. MM-126

- A rabbit that runs away from the bull-terrier is not particularly non-violent. T-2-131

- Carrying arms for the removal of the Arms Act can never fall under any scheme of nonviolence. T-2-279

- Tolstoy was the greatest apostle of nonviolence that the present age has produced. T-2-31

- The panoplied warrior of truth and nonviolence is ever and incessantly active. T-3-145

- Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life.MM-265

- All society is held together by nonviolence even as the earth is held in her position by gravitation. MM-130

- We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere life-homage to truth and nonviolence. T-2-85

- Nonviolence does not require any outside or outward training.MM-126

- To practice nonviolence in mundane matters is to know its true value. MM-129

- Nonviolence cannot be learnt by staying at home. MM-126

- That nonviolence which only an individual can use is not of much use in terms of society. MM-127

- Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, demands the greatest exercise of faith. T-5-17

- Our nonviolence vis-a-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak. MM-349

- When a man vowed to nonviolence as the law governing human beings dares to refer to war, he can only do it so as to strain every nerve to avoid it. T-8-140

- Unless you go on discovering new applications of the law of nonviolence, you do not profit by it.T-5-80

- Unless we learn the lesson of nonviolence fully, we shall never do away with the deadly feuds which have been the curse of the Frontier* people. T-5-302*The North-West Frontier of pre-partition India

- Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed. MM-23

- My nonviolence is made of stern stuff. It is firmer than the firmest metal known to scientists.T-5-169

- Nonviolence, which to me is the chief glory of Hinduism, has been sought to be explained away by our people as being meant for sanyasis only. T-7-272

- My nonviolence demands universal love, and you ** are not a small part of it. T-5-295

**Addressed to every Briton

- My nonviolence bids me to dedicate myself to the service of minorities. T-7-385

- My nonviolence does recognize different species of violence, defensive and offensive. MM-148

- My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. Truth is my God. Nonviolence is the means of realising Him. XXV-558

- My love for nonviolence is superior to every other thing, mundane or super mundane. MM-118

- My creed of nonviolence does not favour the punishment of thieves and dacoits and even murderers. T-3-62

- My faith in truth and nonviolence is ever growing, and as I am ever trying to follow them in my life, I too am growing every moment. T-4-154

- My life is dedicated to the service of India through the religion of nonviolence which I believe to be the root of Hinduism. T-2-6

- My mission is to convert every Indian, even Englishmen, and finally the world to nonviolence, for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic, social or religious. T-5-221

- My dharma teaches me that for the sake of others to give my life without even attempting to kill.XXV-437

- To my mind, Swaraj based on nonviolence is the fulfillment of the constructive programme. T-6-16

- To me Truth is God and there is no way to find Truth except by way of nonviolence.T-2-235

- For me the only certain means of knowing God is nonviolence, ahimsa, love. T-2-126

- Truth is my God. I can only search Him through nonviolence and in on other way. T-3-298

- Since the propagation of nonviolence is the mission of my life, I must pursue it in all weathers. T-5-287

- The spinning wheel is the symbol of nonviolence for me. T-5-290

- The religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. T-2-5

- My nonviolence does not admit to running away from danger and leaving dear ones unprotected. T-2-131

- My creed of nonviolence is an extremely active force. MM-143

- For me nonviolence is a creed. I must act up to it, whether I am alone or have companions. T-5-287

- If my nonviolence is to be contagious and infectious, I must acquire greater control over my thoughts.MM-277

- My implicit faith in nonviolence does mean yielding to minorities when they are really weak. MM-343

- It is my unshakable belief that India’s destiny is to deliver the message of nonviolence to mankind. T-4-41

- Every moment of my existence is dedicated to the winning of Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence.T-3-79

- All my experiments in ahimsa have taught me that nonviolence in practice means common labour with the body. T-5-225

- The only virtue I want to claim is truth and nonviolence. T-2-84

- I have no weapon but nonviolence. XXV-423

- I shall, of course, die with nonviolence on my lips. T-5-265

- I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers. XXV-489

- I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith. T-5-222

- I will not have the power of nonviolence to be underestimated in order to cover my limitations or weaknesses. T-5-169

- I can no more preach nonviolence to a cowardly man than I can tempt a blind man to enjoy healthy scenes. T-2-131

- I have been practicing, with scientific precision, nonviolence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. T-5-295

- I have recognised that the nation has the right, if it so wills, to vindicate her freedom even by actual violence. MM-148

- The nonviolence I teach is active nonviolence of the strongest. But the weakest can partake in it without becoming weaker. XXVI-140

- If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of nonviolence. T-5-291

- There is nothing on earth that I would not give up for the sake of the country, excepting, of course, two things and two only, namely, truth and nonviolence. T-2-235

- The nonviolent man automatically becomes a servant of God. T-4-257

- The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence. MM-153

- The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme.T-5-226

- Nonviolent defence presupposes recklessness about one’s life and property. T-5-282

- A nonviolent fight is as sharp as the edge of a sword, sharpened on the whetstone of the heart. T-5-111

- Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour.T-5-267

- Nonviolent action without the co-operation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended result. T-5-132

- Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country. T-2-83

- Nonviolent acts exert pressure far more effectively than violent acts, for that pressure comes from goodwill and gentleness. XXV-473

- Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life. XXV-369

- A nonviolent person’s life is always at the disposal of him who would take it. XXV-437

- A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia. XXVI-140

- Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built. T-2-42

- A nonviolent occupation is that occupation which is fundamentally free from violence and which involves no exploitation or envy of others. MM-265

- A society or a nation constructed non-violently must be able to withstand attack upon its structure from without or within. T-6-27

- A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. MM-257

- The end of nonviolent ‘war’ is always an agreement, never dictation, much less humiliation of the opponent. T-5-257

- For a nonviolent person, the whole world is one family. He will thus fear none, nor will others fear him. T-5-304

- No man can be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice, no matter where it occurs. T-5-276

- A nonviolent life is an act of self-examination and self-purification, whether by an individual, group or nation. T-7-321

- In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file. T-4-298

- A nonviolent revolution is not a programme of "seizure of power" but it is a programme of transformation of relationships, ending in a peaceful transfer of power. T-7-29

- If all were nonviolent, there would be no anarchy and there would be no question of anybody being armed for meeting aggression from without. T-5-287

- If we are nonviolent through and through, our nonviolence would have been self-evident.T-3-298

- Those who are truthful, nonviolent and brave do not cease to be so because of the stupidity of their leader. T-5-304

- Centralization as a system is inconsistent with a non-violent structure of society. MM-137

- Boycott of foreign cloth through picketing may easily be violent; through the use of khadi it is most natural and absolutely nonviolent. T-4-10

- Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent. T-5-316

- The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be. T-5-167

- A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance.T-7-30

- Those who have their hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a nonviolent order for the world. T-7-5

- A nonviolent action accompanied by nonviolence in thought and word should never produce enduring violent reaction upon the opponent. T-5-130

- A nonviolent warrior knows no leaving the battle. He rushes into the mouth of himsa, never even once harbouring an evil thought. T-5-116

- It is nonviolent non-co-operation which evokes the highest spirit of self-sacrifice that will wean one from the error of one’s ways. T-7-157

- Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times. T-2-149

- Nonviolent non-co-operation is the only alternative to anarchy and worse. T-2-149

- Nonviolent, non-co-operators can only succeed when they have succeeded in attaining control over the hooligans of India. T-2-83

- Total nonviolent non-cooperation has no place in popular Raj, whatever its level may be. T-7-149

- The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West. MM-182

- For a nonviolent struggle, there is no age limit. The blind, the maimed and the bed-ridden may serve, and not only men but women also. T-4-141

- Unless nonviolence of the strong is really developed among us, there should be no thought of civil disobedience for Swaraj, whether within the states or in British India.T-5-71

O

Obedience

- Obedience to the law of bread labour will bring about a silent revolution in the structure of society. T-4-36

- Compulsory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing obedience to one’s father is the glory of son ship.T-4-36

- Before civil disobedience can be practiced on a vast scale, people must learn of civil or voluntary obedience.T-4-10

- Reasoned and willing obedience to the laws of the State is the first lesson in non-co-operation. XXV-560

- A wretched parent who claims obedience from his children, without first doing his duty by them, excites nothing but contempt.T-8-31

- Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine. T-5-104

- In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience or the rank and file.T-4-298

- Through khadi we teach people the art of civil obedience to an institution which they have built up for themselves. T-4-10

Ocean

- The ocean is composed of drops of water, each drop is an entity and yet is a part of the whole, the ‘one and the many’. TIG-147

- Absolute calm is not the law of ocean. And it is the same with the ocean of life. T-7-190

Oppression

- Everyone should realize the secret that oppression thrives only when the oppressed submit to it. T-7-192

Optimist

- I am an irrepressible optimist, but I always base my optimism on solid facts. T-2-152

Organization

- Organizations, like men, if they are to command respect and grow, must have a sense of honor and must fulfill their promises.T-3-7

- Personal likes and dislikes, ambitions and petty jealousies should have no place in the Congress organization. T-7-53

Orthodox

- The only way by which you and I can wean orthodox Hindus from their bigotry is by patient argument and correct conduct. XXV-514

P

Parliament

- Parliamentary work is but a minor item of the Congress Programme. T-5-322

- The Congress is intended to be a forerunner and prototype of a Parliament. XXV-386

- When Swaraj comes, different parties will work in the same Swaraj Parliament. XXV-386

Passion

- By reckless indulgence in their passions, parents serve for their children as models for unrestrained license. T-2-224

- To conquer the subtle passions seems to me to be harder by far than the physical conquest of the world by the force of arms. TIG-58

Passive Resistance

- Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. X-48

- Passive resistance is a preparation for active resistance of arms. T-8-40

- Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used. MM-164

- Passive resistance is a misnomer for nonviolent resistance. It is much more active than violent resistance. T-4-141

- Passive resistance is a negative thing, and it has nothing of the active principle of love. T-4-253

- Passive resistance, unlike nonviolence, has no power to change men’s hearts. MM-157

- The sword of passive resistance does not require a scabbard. X-51

- Jesus Christ, Daniel and Socrates represented the purest form of passive resistance or soul force. MM-164

Patience

- Patience and perseverance, if we have them, overcome mountains of difficulties. MM-365

- To lose patience is to lose the battle. T-2-180

- The khadi spirit means infinite patience. T-2-281

Patient

- A doctor who uses his talent to pander to the vices of his patient degrades himself and his patient. TIG-114

Patriotism

- My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount upon the distress or exploitation of other nationalities. T-2-353

- By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them. X-41

Peace

- Peace is unattained by part performance of conditions, even as a chemical combination is impossible without complete fulfillment of the conditions of attainment thereof. TIG-144

- Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds. T-5-193

- My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace, which is here, called Pax Britannica. T-2-201

- A civil resister offers resistance only when peace becomes impossible. T-3-218

- The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence. T-5-172

- Without prayer there is no inward peace. TIG-42

- My attempt and my prayer are and will be for an honourable peace between belligerent nations in the least possible time. T-5-188

- Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness, peace and repose in our daily acts. TIG-43

- Salvation of the Gita is perfect peace. TIG-100

- An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill for a groaning world. T-2-46

- Violence is bound, sooner or later, to exhaust itself but peace cannot issue out of such exhaustion. T-7-5

- If Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods, it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life. T-2-360

- The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world. TIG-43

- Not to believe in the possibility of permanent peace is to disbelieve in the Godliness of human nature. TIG-144

- The one condition for fighting for peace and liberty is to acquire self-restraint. XXVI-45

- The English peace is the peace of the grave. T-2-326

People

- A true life lived amongst the people is in itself an object-lesson that must produce its own effect upon immediate surroundings. MM-366

- A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people. T-5-10

- An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers. T-5-19

Perfect – Perfection

- In the characteristics of the perfected man of the Gita, I do not see any that correspond to physical warfare. TIG-97

- Salvation of the Gita is perfect peace. TIG-100

- Man will ever remain imperfect and it will always be his part to try to be perfect. T-4-11

- Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified, but the picture is imaginary. TIG-98

- Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. T-4-33

- To find Truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, i.e. to become perfect. TIG-3

Picketing

- Work achieved through aggressive picketing will be of doubtful worth, while work achieved through loving persuasive pressure will be lasting. T-3-63

Pledge

- If you weigh a pledge against a sum of hundreds of thousands, the pledge will be seen to be of greater consequence. XIV-249

- A religious person will never feel happy in forcing a person to break his pledge or associating himself with such an effort. XIV-249

Poetry

- If the poet* spun for half an hour daily, his poetry would gain in richness. T-2-215

* The reference here is to poet Rabindranath Tagore

Police

- Peace restored with the help of the police and its elder brother, the military, will strengthen the hold of the foreign government and emasculate us still further. T-7-167

Politics – Political

- Politics divorced from religion has absolutely no meaning. MM-310

- Politics are a part of our being; we ought to understand our national institution. MM-310

- All constructive activity is, in a sense, part and parcel of the politics of the country. T-5-244

- Remember that no political programme can stand without the constructive programme. T-4-156

- Human life being and undivided whole, no line could ever be drawn between its different compartments, nor between ethics and politics. T-7-350

- Nonviolence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution. Its vast possibilities are yet unexplored. T-4-205

- Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test every one of our actions in the light of ethical principles. X-248

- To think in terms of the political goal in every matter and at every step is to raise unnecessary dust. T-4-44

- I would dance with joy if I had to give up politics. T-5-244

- I have sacrificed no principle to gain political advantage. XXVI-285

- I draw no hard and fast line of demarcation between political, social, religious and other questions. T-3-187

- Section 124-A, under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen. T-2-100

Pomp

- Pomp and pageantry are often synonymous with vulgarity. T-4-170

Poor – Poverty

- Let there be no distinction between rich and poor, high and low. XXVI-199

- To wear torn clothes is a sign of laziness and, therefore, of shame, but to wear patched clothes proclaims poverty or renunciation, and industry. T-7-108

- My greatest worry is the ignorance and poverty of the masses of India, and the way in which they have been neglected by the classes, especially the neglect of the Harijans by the Hindus. T-4-102

- The spinning wheel and the spinning wheel alone will solve, if anything will solve, the problem of the deepening poverty of India. XXVI-292

- Unless all the discoveries that you make have the welfare of the poor as the end view, all your workshops will be no better than Satan’s workshops. T-2-272

Possible

- We are daily witnessing the phenomenon of the impossible of yesterday becoming the possible of today. XXVI-68

Power

- Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. XXV-563

- Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment. XXV-563

- Real power does not consist in the ability to inflict capital punishment upon the subjects, but in the will and the ability to protect the subjects against the world. T-2-178

- There is an indefinable mysterious Power that pervades everything. T-2-312

- Whilst power, superimposed, always needs the help of the police and the military, power generated from within should have little or no use of them. MM-345

- God is not a power residing in the clouds. God is an unseen power residing within us and nearer to us than fingernails to the flesh. TIG-19

- Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives. MM-345

- Man has always desired power. Ownership of property gives this power. Man hankers also after posthumous fame based on power. T-2-367

- No power on earth can subjugate you when you are armed with the sword of ahimsa. T-7-113

- Khaddar has the greatest organizing power in it because it has itself to be organized and because it affects all India. T-2-256

- No empire intoxicated with the red wine of power and the plunder of weaker races has yet lived long in this world. T-2-90

- Steam becomes a mighty power only when it allows itself to be imprisoned in a strong little reservoir, produces tremendous motion and carries huge weights by permitting itself a tiny and measured outlet. T-2-373

- The moment the cultivators of the soil realize their power, the evil of Zamindari will be sterilized. MM-129

- How heavy is the toll of sins and wrong that wealth, power and prestige exact from man. MM-219

Prayer

- Prayer can come in only when fasting has done its work. It can make fasting easy and bearable. T-7-79

- Prayer is a confession of one’s unworthiness and weakness. TIG-48

- Prayer is a sign of repentance, a desire to become better, purer. T-4-34

- Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within. TIG-55

- Prayer is either petitional or, in its wider sense, inward communion. TIG-41

- Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. MM-87

- Prayer is no mere exercise of words or of the ears, it is no mere repetition of empty formula. TIG-42

- Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness and peace and repose in our daily acts. TIG-43

- Prayer presupposes faith. No prayer is in vain. Prayer is like any other action. T-8-25

- A prayerful study and experience are essential for a correct interpretation of the scriptures. MOG-13

- Our prayer is a heart search. It is a reminder to ourselves that we are helpless without His support. TIG-44

- Prayer is not an old woman’s idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action. T-7-94

- True prayer is not a prelude to inaction. T-4-35

- Undoubtedly, prayer requires a living faith in God. Successful Satyagraha is inconceivable without that faith. T-7-965

- Virtue lies in being absorbed in one’s prayers in the presence of din and noise. T-2-13

- Worship or prayer is not to be performed with the lips, but with the heart. MM-78

- My greatest weapon is mute prayer. T-5-21

- My attempt and prayer are and will be for an honorable peace between belligerent nations in the least possible time. T-5-188

- My austerities, fasting and prayers are, I know, of no value if I rely upon them for reforming me. My penance is the prayer of a bleeding heart for forgiveness for sins unwittingly committed. XXV-200

- The meaning of prayer is that I want to evoke that Divinity within me. T-5-147

- Prayer has been the saviour of my life. Without it I should have been a lunatic long ago. T-3-110

- Prayer has not been a part of my life in the sense that truth has been. T-3-110

- Fasting and prayer are common injunctions in my religion. T-2-152

- A personal selfish prayer is bad whether made before an image or an unseen God. TIG-90

- A man of prayer regards what are known as physical calamities as divine chastisement. T-4-34

- Begin your day with prayer, and make it so soulful that it may remain with you until the evening. TIG-43

- Close the day with prayer so that you may have a peaceful night free from dreams and nightmares. TIG-43

- You are not going to know the meaning of God or prayer, unless you reduce yourself to a cipher. T-5-149

- A complete fast is a complete and literal denial of self. It is the truest prayer. MM-35

- Buddhism in one long prayer. T-2-256

- God answers prayer in His own way, not ours. MM-91

- Just as a prayer may be merely a mechanical intonation as of a bird, so may a fast be a mere mechanical torture of the flesh. T-2-85

- Let us, by praying, purify ourselves and we shall not only remove untouchability but shall also hasten the advent of Swaraj. XXV-515

- A congregational prayer is a means for establishing essential human unity through common worship. T-7-64

- The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world. MM-90

- The mundane use of the Gayatri*, its repetition for healing the sick, illustrates the meaning we have given to prayer. TIG-51

* A Vedic prayer

- The sky may be overcast today with clouds, but a fervent prayer to God is enough to dispel them. T-4-29

Preaching

- Preaching jars on me and has no appeal for me, and I get suspicious of missionaries who preach. TIG-72

- I cannot say what to preach, but I can say that a life of service and utmost simplicity is the best preaching. TIG-72

Prison

- Our triumph consists in thousands being led to the prisons like lambs to the slaughter-house. T-2-52

- Our triumph consists in being imprisoned for no wrong whatsoever. T-2-52

- By noiselessly going to prison a civil resister ensures a calm atmosphere. T-2-53

Progress

- In our progress towards the goal, we ever see more and more enchanting scenery. T-5-174

- Friends are friends only when they help one to progress in life. T-7-295

- To be dissatisfied with the slowness of progress betrays ignorance of the way in which reform works. T-7-154

- All education in a country has got to be demonstrably in promotion of the progress of the country in which it is given. MM-381

- Civilizations have come and gone and, in spite of our vaunted progress, I am tempted to ask again and again, ‘To what purpose?’ T-2-295

Prohibition

- I would rather have India reduced to a state of pauperism than have thousands of drunkards in our midst. T-2-280

- I would rather have India without education, if that is the price to be paid for making it dry. T-2-280

- Prohibition will remain a far cry if the Congress is to count the cost as a matter of first-class national importance. T-4-173

- Drink is not a fashion in India as it is in the West. T-2-228

- The demand for total prohibition must go hand in hand with the demand for reduction in the military expenditure. T-2-227

- Only those women who have drunkards as their husbands know what havoc the drink devil causes in homes that once were orderly and peace giving. T-3-33

- A snake can only destroy the body, but the curse of drink corrupts the soul within. T-2-297

- It reflects the greatest credit on the determined minority in America that, by sheer force of its moral weight, it was able to carry though the prohibition measure, however short-lived it was. T-4-173

Promise

- If the promise inscribed on a promissory note is not honoured, the promissory note is worth nothing and fit only to be burnt to pieces and thrown away. T-7-118

Propaganda

- Practice is the best speech and the best propaganda. XXV-451

- No language can spread through mere propaganda. T-7-51

- Black flags and noisy slogans and hurling of stones and shoes have no place in educative and instructive propaganda. T-5-159

Prophets

- Prophets live and die but their doctrines often fructify after centuries. T-7-279

Public Opinion

- Creation of effective public opinion depends on the cultivation of true courage, born of truthfulness and nonviolence. T-8-11

- Performance of one’s duty should be independent of public opinion. T-2-320

- The only force at the disposal of democracy is that of public opinion. T-8-100

- In concrete form, what pure suffering, wholly one-sided, does, is to stir public opinion against a wrong. MGCG-301

- The satyagrahi strives to reach the reason through the heart. The method of reaching the heart is to awaken public opinion. XXVI-327

- All satyagraha and fasting is a species of tyaga (renunciation). It depends, for its effects, upon expressions of wholesome public opinion shorn of all bitterness. T-5-54

Punishment

- Punishment is God’s, who alone is the infallible Judge. T-4-299

- My creed of nonviolence does not favour punishment of thieves and dacoits and even murderers. T-3-62

- Experience gained in two schools under my control has taught me that punishment does not purify, if anything, it hardens children. T-2-218

- No sin, no breach of nature’s law, goes unpunished. T-2-226

Pure – Purity- Purification

- Pure motives can never justify impure or violent action. XXV-442

- Never own defeat in a sacred cause and make up your minds henceforth that you will be pure and that you will find a response from God. TIG-58

- The purer I try to become, the nearer I feel to be to God. TIG-9

- Purification being highly infectious, purification of oneself necessarily leads to the purification of one’s surroundings. TIG-57

- Purification is never for the selfishly idle, it accrues only to the selflessly industrious. T-4-35

- To a pure heart all hearts are pure. XXV-509

- Waiting on God means increasing purity. XXV-515

- Temple going is for the purification of the soul. TIG-86

- A spirit is not necessarily purer, because it is disembodied. T-2-366

- Confession of one’s guilt purifies and uplifts. Its suppression is degrading and should always be avoided. T-8-245

- It is necessary first to purify the drunken and dissolute worshippers in charge of some of these temples. T-2-261

- God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart. TIG-57

- Every single act of one who leads a life of purity should be in the nature of yajna. MOG-19

- Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and purity. T-2-7

- A resolute and wise refusal to take part in festivities will be an incentive for introspection and self-purification. T-8-179

- Like the watch, the heart needs the winding of purity, or the Dweller ceases to speak. MOG-17

- Ramanama is for the pure at heart and for those who want to attain purity and remain pure. TIG-144

- Tulsidas’s Ramayana is a notable book because it is informed with the spirit of purity, pity and piety. MOG-14

- I should wish to die if a man who is impure should parade his purity in front of me. XXV-508

- I would beseech you not only to be pure beyond suspicion but I would ask you to combine with stainless purity, great wisdom and great ability. T-2-352

R

Rama – Ramanama – Ram Raj

- Rama, Allah and God are to me convertible terms. XXVI-288

- For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. T-2-37

- Rama was not only on the lips of Hanuman. He was enthroned in his heart. He gave Hanuman exhaustless strength. TIG-48

- My Rama, the Rama of our prayers, is not the historical Rama, the son of Dasharatha, the king of Ayodhya. TIG-1100

- Hinduism would not have been much of a religion, if Rama had not steeled his heart against every temptation. T-2-150

- It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable self-government. T-2-297-128

- Ramanama is for the pure in heart and for those who want to attain purity and remain pure. TIG-114

- Ramanama can be used only for a good, never for an evil end, or else thieves and robbers would be the greatest devotees. T-7-79

- Ramanama purifies while it cures, and, therefore, it elevates. TIG-114

- Even Ramanama is by itself lifeless, but it has become a living symbol of the deity because millions of people have consecrated it. T-5-92

- By Ram Raj I do not mean Hindu Raj. I mean by Ram Raj, Divine Raj, the Kingdom of God. T-2-375555

Rationalism

- Rationalists are admirable beings, but rationalism is a hideous monster when it claims for itself omnipotence. TIG-91

Reading

- Reading comes before writing, and drawing before tracing the letters of the alphabet. T-3-286

Realization

- Freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as Truth. TIG-37

- Divine knowledge is not borrowed from books. It has to be realized in oneself. TIG-94

Reason

- Reason has to be strengthened by suffering, and suffering opens the eyes of understanding. T-2-182

- In man, reason quickens and guides feelings; in brute, the soul lies ever dormant. T-4-62

- Faith is a kind of sixth sense which works in cases which are without the purview of reason. MM-64

- If I know Hinduism at all, it is essentially inclusive and ever-growing, ever-responsive. It gives the freest scope to imagination, speculation and reason. XXV-178

- Nothing in the Shastras, which is capable of being reasoned, can stand if it is in conflict with reason. T-4-42

- There is no doubt that our last state will be worse than our first, if we surrender our reason into somebody’s keeping. T-2-62

- Faith becomes lame when it ventures into matters pertaining to reason. T-7-36

- Islam appeals to people because it appeals also to reason. XXVI-415

- There can be no Ram Raj in the present state of iniquitous inequalities in which only a few roll in riches, while the masses do not even get enough to eat. T-7-404

- I have described Swaraj as Ramarajya and Ramarajya is an impossibility unless we have thousands of Sitas. XXVI-367

- Execution of the constructive programme in its entirety means more than Swaraj. It means Ram Raj, Khudai Sultanat or the Divine Kingdom. T-7-32

- Even the dog is described by the poet to have received justice under Ramarajya. MM-326

- My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions. In this lies the secret of Ramarajya. MM-327

Rebellion

- Complete civil disobedience is a state of peaceful rebellion, a refusal to obey every single state-made law. T-2-52

Reform – Reformer

- A reformer’s business is to make the impossible possible by giving an ocular demonstration of the possibility in his own conduct. XXVI-68

- A reformer has to sail not with the current, often he has to go against it, even though it may cost him his life. T-7-114

- Where is the reformer who has not a price put upon his head? T-2-236

- You cannot achieve durable reform by becoming impatient. XXVI-295

- Every Reform means awakening. Once truly awakened, the nation will not be satisfied with reform only in one department of life. T-2-227

Regularity

- Unless all work is done with clock-work regularity, it is impossible to organise it in a thorough manner. XXV-285

- No organization is possible without punctilious regard to the observance of agreed time-tables. XXV-285

Religion

- Religion is a thing to be lived. It is not merely sophistry. T-7-129

- Religion is one tree with many branches. As branches, you may say, religions are many, but as a tree, religion is only one. T-3-244

- All religions were, at bottom, one, though they differed in detail and outward form like the leaves on a tree. T-8-285

- Even as a tree has a single trunk, but many branches and leaves, there in one religion, but any number of faiths. TIG-65

- The essence of true religious teaching is that one should serve and befriend all. T-7-385

- Religions are different roads converging to the same point. X-29

- Religion is the tie that binds one to one’s Creator, and whilst the body perishes, as it has to, religion persists even after death. T-4-41

- God-given religion is beyond all speech. TIG-65

- Religion should be dearer than life itself. T-8-153

- Religion taught us to return good for evil. T-8-120

- Religion all the world over offers God as the solace and comfort for all in agony. T-2-212

- Religion to be true must satisfy what may be termed humanitarian economics, that is, where the income and the expenditure balance each other. T-2-268

- A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. T-4-314

- Religion of nonviolence is not meant merely for the rishis and saints. T-2-5

- Religion is entirely a personal matter. Each one can approach heir Creator as they like. T-8-51

- Religion is not like a house or a cloak which can be changed at will. T-4-41

- All religions teach that two opposite forces act upon us and the human endeavour consists in a series of eternal rejections and acceptances. T-2-45

- All the great religions of the world inculcate equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of tolerance. T-3-257

- Purest religion is highest expediency. Many things are lawful but they are not all expedient. XX-58

- Religion is no test of nationality, but a personal matter between man and his God. MM-103

- All religions enjoined worship of the One God who was all-pervasive. He is present even in a drop of water or in a tiny speck of dust. T-7-115

- Unity among different races and different communities belonging to different religions of India is indispensable to the birth of national life. XXVI-241

- Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them. MM-68

- All religions are branches of the same mighty tree, but I must not change over from one branch to another for the sake of expediency. T-7-283

- All religions of the world describe God pre-eminently as the Friend of the friendless, Help of the helpless, and Protector of the weak. T-3-192

- No religion taught man to kill fellowmen because he held different opinions or was of another religion. T-7-204

- That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith on injustice, untruth or violence.

- 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. T-3-280

- A religion cannot be sustained by the number of its lip-followers denying in their lives its tenets. T-3-220

- The highest fulfillment of religion requires a giving up of all possessions. MM-191

- To befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. T-7-385

- The external is in no way the essence of religion, but the external often proclaims the internal. T-2-273

- True material welfare is never inconsistent with performance of religious obligations. T-3-225

- A man without a religion is like a ship without a rudder. T-3-223

- To change one’s religion under the threat of force is no conversion but rather cowardice. T-7-274

- It is not part of religion to breed buffaloes or, for that matter, cows. T-2-267

- Hypocrisy and distortion are passing currently under the name of religion. T-7-128

- ‘Physician, heal thyself’ is more true in matters religious than mundane. T-2-132

- It is a travesty of true religion to consider one’s own religion as superior and other’s as inferior. T-7-115

- It is impossible that God, who is the God of Justice, could have made the distinctions that men observe today in the name of religion. T-3-236

- Where there is fear, there is no religion. T-2-230

- I cannot picture to myself a time when all mankind will have one religion. XXVI-285

- I believe that religious education must be the sole concern of religious associations. EWE-30

- I desire no honour if I have to conceal my religious beliefs in order to have it. XIV-235

- I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without its house of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a synagogue or agiari. T-3-194

- I have felt that the Gita teaches us that what cannot be followed in day-to-day practice cannot be called religion. T-2-311

- In matters concerning religion, I consider myself not a child but an adult with 35 years of experience. XIV-74

- I claim to represent all the cultures, for my religion, whatever it may be called, demands the fulfillment of all the cultures. T-5-272

- I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are. TIG-80

- It was through the Hindu religion that I learnt to respect Christianity and Islam. XIV-74

- Mine is not a religion of the prison-house. It has room for the least among God’s creation. XX-159

- My religion is a matter solely between my Maker and myself. MM-116

- My religion has no geographical limits. T-2-6

- My knowledge of the letter of the Shastras is better, but of true religion they are able to give me but little. Bunch-108

- My religion enables me, obliges me to imbibe all that is good in all the great religions of the earth. MM-100

- My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. Truth is my God. Nonviolence is the means of realizing Him. XXV-558

- My religion teaches me that a promise once made or a vow once taken for a worthy object may not be broken. T-2-154

- My personal religion peremptorily forbids me to hate anybody. MM-183

- My religion forbids me to belittle or disregard other cultures, as it insists, under pain of civil suicide, upon imbibing and living my own. EWE-19

- My religion says that only he who is prepared to suffer can pray to God. T-2-152

- My religion teaches me that whenever there is distress which one cannot remove, one must fast and pray. T-2-148

- My religion teaches me that I should, by my personal conduct, instill into the minds of those who might hold different views the conviction that cow killing is a sin.XXV-518

- My respectful study of other religions has not abated my reverence for or my faith in the Hindu scriptures. T-2-230

- My life is dedicated to the service of India through the religion of nonviolence which I believe to be the root of Hinduism. T-2-6

- My Hindu instinct tells me that all religions are more or less true. T-2-132

- My politics and all other activities of mine are derived from my religion. MM-102

- Fasting and prayer are common injunctions in my religion. T-2-152

- To me the Mahabharata is a profoundly religious book, largely allegorical, in a way meant to be a historical record. TIG-95

- Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth. XXVI-158

- Hinduism has become a conservative religion and, therefore, a mighty force because of the swadeshi spirit underlying it. MM-410

- Hinduism is not a codified religion. T-2-285

- Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. In it there is room for the worship of all the prophets in the world. MM-92

- Hinduism with its message of ahimsa is, to me, the most glorious religion in the world. MM-93

- Hinduism has absorbed the best of all the faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. T-8-120

- Hinduism would not have been much of a religion if Rama had not steeled his heart against every temptation. T-2-150

- Hindu dharma is like a boundless ocean teeming with priceless gems. TIG-85

- If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood. MM-299

- We cry for cow protection in the name of religion, but we refuse protection to the human cow in the shape of the girl-widow. T-2-227

- Calling them devadasis, we insult God Himself in the name of religion. T-2-280

- In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakh girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony. T-2-227

- It is no religion to have for one’s wife a girl who is fit only to sit in one’s lap, it is the height of irreligion. T-2-273

- Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion. T-2-227

- It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man. XXVI-58

- The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler than that of the rose. TIG-72

- Religion of our conception, thus imperfect, is always subject to a process of evolution and re-interpretation. TIG-65

- If we import compulsion in matters of religion, there is no doubt that we shall be committing suicide. XXVI-270

- Dharma is one and one only, Ahimsa means Moksha, and Moksha is the realization of truth. MOG-17

- Ahimsa is the height of Kshatriya dharma as it represents the climax of fearlessness. XXV-563

- Belief in one God is the cornerstone of all religions. MM-67

- Dharma is that which is enjoined by the holy books, followed by the sages, interpreted by the learned and which appeals to the heart. MM-65

- Even a little of dharma saves one from many a pitfall. T-2-89

- Truth is my religion and ahimsa is the only way of its realization. T-4-250

- Politics bereft of religion is absolute dirt, ever to be shunned. MM-102

- The final goal of all religions is to realise the essential oneness. MM-419

- True religion being the greatest thing in life and in the world, has been exploited the most. BINCH-42

- To benefit by others’ killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception. MM-429

- To reject the necessity of temples is to reject the necessity of God, religion and earthly existence. T-3-195

- "Do not worry in the least about yourself, leave all worry to God," this appears to be the commandment in all religions. MOG-19

- Passive resistance seeks to rejoin politics and religion and to test all our actions in the light of ethical principles. XX-201

- No Indian who aspires to follow the way of true religion can afford to remain aloof from politics. XX-201

- Love is the basis of our friendship as it is of religion. MM-398

- God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one-fifth of our vast population as untouchables. T-3-280

- Conversion without a clean heart is a denial of God and religion. T-4-79

- The practice of truth and nonviolence melted religious differences, and we learnt to see beauty in each religion. T-5-225

- Any imposition from without means compulsion. Such compulsion is repugnant to religion. T-8-61

- Every person, as every institution, and, above all, every religion is to be judged not by the amount of atrocities or the wrong committed but by the right conduct. T-8-25

Renunciation

- Renunciation is everyone’s prerogative. XXVI-361

- Renunciation means absence of hankering after fruit. T-2-310

- Renunciation to the Gita is the acid test of faith. T-2-310

- Renunciation which is natural does not herald its coming by the blowing of trumpets. It comes in imperceptibly without letting anyone notice it. XXVI-361

- The secret of a happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation to life. MM-192

- Renunciation made for the sake of service is an ineffable joy of which none can deprive anyone, because that nectar springs from within and sustains life. T-7-66

- Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the test of renunciation of the fruits of action. T-2-309

- The sanyasa of the Gita is all work and yet no work. T-2-312

- The sanyasa of the Gita will not tolerate complete cessation of activity. T-2-311

- Renunciation is the central Sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets. T-2-308

- 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. T-2-310

- That parrot’s non-co-operation with the cage, with its master, will live forever because it looks upon renunciation, non-co-operation, as a joy. XXV-445

- An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain, the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned forever and quicken and purify the ideal as time passes. T-2-333

- Desirelessness or renunciation does not come for the mere talking about it. TIG-99

Repose

- Prayer is the only means of bringing about orderliness, peace and repose in our daily life. TIG-43

Repression

- Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect. T-2-9

Research

- All research will be useless if it is not allied to internal research. T-2-272

Resolution

- Mere promises mean nothing if there is not an unalterable resolution behind them. XXV-530

Responsibility

- Responsibility will mellow and sober the youth and prepare them for the burden they must discharge. T-2-371

- Every person in a well-ordered State is fully conscious of both his responsibility and his rights. XXV-420

Restraint

- Moral results can only be produced by moral restraints. MM-285

- Let India become alive by self-purification, that is, self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind. T-2-56

Retaliation

- Retaliation is counter-poison and poison breeds more poison. The nectar of love alone can destroy the poison of hate. T-5-241

Retirement

- Older men should yield with grace what will be taken from them by force if they do not read the signs of the times. T-2-371

Revolutionary

- Impatience will blur the revolutionary’s vision and lead him astray. XXVI-141

- All criticism is not intolerance. I have criticized the revolutionary because I have felt for him. He has the same right to hold me to be in error as I believe him to be in error. XXVI-141

Reward

- No past services, however brilliant, should be counted to distributing the present employments. T-2-137

Rich

- Justice should become cheap and expeditious. Today it is the luxury of the rich and the joy of the gambler. T-4-182

- Let there be no distinction between rich and poor, high and low. XXVI-119

- I own no property and yet I feel that I am perhaps the richest man in the world. XXVI-561

Ridicule

- Ridicule is like repression. Both give place to respect when they fail to produce the intended effect. T-2-9

Right

- Rights of true citizenship accrue only to those who serve the State to which they belong. MM-135

- The true source of rights is duty. T-2-179

- If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek. XXV-564

- No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who thought of duties. XXV-573

- Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and performed their duties came naturally by their rights. XXV-573

- A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction. T-2-324

- There being no absolute and universal standard of right, terrorism must be held to be wrong in every case. XXV-442

- As soon as I arrogate to myself the exclusive title to being in the right, I usurp the function of the Deity. XXV-442

- Might of members or of the sword shall not be right. Right is the only true might, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. T-8-65

- If all simply insist on rights and no duties, there will be utter confusion and chaos. T-8-31

- If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o'-the wisp. TIG-152

- One man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole. MM-440

- Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. X-48

- The safest rule of conduct is to claim kinship when we want to do service and not to insist on kinship when we want to assert a right. T-2-300

- Satan's snares are mostly subtly laid and are the most tempting when the dividing line between right and wrong is so thin as to be imperceptible. T-2-55

- The only things that separates us from the brute, with which we have so much in common, is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong. T-4-158

- Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties. T-4-13

- Swaraj would be real Swaraj only when there would be no occasion for safeguarding any rights. T-3-92

Right Angle

- An insignificant right angle will make all the difference between ugliness and elegance, solidity and shakiness of a gigantic structure. T-2-365

- If I have the definition of a right angle, I can make whatever angle I need. T-3-289

Risk

- If we want to overtake the storm which is about to burst upon us, we must take bolder risks and sail full steam ahead. T-2-286

Rome

- Rome's decline began long before it fell. MM-349

Rose

- The fragrance of religious and spiritual life is much finer and subtler than that of the rose. TIG-72

- A rose does not need to preach. It simply spreads its fragrance. The fragrance is its own sermon. TIG-72

S

Sacrifice

- A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy. MOG-21

- God accepts the sacrifice of the pure in heart. T-2-377

- The State is the sum total of the sacrifice, on its behalf, of its members. XXV-240

- The willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God or man. XXVI-141

- The stability of a State depends upon the readiness of every citizen to subordinate his rights to those of the rest. XXV-420

- Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice. T-2-25

- The charkha is the symbol of sacrifice, and sacrifice is essential for the establishment of the image of the deity. T-2-277

- An ideal sanctified by the sacrifices of such master-spirits as Lenin cannot go in vain; the noble example of their renunciation will be emblazoned for ever and quicken and purify the idea as time passes. T-2-333

- If I were overfull of pity for the cow, I should sacrifice my life to save her but not take my brother's. X-30

- Woman is the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering and her advent to public life should, therefore, result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and accumulation of property. T-2-367

- Non-co-operation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views. T-2-11

Sad

- It is a sad thing that our schoolboys look upon manual labour with disfavour, if not contempt. EWE-20

Saint

- A saint who considers himself superior to a sinner forfeits his sainthood and becomes worse than the sinner, who unlike the proud saint, knows not what he is doing. TIG-153

- The temples are for the sinners, not for the saints. T-3-271

Salt

- If salt loses its savour, wherewith can it be salted? MM-262

- There is no article like salt, outside water, by taxing which the state can reach the starving millions, the sick, the maimed and the utterly helpless. T-3-13

Salvation

- Salvation is nothing more and nothing less than being well in every way. TIG-116

- Salvation of the Gita is perfect peace. TIG-100

- Moksha is a bodiless super physical state in which there is neither drinking nor eating and therefore neither the milking of buffalo nor the plucking even of a weed.XXVI-3355

Sanitation

- The Brahmin's duty is to look after the sanitation of the soul, the bhangi's that of the body of society. T-4-104

- Everyone must be his own scavenger. MM-200

- Conservation of national sanitation is Swaraj work and it may not be postponed for a single day on any consideration whatsoever. T-2-360

- In the matter of outward sanitation we have to learn a great deal from the West. XXVI-241

- Corporate cleanliness can only be ensured if there is a corporate conscience and a corporate insistence on cleanliness in public places. MM-396

- To me, the test of a people's knowledge of sanitation is the condition of their latrines. T-2-274

Sanskrit

- Every Hindu should have enough knowledge of Sanskrit to be able to express himself in that language. T-2-273

Satan

- Satan's snares are most subtly laid and are the most tempting when the dividing line between right and wrong is so thin as to be imperceptible. T-2-55

- Satan mostly employs comparatively moral instruments and the language of ethics to give his aims an air of respectability. T-2-17

- Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips. MM-231

- Since one Satan is one too many for me, I would not multiply him. XXVI-489

- Armed conspiracies against something satanic is like matching satans against Satan. XXVI-489

- A fast to be true must be accompanied by a readiness to receive pure thoughts and determination to resist all Satan's temptations. TIG-52

- I am not likely to obtain the result flowing from the worship of God by laying myself prostrate before Satan. X-43

- The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between a modern civilization, which is the kingdom of Satan, and an ancient civilization, which is the Kingdom of God. X-189

- God rules even where Satan seems to hold sway, because the latter exists only on God's sufferance. T-7-147

- Unless all the discoveries that you make have the welfare of the poor as the end in view, all your workshops will be really no better than Satan's workshops. T-2-272

- What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as Satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren? T-2-36

- The eternal duel between Ormuzed and Ahriman, God and Satan, is raging in my breast, which is one among their billion battlefields. XXV-450

Satyagraha- Satyagrahi

- Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and in the end makes itself irresistible. T-7-49

- Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth. XXVI-273

- Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. XV-489

- Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence. TIG-53

- All satyagraha and fasting is a species of tyaga. It depends for its effects upon an expression of wholesome public opinion shorn of all bitterness. T-5-54

- The fight of satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying. T-7-76

- The satyagrahi general has to obey his inner voice, for over and above the situation outside he examines himself constantly and listens to the dictates of the inner self.T-5-111

- Satyagraha, of which civil resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life. T-3-298

- Satyagraha is itself an unmistakable mute prayer of an agonized soul. MM-446

- Satyagraha is a law for universal application. Beginning with the family, its use can be extended to every other circle. T-7-48

- Satyagraha can rid society of all evils, political, economic and moral. T-8-39

- Satyagraha and civil disobedience and fasts have nothing in common with the use of force, veiled or open. T-8-100

- Satyagraha is a purely spiritual weapon. T-3-260

- A genuine satyagraha should never excite contempt in the opponent even when it fails to command regard or respect. T-5-8

- Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor is tired of it and the object of satyagraha is gained. T-6-2

- In satyagraha, a courted imprisonment carries its own praise. T-5-302

- Final satyagraha is inconceivable without an honourable peace between the several communities composing the Indian nation. T-5-131

- Satyagraha does not depend on outside help, it derives all its strength from within. T-5-93

- My purpose is to describe experiments in the science of satyagraha and not at all to describe how good I am. T-2-217

- The method of satyagraha requires that the satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it. T-5-235

- In the dictionary of satyagraha, there is no enemy. T-5-162

- Even as satyagraha is a weapon unique of its kind and not one of the ordinary weapons used by people, so is khadi a unique article of commerce which will not, cannot, succeed on terms common to other articles. T-2-282

- Since satyagraha is a method of conversion and conviction, it seeks never to use the slightest coercion. XXVI-267

- Jail-going is only the beginning, not the end of satyagraha. The acme of satyagraha for us would be to lay down our lives for the defence of India's just cause. T-7-194

- Satyagraha as conceived by me is a science in the making. MM-168

- It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war. T-3-260

- For a satyagrahi brigade only those are eligible who believe in ahimsa and satya. MM-177

- Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it. XXVI-292

- Satyagraha does not begin and end with civil disobedience. T-5-69

- Satyagraha and its off-shoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. MM-167

- A clear victory of satyagraha is impossible so long as there is ill will. MM-173

- I regard the constituent assembly as the substitute of satyagraha. It is constructive satyagraha. T-7-148

- Non-co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha. XXV-489

- Whatever may be true of the other modes of warfare, in satyagraha it has been held that the causes for failure are to be sought within. T-5-187

- Seeming failure is not of the law of satyagraha but of incompetence of the satyagrahi by whatever cause induced. MGCG-301

- Satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth. XXV-587

- Without satyagraha carried out in the proper spirit, there is no victory, no Swaraj. T-5-264

- 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. T-5-264

- What I call the law of satyagraha is to be deduced from an appreciation of duties and rights flowing therefrom. T-8-31

- Force that the performance of duty naturally generates is the non-violent and invincible force that satyagraha brings into being. T-8-32

- Not those who shout 'satyagraha', 'satyagraha' will do satyagraha, but those who will work for it. T-5-264

- There is a vital connection between satyagraha and charkha, and the more I find that belief challenged, the more I am confirmed in it. T-5-264

- There must be power in the word of a satyagraha general, not the power that the possession of limitless arms gives, but the power that purifies life which strict vigilance and a ceaseless application produce. T-4-267

- A satyagrahi is sometimes bound to use language which is capable of two meanings, provided both the meanings are obvious and necessary and there is no intention to deceive anyone. T-4-1599

- My satyagrahi spirit tells me that I may not retaliate. XXV-44

- A satyagrahi should have a living faith in God. T-5-92

- A satyagrahi turns the searchlight inward relentlessly to weed out all the defects that may be lying hidden there still. T-5-81

- A satyagrahi has infinite patience, abundant faith in others, and ample hope. T-3-68

- A satyagrahi has no other stay but God, and he who has any other stay or depends on any other help cannot offer satyagraha. T-5-98

- A satyagrahi cannot go to law for a personal wrong. XXV-163

- A satyagrahi loves his so-called enemy even as he loves his friend. He has no enemy. T-5-162

- A satyagrahi must ceaselessly strive to realize and live truth. And he must never contemplate hurting anyone by thought, word or deed. T-8-9

- I have repeatedly stated that satyagraha never fails and that one perfect satyagrahi is enough to vindicate Truth. XXV-489

- The satyagrahi strives to reach reason through the heart. The method of reaching the heart is to awaken public opinion. XXVI-327

- A satyagrahi has always his minimum and it is this minimum that is wanted in connection with this struggle. XXVI-266

- The satyagrahi should not have any hatred in his heart against the opponent. MM-176

- There is no time limit for a satyagrahi nor is there a limit to his capacity for suffering. XXVI-159

- A satyagrahi is dead to his body even before the enemy attempts to kill him. MM-169

- A satyagrahi would neither retaliate nor would he submit to the criminal, but seek to cure him by curing himself. T-7-190

- No confirmed satyagrahi is dismayed by dangers, seen or unseen, from his opponent's side. T-7-148

- To die without killing is the badge of a satyagrahi. T-7-147

- A satyagrahi is nothing if not instinctively law-abiding. MM-170

- A satyagrahi exhausts all other means before he resorts to satyagraha. MM-170

- A satyagrahi, whilst he is ever ready to fight, must be equally eager for peace. MM-171

- In the code of the satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force. MM-171

- You are no Satyagrahi if you remain silent or passive spectators while your enemy is being done to death. T-7-77

- A satyagrahi lays down his life, but never gives up. That is the meaning of the 'do or die' slogan. T-7-147

- A satyagrahi may not ride two horses, truth and untruth, at the same time, nor, to change the metaphor, trim his sail to catch every breeze as you do in the name of communism. T-8-9

- No police officer could compel a satyagrahi to give evidence against a person who has confessed to him. A satyagrahi would never be guilty of a betrayal of trust. T-7-190

Scavenger

- A scavenger who works in His service shares equal distinction with a king who uses his gifts in His name and is a mere trustee. TIG-137

- A bhangi, if he is true to his salt, is a sanitarian. XXVI-294

- I am not ashamed to call myself a bhangi, and I ask every bhangi not to be ashamed of his calling. XXVI-294

- My mother was certainly a scavenger inasmuch as she cleaned me when I was a child. XXVI-152

- Society is sustained by several services. The bhangi constitutes the foundation of all services. T-4-104

- To clothe the bhangi with the dignity and respect due to him is the special task and privilege of the educated class. T-4-105

- The ideal bhangi of my conception would be a Brahmin par excellence, possibly even excel him. T-4-104

Schools

- All our national schools ought to be converted into factories of our national ammunition, namely, constructive work. T-3-3

Science

- Science to be science must afford the fullest scope for satisfying the hunger of body, mind and soul. T-4-119

- Science has not so far discovered any recipe for making the body immortal. TIG-113

- To state the limitation of science is not to belittle it. T-7-36

- Scientific knowledge requires constant probing into the why and wherefore of every little process that you perform. T-7-36

- Western science has made the discovery that society that is indifferent to the welfare of its servants suffers a heavy material loss. T-3-225

- Ahimsa is a science. The word 'failure' has no place in the vocabulary of science. T-5-81

- I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence. T-2-314

Scriptures

- A prayerful study and experience are essential for a correct interpretation of the scriptures. MOG-13

- A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. MOG-13

- Every true scripture only gains by criticism. XXVI-226

- My belief in the Hindu scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired. TIG-7

- Self-realization is the subject of the Gita, as it is of all scriptures. MOG-4

Self

- Searching of self ennobles, searching of others debases. MM-439

Self-Confidence

- The history of the world is full of instances of men who rose to leadership by sheer force of self-confidence, bravery and tenacity. T-3-23

- Shraddha means self-confidence and self-confidence means faith in God. XXV-88

Self-Control

- A votary of ahimsa must cultivate a habit of unremitting toil, sleepless vigilance, ceaseless self-control. T-5-80

Self-Defence

- It is unalloyed self-suffering which is the truest form of self-defense which knows no surrender. T-7-87

- Individual civil disobedience is everybody's inherent right, like the right ofin normal life. T-7-34

- The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die. T-3-3

Self-Determination

- If every component part of the nation claims the right of self-determination for itself, there is no one nation and there is no independence. T-5-272

Self-Government

- It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil wherever it occurs, and it is equally the function of God Rama to give to his devotees like Bibhishana a free charter of irrevocable self-government. T-2-297

- Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a nonviolent control over the violent elements in the country. T-2-83

- Self-government to be self-government has merely to reflect the will of the people who are to govern themselves. T-5-204

Self-Immolation

- Not even self-immolation can be allowed to support a bad or an immoral cause. XXV-442

Self-Indulgence

- Literature, full of the virtues of self-indulgence, served out in attractive forms, is flooding this country from the West and there is the greatest need for our youth to be on their guard. T-2-31

Selflessness

- Selflessness may be the purest form of selfishness. XXVI-271

Self-Pity

- Self-pity comes when you do a thing for which you expect recognition from others. MM-120

Self-Realization

- Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection which is self-realization. T-4-33

- There is no other way of self-realization except the way of complete self-abandonment. XXVI-350

- Self-realization is the subject of the Gita, as it is in all scriptures. TIG-98

- To find Truth completely is to realize oneself and one's destiny, i.e. to become perfect. TIG-3

- What I want to achieve, what I have been striving and pining for these thirty years, is self-realization, that is, to see God face to face. T-2-217

- The object of the Gita appears to me to be that of showing the most excellent way to attain self-realization. MOG-4

Self-Reliant

- We must learn to be self-reliant and independent of schools, courts, protection and patronage of a Government we seek to end, if it will not mend. T-2-32

Self-Respect

- In a self-respecting India, is not every woman's virtue as much every man's concern as his own sister's? T-2-51

- To yield to the threat of actual use of violence is a surrender of one's self-respect and religious conviction. T-2-133

- If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief. T-2-303

- Can it be ever dangerous for a lion to tell a number of other lions, who in their ignorance, consider themselves to be mere lambs, that they, too, are not lambs but lions? X-249

- Self-respect and honour cannot be protected by others. They are for each individual himself or herself to guard. T-5-249

Self-Restraint

- Self-restraint is the very keystone of the ethics of vow-taking. T-2-365

- All the four stages in a man's life are devised by the seers in Hinduism for imposing discipline and self-restraint. XXVI-375

Self-Righteousness

- There is always the fear of self-righteousness possessing us, the fear of arrogating to ourselves a superiority that we do not possess. T-5-243

Self-Rule

- Rule of all without the rule of oneself would prove to be as deceptive and as disappointing as a painted toy mango, charming to look at but hollow and empty within. T-4-63

- As every country is fit to eat, to drink and to breathe, even so is every nation fit to manage its own affairs, no matter how badly. MM-311

Self-Sacrifice

- Self-sacrifice of one innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of a million men who die in the act of killing others. XXVI-141

Self-Suffering

- My method is conversion, not coercion; it is self-suffering, not the suffering of the tyrant. T-2-32

- Love can never express itself by imposing suffering on others. It can only express itself by self-suffering, by self-purification. T-3-221

Self-Supporting

- If hand-spinning is an effective method of making India self-supporting, it must be made part of the franchise. XXV-317

Self-Surrender

- God will rule the lives of all those who will surrender themselves without reservation to Him. T-3-186

- God demands nothing less than complete self-surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having. TIG-56

Service

- Service is not possible unless it is rooted in love orahimsa. TIG-138

- Social service that savours of patronage is not service. XXVI-365

- Voluntary service of others demands the best of which one is capable, and must take precedence over service of self. MOG-21

- The platform of services is as big as the world. It is never overcrowded. T-7-3

- Khadi service, village service and Harijan service are one in reality though three in name. T-4-39

- For me, humanitarian service, or rather service of all that lives, is religion. And I draw no distinction between such religion and politics. XXV-52-3

- My creed is service of God and therefore of humanity. XXV-260

- The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence. T-7-66

- Charkha is an instrument of service. T-2-253

- That prince is acceptable to me who becomes a prince among his people's servants. XXV-564

- God took and needed no personal service. He served His creatures without demanding any service for Himself in return. T-4-304

- Man becomes not the lord and master of all creation but its servant.XXVI-545

- The time is fast coming when politicians will cease to fear the religion of humanity and humanitarians will find entrance into political life indispensable for full service. XXV-53

- The foundation of service and your real training lie in spinning Khaddar. XXVI-378

- My nonviolence bids me to dedicate myself to the service of minorities. T-7-385

- Ahimsa must express itself through acts of selfless service of the masses. T-5-81

- Cent percent swadeshi gives sufficient scope for the most insatiable ambition for service and a satisfaction of every kind of talent. T-3-289

- This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has made us unfit for true national service. EWE-8

- Renunciation made for the sake of service is an ineffable joy of which none can deprive one, because that nectar springs from within and sustains life. T-7-66

- The safest rule of conduct is to claim kinship when we want to do service and not to insist on kinship when we want to assert a right. T-2-300

- Man's triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by the struggle for mutual service. TIG-135

Silence

- Silence is a great help to a seeker after truth like myself. TIG-61

- Experience has taught me that silence is a part of the spiritual discipline of a votary of truth. TIG-59

- Modern civilization has taught us to convert night into day and golden silence into brazen din and noise.TIG-60

- The Divine Radio is always singing if we could only make ourselves ready to listen to it, but is impossible to listen without silence. TIG-60

Simplicity

- Simplicity is the essence of universality. MM-82

- Do not be lifted off your feet, do not be drawn away from the simplicity of your ancestors. T-2-295

- I cannot help thinking that it would be a great catastrophe, a great national tragedy, if you were to barter away your simplicity for this tinsel splendour. T-2-301

Slave-Slavery

- To end slavery, you must overcome the mental and physical inertia of the masses and quicken their intelligence and creative faculty. T-7-36

- Compulsory obedience to a master is a state of slavery, willing obedience to one's father is the glory of sonship. T-4-36

- The way of mutual strife and exclusiveness is the only way to perdition and slavery. T-8-10

- The mentality which made one section of Indians look upon another as enemies was suicidal; it could only serve to perpetuate their slavery. T-7-352

- No one chains a slave without chaining himself. T-3-139

- A slave has not the freedom even to do the right thing. T-2-6

- My interest in India's freedom will cease is she adopts violent means, for its fruit will be not freedom but slavery in disguise. T-2-126

- A slave-holder cannot hold a slave without putting himself or his deputy in the cage for holding the slave. T-7-144

- When a slave begins to take pride in his fetters and hugs them like precious ornaments, the triumph of the slave-owner is complete. T-4-62

- The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. MM-313

- Golden fetters are no less galling to a self-respecting man than iron ones. The sting lies in the fetters, not in the metal. MM-311

- If, as a member of a slave nation, I could deliver the suppressed classes from their slavery without freeing myself from own, I would do so today. T-2-6

- Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves. MM-311

- No nation keeps another in subjection without herself turning into a subject nation. T-3-39

Small Things

- We have grown into the habit of straining at a gnat and swallowing a camel. XXVI-375

Smoking

- Do not make the mistake that between drink and tobacco, drink is a lesser evil. No. If cigarette is Beelzebub, than drink is Satan. T-2-280

Socialism

- I have looked up the dictionary meaning of socialism. It takes me no further than where I was before I read the definition. BUNCH-118

- The socialism that India can assimilate is the socialism of the spinning wheel. T-3-285

- If socialism means befriending one's enemies, I should be treated as a true socialist. T-8-37

- My socialism was natural to me and not adopted from any books. T-5-276

- Real socialism has been handed down to us by our ancestors who taught: 'All land belongs to Gopal, where then is boundary line?' T-4-114

Society

- Public opinion alone can keep a society pure and healthy. MM-343

- Society is sustained by several services. The bhangiconstitutes the foundation of all services. T-4-104

- The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society. MM-271

- Willing submission to social restraint for the sake of the well-being of the whole society enriches both, the individual and the society of which he is a member. T-5-105

- Differences of opinion are inevitable in a living society. T-7-1

Soldier

- Forgiveness adorns a soldier. T-2-4

- A soldier fights with an irresistible strength when he has blown up his bridges and burnt his boats. Even so, it is with a soldier of ahimsa. T-5-127

- We must treat arrest and imprisonment as a soldier who goes to battle seeks death. T-2-52

- A soldier in arms is trained to kill. Even his dreams are about killing. T-4-285

Sorrow

- Sorrow and suffering make for character if they are voluntarily borne, but not if they are imposed. T-3-122

Soul-Soul-Force

- Soul-force comes only through God's grace and never descends upon a man who is a slave to lust. T-4-63

- The use of soul-force for turning stones into bread would have been considered, as it is still considered, as black magic. X-248

- History supplied numerous instances to prove that brute force is as nothing before soul-force. MM-334

- Great causes cannot be served by intellectual equipment alone, they call for spiritual effort of soul-force. T-4-63

- The strength of the soul can defy a whole world in arms against it. MM-121

- Bravery is not a quality of the body; it is of the soul.MM-61

- The force of the spirit is ever progressive and endless. Its full expression makes it unconquerable in the world. T-7-53

- Spiritual force is like any other force at the service of man. MM-83

- Nonviolence or soul-force too does not need physical aids for its propagation or effect. T-4-290

- Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul-force or the power of the godhead within us. T-4-290

- Nonviolence is the attribute of the soul, and, therefore, to be practised by everybody in all the affairs of life. T-5-246

- Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevate it. T-3-147

- Mere mental, that is, intellectual labour is for the soul and is its own satisfaction. T-4-366

- Anything which is a hindrance to the fight of the soul is a delusion and a snare, even like the body which often does hinder you in the path of salvation. XXV-250

- A balanced intellect presupposes a harmonious growth of body and soul. MM-379

- Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs the matchless and pure strength of faith.TIG-112

- The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. T-4-11

- Man is neither mere intellect, nor the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. EWE-22

- Our life is a long and arduous quest for truth, and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height.TIG-61

- Fear is a worse disease than malaria or kalaazar; these diseases kill the body, fear kills the soul. T-2-304

- The force of love is the same as the force of the soul or truth. MM-416

- The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit. MM-23

- My soul refuses to be satisfied so long as it is a helpless witness of a single wrong or a single misery. MM-17

- The sword is a rusty weapon. Its very effective substitute is the force of the spirit which costs nothing and which is indestructible.T-8-34

- A genuine fast cleanses the body, mind and soul. It crucifies the flesh and to that extent sets the soul free. MM-35

Spiritual-Spiritualism

- Spiritual instruments suffer in their potency when their use is taught through non-spiritual messages which are self-propagating.T-3-259

- The deepest spiritual truths are always unutterable. T-2-343

- By spiritual training I mean education of the heart. EWE-21

- God is the vital force or spirit which is all-pervading and therefore beyond human ken. TIG-45

- Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within. XXV-489

- Satyagraha is a purely spiritual weapon. T-3-260

- Temples are like spiritual hospitals, and the sinful, who are spiritually diseased, have the first right to be ministered to by them. T-3-270-71

- Whatever else India may not be, she is at least one thing. She is the greatest storehouse of spiritual knowledge. XXVI-333

- Mortification of the flesh has been held all the world over as a condition of spiritual progress. TIG-53

- One's everyday life is never capable of being separated from his spiritual being. T-7-350

- There is no yajna (Sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student's mind, to spiritualize his life. XXV-577

- Let not the spirit wander while the words of prayer run on out of our mouth. TIG-43

- I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him, and if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.XXV-390

Starvation

- Slow and inglorious self-imposed starvation among the starving masses is every time more heroic than the death of the scaffold under false exaltation. XXVI-141

State

- The state is the sum total of the sacrifice, on its behalf, of its members. XXV-420

Strikes

- Strikes, cessation of work and hartal are wonderful things no doubt, but it is not difficult to abuse them. MM-222

- If he (Gandhiji himself) were a cabinet minister, he would offer the strikers nothing whatever under the threat of a strike which implied force. T-7-358

Strong-Strength

- Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will. T-2-5

- A person who has truly realised the principle of nonviolence has the God-given strength for his weapon and the world has not yet known anything that can match it. T-4-297

- Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been. T-7-147

- A definite forgiveness would mean a definite recognition of our strength. T-2-5

- The greater our innocence, the greater our strength and the swifter our victory. T-2-52

- The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law, to the strength of the spirit. T-2-5

- If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them. XXV-509

- A soldier fights with an irresistible strength when he has blown up his bridges and burnt his boats. T-5-127

- If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief. T-2-303

- Just as the body cannot exist without blood, so the soul needs the matchless and pure strength of faith. TIG-112

- Every truth is self-acting and possesses inherent strength. XXV-423

- Civil disobedience can only lead to strength and purity. T-2-76

- Satyagraha does not depend on outside help, it derives all its strength from within. T-5-93

- Nonviolence is not a weapon of the weak. It is a weapon of the strongest and the bravest. T-4-253

- If God holds me to be a pure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in the place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. T-5-213

- The nonviolence I teach is the active nonviolence of the strongest. But the weakest can partake in it without becoming weaker. XXVI-140

Struggle

- Man's triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by a struggle for mutual service. T-4-36

Student

- A student is a searcher after truth. XXVI-377

- A student is he who continuously uses his faculty of observation, puts two and two together and carves out for himself a path in life. XXVI-877

- A vacation is just the period when the students' minds should be free from routine work and be left free for self-help and original development. T-2-373

Success

- A burning passion coupled with absolute detachment is the key to all success. MM-464

Suffering

- Sorrow and suffering make for character if they are voluntarily borne, but not if they are imposed. T-3-122

- Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms. X-48

- True suffering does not know itself and never calculates. MM-170

- If a man voluntarily allows himself to be crushed, he yields the oil of moral energy which sustains the world. X-386

- Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. MM-295

- India's freedom will not be won by violence but only by the purest suffering without retaliation. T-2-164

- *Nanda broke down every barrier and won his way to freedom not by brag, not by bluster, but by the purest form of self-suffering. T-2-281

* A south Indian Saint, Nandnar

- Reason has to be strengthened by suffering, and suffering opens the eyes of understanding. T-2-182

- The only way love punishes is by suffering. T-2-87

- There is no time limit for a satyagrahi nor is there a limit to his capacity for suffering. XXVI-159

- Civil disobedience means capacity for unlimited suffering, without the intoxicating excitement of killing. XXV-365

- Satyagraha and its offshoots, non-co-operation and civil resistance, are nothing but new names for the law of suffering. T-2-5

- The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice. XXVI-159

- Only the toad under the harrow knows where it pinches him. T-5-226

- The quest of Truth involves tapas (self-suffering) sometimes even unto death. TIG-21

- I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country's honour. T-5-171

- I literally believe in the possibility of a Sudhanva* smiling away whilst he was being drowned in boiling oil. XXVI-273

* A mythological hero who withstood all persecution bravely

- He who atones for sins never calculates; he pours out the whole essence of his contrite heart. T-5-111

Superiority

- Birth and observance of forms cannot determine one's superiority and inferiority. T-3-280

Superman

- The weapon of nonviolence does not need supermen or superwomen to wield it; even beings of common clay can use it and have used it before this with success. T-4-278

Superstition

- It is a sin to let simple folk such as the Gonds to be encouraged in the practice of superstition. XXV-334

Supreme Judge

- There is that Supreme Judge who can hang you, but He leaves you alive. MM-420

Swadeshi

- True swadeshi is that alone in which all the processes through which cotton has to pass are carried out in the same village or town. XX-37

- Swadeshism is not a cult of hatred. It is a doctrine of selfless service that has its roots in the purest ahimsa, i.e. love. MM-415

- My swadeshi chiefly centers round handspun khaddar and extends to everything that can and is produced in India. XXVI-279

- Cent percent swadeshi gives sufficient scope for the most insatiable ambition for service and can satisfy every kind of talent. T-3-289

- My nationalism is as broad as my Swadeshi. I want India's rise so that the whole world may benefit. XXBI-279

- I swear by swadeshi as it affords occasion for ample exercise of all our faculties and it tests every one of the millions of men and women, young and old. T-2-54

- Swadeshi is the only doctrine consistent with the law of humanity and love. MM-412

- I must not serve a distant neighbour at the expense of the nearest. XXVI-278

- I refuse to buy from anybody anything however nice or beautiful if it interferes with my growth or injures those whom Nature has made my first care. XXVI-278

- My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house-top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. T-2-64

- India must protect her primary industries even as a mother protects her children against the whole world without being hostile to it. SSV-369

- If the people resolve and carry out this programme of boycott and Swadeshi, they would not have to wait for Swaraj even for a year. T-2-27

- For a firm believer in swadeshi, there need be no Pharisaical self-satisfaction in wearing khadi. T-2-56

- Even swadeshi, like any other good thing, can be ridden to death if it is made a fetish. MM-415

Swaraj

- Swaraj is a hardy tree of patient growth. XXVI-245

- Swaraj of a people means the sum total of the Swaraj (self-rule) of individuals. MM-136

- The pilgrimage to Swaraj is a painful climb. MM-320

- For winning Swaraj one requires iron discipline. XXV-51

- Swaraj will favour Hinduism no more than Islam, nor Islam more than Hinduism. T-3-89

- A Swaraj government means a government established by the free joint will of Hindus, Mussalmans and others. XXV-478

- Swaraj means a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English. T-2-19

- It is Swaraj when we learn to rule ourselves. X-39

- Conservation of national sanitation is Swaraj work and it may not be postponed for a single day on any consideration whatsoever. T-2-360

- Swaraj means ability to regard every inhabitant of India as our own brother or sister. T-2-51

- Swaraj can only be achieved through an all-round consciousness of the masses. T-3-274

- Swaraj is not meant for cowards, but for those who would mount smilingly to the gallows and refuse even to allow their eyes to be bandaged. T-2-346

- Swaraj would be real Swaraj only when there would be no occasion for safeguarding any rights. T-3-92

- To get Swaraj is to get rid of our helplessness. T-2-19

- Swaraj means even under dominion status a capacity to declare independence at will. T-2-240

- Swaraj is not a product of excitement or intoxication. Swaraj will be the natural and inevitable result of business like habits. XXVI-244

- Let the content of Swaraj grow with the growth of national consciousness and aspirations. T-2-240

- Swaraj does not depend on jail going. If it did, there are thousands of prisoners in jail today. It depends on everyone doing his or her own task. T-4-29

- Swaraj, without any qualifying clause, includes that which is better than the best one can conceive or have today. T-2-240

- So long as we fear the outside world, we must cease to think of Swaraj. XXVI-162

- Half-a-dozen or twenty cities of India alone working together cannot bring Swaraj. XXVI-244

- No Swaraj government with any pretension to being a popular government can possibly be organised and maintained on a war-footing. XXV-162

- Lovers of Swaraj cannot rest till a solution is found which would allay Mussalman apprehensions and yet not endanger Swaraj. XXVI-162

- If Swaraj is to be had by peaceful methods, it will only be attained by attention to every little detail of national life. T-2-360

- We are aware that the business of Swaraj will thrive only if the boycott of foreign cloth is successful. XXV-578

- To ignore the Mussalman grievance as if it was not felt is to postpone Swaraj. XXVI-162

- It only confirms me in my belief that there is no Swaraj without a settlement with the Mussalmans. T-5-261

- If we want Swaraj to be built on non-violence, we will have to give the villages their proper place. MM-370

- Work for Swaraj fails to appeal to us because we have no music in us. T-2-231

- There can be no Swaraj where there is no harmony, no music. T-2-230

- Swaraj for me means freedom for the meanest of countrymen. MM-317

- My Swaraj will be not be a result of murder of others but a voluntary act of continuous self-sacrifice. MM-320

- My Swaraj is to keep intact the genius of our civilization. MM-321

- Swaraj as conceived by me does not mean the end of kingship. XXV-55

- The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man's Swaraj. T-3-65

- The Swaraj of my dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions. MM-318

- My Swaraj takes note of bhangis, dheds, dublas and the weakest of the weak, and except the spinning-wheel I know no other thing which befriends all these. XXV-564

- Swaraj is our birthright. No one can deprive us of it unless we forfeit it ourselves. T-4-29

- I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it. T-2-262

- If God gives me the privilege of dying for Hinduism of my conception, I shall have sufficiently died for the unity of all and even for Swaraj. T-3-187

- I have had the hardihood to say that Swaraj could not be granted even by God. MM-319

- I declare that we cannot win Swaraj for our famishing millions, for our deaf and dumb, for our lame and crippled, by the way of the sword. T-3-77

- With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster. T-3-77

- When large numbers of wholly innocent men are in jail, we may take it that Swaraj is at hand. XX-51

- We shall make progress towards Swaraj only if we do everything thoughtfully and with understanding. XX-33

- Prosecution of the constructive programme means constructing the structure of Swaraj. T-6-16

- Every moment of my existence is dedicated to the winning of Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence. T-3-79

- The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj. T-2-78

- Destruction of the churches and the like is not the way to Swaraj as defined by the Congress. T-7-68

- If it is by force that we wish to achieve Swaraj, let us drop nonviolence and offer such violence as we may. T-2-92

- Non-co-operation and civil disobedience in terms of Swaraj are not to be thought of without substantial constructive effort. T-7-33

- Let us by prayer purify ourselves and we shall not only remove untouchability but shall also hasten the advent of Swaraj. XXV-515

- So long as untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility. T-2-183

- Khadi work without the mastery of the science of khadi will be love's labour lost in terms of Swaraj. T-7-36

- The call of the spinning wheel is the noblest of all. Because it is the call of love. And love is Swaraj. T-2-63

- The get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj. EWE-46

- A bogus Congress register can never lead you to Swaraj any more than a paper boat can help you to sail across the Padma.* T-5-240

*The great river of Bengal formed after the confluence of the Ganga with the Brahmaputra

Sword

- Reliance upon the sword is wholly inconsistent with reliance upon God. T-2-237

- The sword is too much in evidence among the Mussalmans. It must be sheathed if Islam is to be what it means: peace. T-2-237

- Islam was born in an environment where the sword was and still remains the supreme law. T-2-237

- India's acceptances of the doctrine of the sword will be the hour of my trial. T-2-6

- If India takes up the doctrine of the sword, she may gain momentary victory. Then India will cease to be the pride of my heart. T-2-6

- The essential part of your message to the country is not how to wield the sword, but to cease to be afraid of it.T-7-114

T

Taboo

- In Ahimsa, wars were not only not taboo, but nobody observed the contradiction between them and ahimsa. TIG-103

Taxation

- All taxation to be healthy must return tenfold to the taxpayer in the form of necessary services. T-4-173

Teacher

- What… does Jesus mean to me? To me, He was one of the greatest teachers humanity has ever had. TIG-79

- No teacher can be held responsible for a caricature of his teachings.T-7-402

Temples

- I know of no religion or sect that has done or is doing without its house of God, variously described as a temple, a mosque, a church, a synagogue or agiari. T-3-194

- I hold it a blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing the faith in it are excluded. T-3-219

- It is necessary first to purify the drunken and dissolute worshippers in charge of some of these temples. T-2-261

- Temples are for sinners, not for saints. T-3-271

- Temples are like spiritual hospitals, and the sinful, who are spiritually diseased, have the first right to be ministered unto by them. T-3-270-71

- Temples are meant for sinners where they can wash away their sins. T-3-230

Temptation

- Learning takes us through many stages in life but it fails us utterly in the hours of danger and temptation. XXVI-28

Terrorism

- Terrorism and deception are weapons not of the strong but of the weak. T-2-20

Thinking

- Today, it is certain that millions cannot have high living and we, the few who profess to do the thinking for the masses, run the risk, in a vain search after high living, of missing high thinking. T-3-94

Thoughts

- Deeds are indifferent caricatures of our thoughts. XXVI-297

- All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and your actions. T-2-376

- It is rarely that language succeeds as a vehicle of thought. More often than not it conceals thought. Language always circumscribes thought. XX-5

- Thought is never complete unless it finds expression in action and action limits your thought. MM-495

- Thoughts, which turn us away from God, or do not turn us towards Him, constitute impediments in our way.MM-190

Time

- Time is always on the side of those who will wait upon it. XXVI-268

- Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. T-7-178

- Time is wealth, and the Gita says the Great Annihilator annihilates those who waste time. T-2-274

Tolerance- Toleration

- Tolerance gives us spiritual insight, which is as far from fanaticism as the north pole is from the south. TIG-66

- Tolerance implies a gratuitous assumption of the inferiority of other faiths to one’s own. TIG-64

- Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil. TIG-66

- Tolerance is the only thing that will enable persons belonging to different religions to live as good neighbours and friends. MM-401

- Mutual tolerance is a necessity for all time and for all races. MM-401

- Decency and tolerance, to be of any value, must be capable of withstanding the severest strain. T-8-132

- Unless we are able to evolve a spirit of mutual tolerance for diametrically opposite views, non-co-operation is an impossibility. T-2-12

- God the Compassionate and the Merciful, Tolerance incarnate, allows Mammon to have his nine days' wonder. TIG-144

- The first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance, and loving kindness. T-4-236

- The need of the moment is not one religion, but mutual respect and tolerance of the devotees of different religions. XXV-179

- The sacred thread and the tuft of hair do not make a Hindu, without a pure heart and a spirit of tolerance.T-7-413

Tolstoy

- What has appealed to me most in Tolstoy’s life is that he practiced what he preached and reckoned no cost too great in his pursuit of truth. T-2-317

- Tolstoy's so-called inconsistencies were a sign of his development and his passionate regard for truth. T-2-318

- I do not believe that "My philosophy" is an indifferent mixture of Tolstoy and Buddha. XXVI-140

Tools

- It is a bad carpenter who quarrels with his tools. It is a bad general who blames his men for faulty workmanship.T-4-167

Tragedy

- It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that the millions have ceased to use their hands as hands. T-2-251

Treachery

- If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm? XXV-509

Trust

- Trust put on is worse than useless. Trust felt is the thing that counts. MGCG-199

- Men to be men must be able to trust their womenfolk, even as the latter are compelled to trust them. T-2-249

- Trustworthy action will dispel all mistrust or distrust as the sun dispels the morning mist. MGCG-199

- Trusting one another, however, can never mean trusting with the lip and mistrusting in the heart. XXV-436

- Are we sure that the leaders trust one another? My fear is that neither at the top, nor at the bottom, are we cleansed of hypocrisy. T-8-297

- If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm? XXV-509

- A scavenger who works in His service shares equal distinction with a king who uses his gift in his name and as a mere trustee. TIG-137

- Each and every one of you should consider himself to be a trustee for the rest of his fellow labourers and not be self-seeking. T-2-297

Truth

- Truth is what the voice within tells you. T-3-144

- Truth is the right designation of God. TIG-21

- Truth and ahimsa will never be destroyed. T-5-245

- Truth is like a vast tree which yields more and more fruit the more you nurture it. MM-43

- Truth is superior to man’s wisdom. T-2-143

- Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time. T-7-178

- Religious truth, or for that matter any truth, requires a calm and meditative atmosphere for its percolation. T-3-269

- Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil often are found together. TIG-107

- Truth stands for fact, nonviolence negates fact. MOG-14

- Truth is self-evident, nonviolence is its maturest fruit. It is contained in truth, but is not self-evident. MOG-14

- Truth—sat—is positive, nonviolence is negative. MOG-14

- All truths, not merely true ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures, or songs, are highly beautiful. XXV-249

- Every truth is self-acting and possesses inherent strength. XXV-423

- Truth, which is permanent, eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history. T-2-11

- Truth and ahimsa demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be. XXVI-374

- Truth is God, and truth overrides all our plans. T-7-363

- Truth is the first to be sought for, and Beauty and Goodness will then be added unto you. XXV-255

- Truth is not truth merely because it is ancient. Nor is truth necessarily to be regarded with suspicion because it is ancient. T-4-57

- Truth should so humble that even dust could crush it. MM-43

- Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature. TIG-38

- A man of truth must ever be confident, if he has also equal need to be diffident. T-2-204

- A seeker after truth, a follower of the law of Love, cannot hold anything against tomorrow. MM-188

- An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. TIG-94

- All faiths constitute a revelation of Truth, but all are imperfect and liable to error. TIG-65

- The path of truth is as narrow as it is straight. Even so is that of ahimsa. TIG-36

- The quest of Truth involves tapas—self-suffering—sometimes even unto death. TIG-21

- Though God may be Love, God is Truth above all. T-3-144

- Truth and nonviolence are perhaps the activist forces you have in the world. T-3-144

- The panoplied warrior of Truth and nonviolence is ever and incessantly active. T-3-145

- The greater the realization of truth and ahimsa, the greater the illumination. XXV-521

- Devotion to Truth is the sole justification for our existence. TIG-20

- Every expression of truth has in it the seeds of propagation, even as the sun cannot hide its light. T-4-13

- God alone is truth, everything else is transitory and illusory. XXVI-265

- God is light, not darkness. God is love, not hate. God is truth, not untruth. God alone is great. XXV-479

- God of truth and justice can never create distinctions of high and low among His own children. T-3-221

- If you would swim on the bosom of the ocean of Truth, you must reduce yourself to a zero. T-3-144

- Nobody in this world possesses absolute truth. MM-45

- Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being. MM-444

- One is ever young in the felt presence of the God of Truth or Truth which is God. T-5-71

- One cannot reach Truth by untruthfulness. Truthful conduct alone can reach truth. T-8-38

- Search for truth is search for God. Truth is God. God is because Truth is. T-3-293

- When you want to find Truth as God, the only inevitable means is love, that is nonviolence. T-3-144

- We may not go about parroting truth and non-violence and steer clear of them in our daily life. T-5-180

- Where there is truth, there also is knowledge which is true. TIG-20

- 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. T-4-161

- Truth and nonviolence are no cloistered virtues but are applicable as much in the forum and the legislatures as in the marketplace. T-4-161

- Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of trust and hammered with ahimsa, reject as non-Hindu. XXVI-374

- A man of faith will remain steadfast to truth even though the whole world might appear to be enveloped in falsehood. MM-47

- A man with a grain of faith in God never loses hope, because he ever believes in the ultimate triumph of Truth. XXV-188

- A successful search for truth means complete deliverance from the dual throng, such as of love and hate, happiness and misery. MM-44

- Even atheists, who have pretended to disbelieve in God, have believed in Truth. T-3-294

- Satyagraha is search for Truth, and God is Truth. XXV-489

- There is no ‘playing with truth’ in the charkha programme, for Satyagraha is not predominantly civil disobedience but a quiet and irresistible pursuit of Truth. XXV-587

- The deepest spiritual truths are always unutterable. T-2-343

- The highest truth needs no communicating, for it is by its very nature self-propelling. It radiates its influence silently as the rose its fragrance without the intervention of a medium. T-2-343

- The instruments for the quest for Truth are as simple as they are difficult. TIG-33

- The law is God. Anything attributed to Him is not mere attribute. He is Truth, Love, Law and a million things that human ingenuity can name. T-3-250

- The patriotic sprit demands loyal and strict adherence to nonviolence and truth. T-2-92

- We dare not enter the kingdom of liberty with mere lip-homage to truth and nonviolence. T-2-85

- Where there is honest effort, it will be realized that what appears to be different truths are like the countless and apparently different leaves of the same tree. TIG-21

- In Hinduism we have got an admirable foot rule to measure every Shastra and every rule of conduct, and that is truth. T-2-285

- Hindu religious literature, indeed all religious literature, is full of illustrations to prove the truth. XXVI-158

- Nothing in the Shastra, which is manifestly contrary to universal truths and morals, can stand. T-4-42

- I believe in what Max Muller said, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it. TIG-143

- I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth, truth persists, in the midst of darkness, light persists, hence I gather that God is Life, Truth, Light, He is Love, He is the supreme good. T-2-313

- I claim no perfection for myself. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth which is but another name for God. T-5-295

- I know no diplomacy save that of truth. XXV-423

- I know that man who forsakes Truth can forsake his country and his nearest and dearest ones. T-2-236

- I have repeatedly stated that satyagraha never fails and that one perfect satyagrahi is enough to vindicate Truth. XXV-489

- I will say that if there is anything like God Or Truth on earth, Hindu-Muslim unity is also possible. T-2-236

- I worship the God that is truth or Truth which is God through the service of these millions. T-5-58

- If I am true to myself, if I am true to mankind, if I am true to humanity, I must understand all the faults that human flesh is heir to. T-2-199

- If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. T-3-144

- The only virtue I want to claim is truth and nonviolence. T-2-84

- There is nothing on earth that I would not give up for the sake of country, excepting, of course, two things and two only, namely, truth and nonviolence. T-2-235

- With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster. T-3-77

- I would far rather that India perished than that she won her freedom at the sacrifice of truth. T-3-113

- I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness. MM-326

- My anekantavada is the result of the twin doctrines of satya and ahimsa. TIG-12

- My errors are errors of calculation and in judging men, not in appreciating the true nature of truth and ahimsa or in their application. T-2-204

- My experience teaches me that truth can never be propagated by doing violence. MM-177

- My faith in truth and nonviolence is ever growing, and as I am ever trying to follow them in my life, I too am growing every moment. T-4-15

- My religion is based on truth and nonviolence. Truth is God. Nonviolence is the means of realizing Him. XXV-558

- Mine may today be a voice in the wilderness, but it will be heard when all other voices are silenced, if it is the voice of truth. T-7-178

- Truth is my God, I can only search Him through nonviolence and in no other way. T-3-298

- Truth is my religion and ahimsa the only way of its realization. T-4-250

- Truth to me is infinitely dearer than the ‘mahatmaship’ which is purely a burden. MM-1

- Every moment of my existence is dedicated to the winning of Swaraj by means of truth and nonviolence. T-3-79

- For me, Rama and Rahim are one and the same deity. I acknowledge no other God but the one God of truth and righteousness. T-2-375

- 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. TIG-2

- To me God is Truth and Love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. TIG-10

- God as truth has been for me a treasure beyond price; may He be so to every one of us. TIG-22

- Indeed, my errors and my prompt confessions have made me surer, if possible, of my insight into the implications of truth and ahimsa. T-2-204

- It is an ever-growing belief with me that truth cannot be found by violent means. T-3-217

- Let hundreds like me perish, but let truth triumph. T-2-217

- Prayer has not been a part of my life in the sense that truth has been. T-3-110

- Silence is a great help to a seeker after truth like myself. TIG-61

- The attainment of national independence is to me a search for truth. T-3-217

- What has appealed to me most in Tolstoy’s life is that he practiced what he preached and reckoned no cost too great in his pursuit of truth. T-2-317

- Without living Truth, God is nowhere. T-8-270

- If we had attained the full vision of Truth, we would no longer be seekers, but become one with God, for Truth is God. TIG-6

- God, who is the embodiment of Truth and Right and Justice, can never have sanctioned a religion or practice which regards one-fifth of our vast population as untouchables. T-3-288

- If fighting for the legislatures means a sacrifice of truth and non-violence, democracy would not be worth a moment’s purchase. T-4-1

- Our life is a long quest after Truth, and the soul requires inward restfulness to attain its full height. TIG-61

- Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self-controlled. XVI-297

- Tolstoy’s so-called inconsistencies were a sign of his development and his passionate regard for truth. T-2-318

- Exercise of faith will be the safest where there is a clear determination summarily to reject all that is contrary to Truth and love. TIG-9

- The charkha is an outward symbol of Truth and nonviolence. T-5-265

- If people knew the working of the law of truth and nonviolence, then they would themselves regulate the matter of shortage. T-8-40

- The first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance and loving kindness. T-4-236

- Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth. T-2-295

- Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth. XXVI-273

- A seeker of truth will never begin by discounting his opponent’s statement as unworthy of trust. MM-324

- The way of peace is the way of truth. Truthfulness is even more important than peacefulness. MM-153

- Truthful conduct alone can reach truth. MM-248

- The finite human being shall never know in its fullness Truth and Love which is itself infinite. MM-20

- Openness of mind strengthens the truth in us and removes the dross from it, if there is any. MM-342

- To find truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, i.e. to become perfect. MM-18

- The practice of truth and nonviolence melted religious differences, and we learnt to see beauty in each religion. T-5-225

- Those who are truthful, nonviolent and brave do not cease to be so because of the stupidity of their leader. T-5-128

- To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul. T-2-159

- Death is at any time blessed but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause, that is, truth. T-2-237

- Names and forms matter little; they come and go. That which is permanent and therefore necessary eludes the historian of events. Truth transcends history. XXV-129

- The propagation of truth and nonviolence can be done less by books than by actually living on those principles.T-5-93

- Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them. TIG-37

U

Understanding

- Reason has to be strengthened by suffering and suffering opens the eyes of understanding. XXVI-271

- Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear, if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint. XXVI-271

Unity

- Unity among the difference races and the different communities belonging to different religions of India is indispensable to the birth of national life. XXVI-241

- A heart unity can be achieved between pure hearts, purged of distrust, and that can be achieved only outside the conference. T-3-60

- I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives. XXV-390

- My motto is ‘Unite now, today if you can, fight if you must, but in every case avoid British intervention’. XXVI-233

- We are all leaves of a majestic tree whose trunk cannot be shaken off its roots, which are deep down in the bowels of earth. T-7-169

Universal

- Nonviolence is a universal law acting under all circumstances. T-5-35

- Yajna having come to us with our birth, we are debtors all our lives and thus for ever bound to serve the universe. TIG-138

University

- The aim of university education should be to turn out true servants of the people, who would live and die for the country’s freedom. T-7-176

- A university never needs a pile of majestic buildings and treasures of gold and silver. What it does need most of all is the intelligent backing of public opinion. T-8-165

- The State Universities should be purely examining bodies, self supporting through the fees charged for examinations. EWE-26

- University is at the top. A majestic top can only be sustained if there is a sound foundation. EWE-27

- It is not for a democratic state to find money for founding universities. EWE-28

- There is every reason for being cautious about founding new universities till India has digested the newly acquired freedom. EWE-28

- The mechanical university study deprives us of the desire for originality, years of memorizing cause a fatigue of the mind that makes most of us fit for the clerical work. T-4-166

Untouchability

- Untouchability is a hydra-headed monster. XXVI-330

- Untouchability is an error of long standing. XXVI-268

- Untouchability I hold is a sin, if Bhagavad Gita is one of our divine books. XXVI-349

- Untouchability of foreign cloth is as much a virtue with all of us as untouchability of the suppressed classes must be a sin with every devout Hindu. T-2-53

- Untouchability is a terrible reality. XXV-25

- The untouchability of Hinduism is probably worse than that of the modern imperialists. XXV-397

- ‘Touch-me-not’ism that disfigures the present-day Hinduism is a morbid growth. T-3-257

- To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves. XXV-479

- The removal of untouchability is one of the highest expressions of ahimsa. T-4-239

- God never made man that he may consider another man as an untouchable. XXVI-354

- I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement. T-3-249

- I would far rather that Hinduism died than that untouchability lived. T-3-128

- I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning the freedom of India. T-3-128

- I would bend the knee before the poorest scavenger, the poorest untouchable in India, for having participated in crushing him for centuries, I would even take the dust off his feet. T-3-114

- In battling against untouchability, and in dedicating myself to that battle, I have no less an ambition than to see a full regeneration of humanity. T-3-196

- If untouchability lives, humanity must die. MM-108

- Men like me feel that untouchability is no integral part of Hinduism, it is an excrescence. T-3-183

- My fight against untouchability is a fight against the impure in humanity. T-3-233

- We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability. T-3-233

- The more I study the Hindu scriptures, and the more I discuss them with Brahmins, the more I feel convinced that untouchability is the greatest blot upon Hinduism. T-3-196

- My mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Mussalman passing by. T-2-35

- Let us by prayer purify ourselves and we shall not only remove untouchability but shall also hasten the advent of Swaraj. XXV-515

- When untouchability is rooted out, these distinctions will vanish and no one will consider himself superior to any other. T-7-50

- Untouchability is a blot on Hinduism. It is a canker eating into its vitals. T-3-223

- Hinduism dies if untouchability lives, and untouchability has to die if Hinduism is to live. T-3-183

- Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability. T-2-36

- There is no ‘as far as possible’ on the question of untouchability. If it is to go, it must go in its entirety from the temples as from everywhere else. T-4-81

- Harijan service is a duty the caste Hindus owe to themselves. T-3-203

- The Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal, it if closes its temple to the Harijans. T-3-195

- Untouchability is a many-headed monster and forms, some of them so subtle as not to be easily detected. T-3-230

- Ravana was a rakshasa but this rakshasi of untouchability is even more terrible than Ravana. XIV-74

- The removal of untouchability is a question of the purification of Hinduism. T-2-342

- If untouchability is an integral part of Hinduism, the latter is a spent bullet. T-4-99

- If untouchability lives, Hinduism perishes, but if untouchability is eradicated from the Hindu heart root and branch, then Hinduism has a definite message for the world. T-4-99

- Hindu-Muslim unity, khaddar and removal of untouchability are to me the foundation of Swaraj. XXVI-444

- So long as the untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility. T-2-183

- It is a crime and a sin to regard a person as untouchable because he is born in a particular community. XXVI-349

- To say that a single human being, because of his birth, becomes an untouchable, unapproachable or invisible, is to deny God. XXVI-373

- The attack on untouchability is an attack on this high-and low-ness. MM-108

- What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren? T-2-36

- Anger, lust and such other evil passions raging in the heart are the real untouchables. T-2-36

- A true man of piety will consider himself a sinner and, therefore, untouchable. T-3-230

- Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability. T-3-230

- We cannot have real independence unless the people banish the touch-me-not spirit from their hearts. T-4-163

- Whilst the Bihar calamity damages the body, the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul. T-3-248

- For me there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity* and the untouchability campaign. T-3-248

*Earthquake disaster of Jan.1934

- Our struggle does not end so long as there is a single human being considered untouchable on account of his birth. T-3-239

- We are too nearer the scene of tragedy to realize that this canker of untouchability has travelled far beyond its prescribed limits and has sapped the very foundations of the whole nation. T-3-182

- No stone should be left unturned to bring home to the family members that untouchability is a sin and a blot on Hinduism. T-4-158

- The purification required is not of untouchables but of the so-called superior castes. XXV-479

Untruth

- Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil are often found together. TIG-107

- An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. TIG-97

- A man of God never strives after untruth and therefore he can never lose hope. XXV-198

- When there is no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or himsa. T-2-311

- My name on the lips and black caps on the heads, what a terrible contrast! What at lie! XXVI-575

- Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence. XXV-424

Utility

- Every bone picked up is valuable raw material from which useful articles can be made or which can be crushed into rich manure. T-4-17

- The amount of public support that an institution can command affords a true measure of its utility. T-2-370

V

Vaccination

- I have no doubt in my mind that vaccination is a filthy process, that is harmful in the end and that it is little short of taking beef.T-3-4

Varnashram Dharma

- My varnashram dharma teaches me that there must be some significance in the fact of my being born in India instead of Europe. XX-49

- I do regard varnashram as a healthy division of work based on birth.XXVI-540

- My varnashram refuses to bow the head before the greatest potentate on earth, but my varnashram compels me to bow down my head in all humility before knowledge, purity, before every person where I see God face to face. T-2-283

Vedas

- Words have, like man himself, an evolution, and even a Vedic text must be rejected if it is repugnant to reason and contrary to experience. T-2-273

- The story of a shudra having been punished by Ramchandra for daring to learn the Vedas, I reject as an interpolation. TIG-94

- The Vedas are as indefinable as God and Hinduism. T-3-181

Vegetarianism

- The correct way for the people to spread vegetarianism was to reason out its beauties, which should be exhibited in their lives. T-8-175

Vice

- Vice pays a homage to virtue, and sometimes the way it chooses is to expect virtue not to fall from its pedestal even whilst vice is rampant round about. T-3-3

- We should cease to grow the moment we cease to discriminate between virtue and vice, and slavishly copy the past which we do not fully know. T-2-51

Victory

- The greater our innocence, the greater our strength and the swifter our victory. T-2-52

- Without satyagraha carried out in the proper spirit, there is no victory, no Swaraj. T-5-264

Villages

- A samagra gramsevak must know everybody living in the village and render them such service as he possibly can. T-7-46

- Basic education links the children, whether of the cities or villages, to all that is best and lasting in India. EWE-24

- Coal is not dear for the coal-miner who can use it there and then, nor is khadi dear for the villager who manufactures his own khadi. T-4-3

- Education should be so revolutionized as to answer the wants of the poorest villager, instead of answering those of an imperial exploiter. T-4-18

- Healthy and nourishing food was the only alpha and omega of rural economy. T-7-181

- If there ever is to be a republic of every village in India, then I claim variety for my picture in which the last is equal to the first, or, in other words, no one is to be the first and none the last. T-7-169

- If the village worker is not a decent man or woman, conducting a decent home, he or she had better not aspire after the high privilege and honour of becoming a village worker. T-4-43

- If we want to impart education best suited to the needs of the villagers, we should take the vidyapith to the villages. T-4-163

- India’s way is not Europe’s; India is not Calcutta and Bombay. India lives in seven hundred thousand villages. XXVI-286

- I would like to bury myself in an Indian village, preferably in a Frontier* village. T-3-299

* North-West Frontier Province of undivided India prior to 1947

- Khaddar is an attempt to revise and reverse the process and establish a better relationship between the cities and villages. T-2-256

- Khaddar was conceived with a much more ambitious object, that is, to make our villages starvation-proof. T-3-292

- Khadi is the sun of the village solar system. T-4-4

- Khadi service, village service and the Harijan service are one in reality, though three in name. T-4-39

- No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye. T-2-99

- Organization of Khaddar is infinitely better than co-operative societies or any other form of village organization. XXV-474

- Return to the villages means a definite, voluntary recognition of the duty of bread labour and all its connotes. MM-201

- The message of khaddar can penetrate to the remotest villages if we only will that it shall be so. T-2-244

- The snakes have their place in the agricultural economy of the village, but our villagers do not seem realize it. T-4-89

- The villagers want bread—not butter—and disciplined work, some work that will supplement their agricultural avocations which do not go on for all the 12 months.XXVI-379

- Today the cities dominate and drain the villages so that they are crumbling to ruin. MM-370

- Urbanization in India is slow but sure death for her villages and villagers. T-3-291

- You cannot build nonviolence on a factory civilization, but it can be built on self-contained villages. MM-369

- Give the villagers village arithmetic, village geography, village history and the literary knowledge that they must use daily, i.e. reading and writing letters, etc. EWE-2

- We have to tackle the triple malady which holds our villages fast in its grip; want of corporate sanitation, deficient diet and inertia. T-4-73

Violence-Himsa

- I hold that the world is sick of armed rebellions.XXVI-140

- It is my firm conviction that nothing enduring can be built on violence. T-2-333

- My dictionary has no such expression as a violent fight. T-5-232

- With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster. T-3-77

- Violence can only be effectively met by nonviolence. This is an old established truth. T-7-404

- I do believe that ideas ripen quickly when nourished by the blood of martyrs. XXVI-489

- I condemn, for all climes and for all times, secret murders and unfair methods even for a fair cause.XXVI-488

- Between violence and cowardly fight, I can only prefer violence to cowardice. T-2-131

- If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of nonviolence. T-5-291

- I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial. T-2-6

- 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. T-8-37

- My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform. T-7-404

- Having flung aside the sword, there is nothing except the cup of love which I can offer to those who oppose me. T-3-77

- I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of the whole race. MM-142

- For me popular violence is as much an obstruction in our path as the Government violence. MM-138

- My experience teaches me that truth can never be propagated by doing violence. MM-177

- My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise. T-2-126

- 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. T-2-4

- I hold that whatever may be true of other countries, a bloody revolution will not succeed in India. XXVI-140

- It is an ever-growing belief with me that truth cannot be found by violent means. T-3-217

- To kill these (rabid) dogs, in my opinion, amount to himsa, but I believe it to be inevitable if we are to escape much greater himsa. T-2-323

- I suffer snakes to be killed in the ashram when it is impossible to catch them and put them out of harm's way. T-3-323

- I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death rather than kill him. TIG-117

- My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house-top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. T-2-26

- I isolate this non-co-operation from Sinn Feinism for it is so conceived as to be incapable of being offered side by side with violence. T-2-6

- I do not regard killing or assassination or terrorism as good in any circumstances whatsoever. XXVI-489

- Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties. T-4-13

- Himsa does not need to be taught. Man as animal is violent, but as spirit he is nonviolent. T-5-316

- What is gained by violence must be lost before superior violence. T-5-225

- Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation. MM-117

- Khadi has been conceived as the foundation and the image of ahimsa. A real khadi-wearer will not utter an untruth. A real khadi-wearer will harbour no violence, no deceit, no impurity. T-4-217

- The individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its vary existence. T-4-11

- Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence. TIG-53

- It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war. T-3-260

- Civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence directly or indirectly. XXVI-538

- Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion. T-3-153

- Violence always thrived on counter violence. T-8-86

- Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents. XXVI-270

- Naked violence repels like the naked skeleton shorn of flesh, blood and the velvety skin. T-3-11

- Violence is bound sooner or later to exhaust itself but peace cannot issue out of such exhaustion. T-7-5

- If there is violence, it will certainly be crushed because violence can only end in a disgraceful rout. T-5-256

- A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses. XXVI-140

- The essential part of your message to the country is now to wield the sword but to cease to be afraid of it. T-7-114

- Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. T-2-4

- To answer brutality with brutality is to admit one's moral and intellectual bankruptcy, and it can only start a vicious circle. MM-146

- Armed conspiracies against something satanic is like matching Satans against Satan. MM-140

- Peace through superior violence inevitably leads to the atom bomb and all that it stands for. MM-146

- Pure motives can never justify impure or violent action. XXV-442

- We do want to drive out the beast in man, but we do not want on that account to emasculate him. MM-142

- The state represents violence in a concentrated and organize form. T-4-11

- To prevent the workers from going to their work by standing in front of them is pure violence and must be given up. T-4-269

- By using violence to subjugate one another we are using violence against our own souls. XXV-279

- Violent nationalism, otherwise known as imperialism, is the curse. XXV-369

- What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of British or any foreign rule. T-7-194

- Disorder and violence were in fact the one thing that might check the pace of India's progress. T-7-22

- India's freedom will not be won by violence by only by the purest suffering without retaliation. T-2-164

- Whether one or many, I must declare my faith that it is better for India to discard violence altogether even for defending her borders. T-5-178

- The socialistic conception of the West was born in an environment reeking with violence. MM-251

- The man who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. T-7-61

- It is difficult to judge, when both sides are employing weapons of violence, which side 'deserves' to succeed. T-5-13

- The consumption of vegetables involves himsa, but I cannot give them up. T-2-323

- The man who coerces another not eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it. T-7-61

- To yield to the threat or actual use of violence is a surrender of one's self-respect and religious conviction. T-2-133

- None, while in flesh, can be entirely free from himsa, because one never completely renounces the will to live. T-2-322

- Any act of injury done from self-interest, whether amounting to killing or not, is doubtless himsa. T-2-322

- 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. X-248

- For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from. T-3-319

- A religious act cannot be performed with the aid of the bayonet or the bomb. T-4-314

- The bomb-throwers have discredited the cause of freedom, in whose name they threw the bombs. T-2-357

- The present [second] war is the saturation point in violence. It spells, to my mind, also its doom. T-5-316

- Carrying arms for the removal of the Arms Act can never fall under any scheme of nonviolence. T-2-279

- The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter bombs even as violence cannot be by counter-violence. TIG-142

- Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has be pursued even in the face of violence raging around you.T-4-236

- Nonviolence of the strong is infinitely braver than their violence. T-7-2

- Nonviolence in the sense of mere non-killing does not appear to me, therefore, to be any improvement on the technique of violence. T-7-67

- True nonviolence is mightier than the mightiest violence. T-4-252

- True ahimsa lay in running into the mouth of himsa. T-5-83

- In an atmosphere of ahimsa, one has no scope to put his ahimsa to the test. It can be tested only in the face of himsa. T-5-90

- Vehement writing, even if it is charged with truth, is no answer to violent action. T-5-178

- Nonviolence becomes meaningless if violence is permitted for self-defense. XXV-280

- Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence. T-5-187

- Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life.MM-265

- The rishis, who discovered the law of nonviolence in the midst of violence, were greater geniuses than Newton. T-2-5

- The Koran says that there can be no heaven for one who sheds the blood of an innocent neighbour. XXV-519

- If it is by force that we wish to achieve Swaraj, let us drop nonviolence and offer such violence as we may. T-2-92

- The Fragrance of nonviolence to him was never sweeter than it was today amidst the stink of violence of the most cowardly type that was being displayed in the cities of India. T-8-27

- Just as there are signs by which you can recognize violence with the naked eye, so is the spinning wheel to me a decisive sign of nonviolence.T-5-277

- A nonviolent occupation is that occupation which is fundamentally free from violence and which involves no exploitation or envy of others. MM-265

- A nonviolent warrior knows no leaving the battle. He rushes into the mouth of himsa, never ever once harbouring an evil thought. T-5-116

- History records numerous instances of the truth that those who use the sword shall perish by the sword.T-3-62

- A dissolute character is more dissolute in thought than in deed, and the same is true of violence. T-6-116

- A nonviolent action accompanied by nonviolence in thought and word should never produce enduring violent reaction upon the opponent. T-5-130

- Civilization based on nonviolence must be different from that organised for violence. T-5-209

- If God holds me to be a pure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. T-5-213

- The reaction that a ruthless dictator sets up in us either that of awe or pity according respectively as we react to him violently on nonviolently. T-5-4

- Is it not possible for us all to realize that the masses will never mount to freedom through murder? T-5-258

- The difficulty one experiences in meeting himsa arises from weakness of mind. T-7-404

- When the panchayat raj is established, public opinion will do what violence can never do. T-7-405

- When there is no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or himsa. T-2-311

Virtue

- Virtue must not be suppressed because many will feign it.MM-32

- We should cease to grow the moment we cease to discriminate between virtue and vice, and slavishly copy the past which we do not fully know. T-2-51

- Vice pays homage to virtue, and sometimes the way it chooses is to expect virtue not to fall from its pedestal even whilst vice is rampant round about. T-3-3

- Nonviolence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue to be cultivated like the other virtues. T-5-18

- Loyalty to a state so corrupt is a sin, disloyalty a virtue. T-3-26

- That which is inherent in man is his virtue.XXVI-294

Vow

- A vow imparts stability, ballast and firmness to one's character. T-2-364

- A vow must lead one upwards, never downwards towards perdition. T-2-365

- A life without vows is like a ship without an anchor or like an edifice that is built on sand instead of a solid rock. T-2-364

- The taking of vows that are not feasible or that are beyond one's capacity would betray thoughtlessness and want of balance. T-2-365

- A person unbound by vows can never be absolutely relied upon. T-2-364

- It goes without saying that moderation and sobriety are of the very essence of vow-taking. T-2-365

- Self-restraint is the very keystone of the ethics of vow-taking. T-2-365

- To shirk taking of vows betrays indecision and want of resolution. T-2-365

- My religion teaches me that a promise once made or a vow once taken for a worthy object may not be broken. T-2-154

- What can be richer and more fruitful than a greater fulfillment of the vow of nonviolence in thought, word and deed or the spread of that spirit? T-2-86

- The essence of a vow does not consist in the difficulty of its performance but in the determination behind it unflinchingly to stick to it in the teeth of difficulties. T-2-365

W

War

- War knows no law except that of might. T-7-144

- History is a record of perpetual wars, but we are now trying to make new history. T-4-165

- People engaged in a war do not lose temper over matters which affect the fortunes of war. T-5-257

- When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books. T-2-6

- It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war. T-3-260

- Nonviolence requires more than the courage of the soldier of war. XXV-437

- The end of nonviolent ‘war’ is always an agreement, never dictation, much less humiliation of the opponent. T-5-257

- The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare; on the contrary he has proved its futility. TIG-97

- The science of war leads one to dictatorship pure and simple. The science of nonviolence can alone lead one to pure democracy. T-4-280

- I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country’s honour. T-5-171

- In the characteristics of the perfected man of the Gita, I do not see any to correspond to physical warfare.TIG-97

- A warrior lives on his wars, whether offensive or defensive. And he suffers a collapse if he finds that his warring capacity is unwanted. T-5-296

- It is open to a war resister to judge between two combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. T-5-197

- Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war. T-7-2

- When a man vowed to nonviolence as the law governing human being dares to refer to war, he can only do it so as to strain every nerve to avoid it. T-8-140

- Where there are wars, wherever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love. MM-417

- Whatever may be true of the other modes of warfare, in Satyagraha it has been held that the causes for failure are to be sought within. T-5-187

Waste

- You may not waste a grain of rice or a scrap of paper, and similarly a minute of your time. It is not ours. It belongs to the nation and we are trustees for the use of it. XXVI-272

Wealth

- Let your zeal for the dumb millions be not stifled in the search for wealth. T-2-272

- A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good he has done to his fellowmen. T-7-341

- For every minute that I spin, there is in me the consciousness that I am adding to the nation’s wealth. T-3-5

Welfare

- I hold no man to be indispensable for the welfare of the country. T-2-137

Widow– Widowhood

- Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion.

T-2-227

- To coerce widowhood upon little girls is a brutal crime for which we Hindus are daily paying dearly. T-2-227

- So long as we have thousands of windows in our midst, we are sitting on a mine which may explode at any moment. T-2-227

- Every widow I have met has recognized in the wheel a dear forgotten friend. T-2-38

- Khaddar brings a ray of hope to the widow’s broken-up home. T-2-256

- In the name of religion, we force widowhood upon our three lakhs of girl-widows who could not understand the import of the marriage ceremony. T-2-227

- We cry for cow protection in the name of religion, but we refuse protection to the human cow in the shape of the girl-widow. T-2-227

- If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood. T-2-227

Woman

- Woman is the incarnation of ahimsa. Ahimsa means infinite love, which again means infinite capacity for suffering. T-5-227

- Woman is, by habit or nature, queen of the household. She is not designed to organize on a large scale. XXV-153

- Woman is the embodiment of sacrifice and suffering and her advent to public life should, therefore, result in purifying it, in restraining unbridled ambition and accumulation of property. T-2-367

- Woman is more fitted than man to make explorations and take bolder action in ahimsa. MM-294

- Women are special custodians of all that is pure and religious in life. MM-293

- A woman’s intuition has often proved truer than man’s arrogant assumption of superior knowledge. T-2-51

- Every woman will tell the curious that with the disappearance of the spinning wheel vanished India’s happiness and prosperity. T-2-38

- The woman who knows and fulfils her duty realizes her dignified status. MM-294

- The woman has circumvented man in a variety of ways in her unconsciously subtle ways, as the man has vainly and equally consciously struggled to thwart the woman in gaining ascendancy over him. T-2-367

- The duty of motherhood, which the vast majority of woman will always undertake, requires the qualities which men need not possess. T-5-227

- A fearless woman who knows that her purity is her best shield can never be dishonoured. MM-301

- There is no occasion for women to consider themselves subordinate or inferior to men. MM-297

- Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacities. MM-292

- If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. T-3-33

- If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. T-3-33

- To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. T-3-33

- Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? T-3-33

- Man is born of woman; he is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. T-2-300

- Man the law-giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he has imposed upon the so called weaker sex. MM-292

- Men to be men must be able to trust their womenfolk, even as the latter are compelled to trust them.T-2-249

- Marriage is not an act of services. It is a comfort man or woman seeks for himself or herself. XXVI-285

- Marriage must cease to be a matter of arrangement made by parents for money.MM-298

- Languages proclaim that woman is half of man, and by parity of reasoning, man is half of woman.MM-297

- I am the only one, whom you may find it hard to get rid of, for I have always counted myself as a woman.T-7-87

- I have mentally become a woman in order to steal into her heart. MM-291

- My own opinion is that, just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problem must be one in essence. MM-294

- My quarrel with the advocates of contraceptives lies in their taking for granted that ordinary mortals cannot exercise self-control. MM-289

- What is it but my ahimsa that draws thousands of women to me in fearless confidence? T-5-291

- For the courage of self-sacrifice, woman is any time superior to man, as I believe man is to woman for the courage of the brute.

MM-294

- Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately today she does not realise what a tremendous advantage she has over man. MM-291

- Any young man, who makes dowry a condition to marriage, discredits his education and his country and dishonours womanhood. MM-298

- Contraceptives are an insult to womanhood. MM-288

- If you want to play your part in the world’s affairs, you must refuse to deck yourselves for pleasing man.T-2-300

- It is degrading both for man and woman that woman should be called upon or induced to forsake the hearth and shoulder the rifle for the protection of the hearth. T-5-227

- If we would be pure, if we would save Hinduism, we must rid ourselves of this poison of enforced widowhood. MM-299

- If what passed as nonviolence did not enable people to protect the honour of women, or if it did not enable women to protect their own honour, it was not nonviolence.T-7-30

- Why should men arrogate to themselves the right to regulate female purity? MM-29

- Widowhood imposed by religion or custom is an unbearable yoke and defiles the home by secret vice and degrades religion.MM-229

- The restoration of spinning to its central place in India's peaceful campaign for deliverance from the imperial yoke gives her women a special status. T-5-206

- If we all could give our own definitions of God, there would be as many definitions as there are men and women.XXVI-224

- A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women. XIV-464

- Man has regarded woman as his tool. She has learnt to be his tool and in the end found it easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall, the descent it easy. T-4-45

Work

- The villagers want bread and not butter, and disciplined work – some work that will supplement their agricultural avocation, which do not go of for all the 12 months. XXVI-397

- Joint work is an impossibility where the workers distrust one another. BUNCH-358

- Lack of finances never represented a real difficulty to a sincere worker. Finances follow, they dog your foot-steps if you represent a real cause. T-7-26

World

- The world easily finds an honourable place for the magician who produces new and dazzling things. T-2-215

- The world is weary of hate. We see the fatigue overcoming the Western nations. T-2-199

- The whole world is in the throes of a new birth. Anything done for a temporary gain would be tantamount to an abortion. T-5-273

- The whole world is like the human body with its various members. Pain in one member is felt in the whole body.T-7-166

- The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word when you have no positive reason to the contrary. XXV-450

- Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint. T-2-181

- Buddha renounced every worldly happiness because he wanted to share with the whole world his happiness which was to be had by men who sacrificed and suffered in the search for truth. T-2-295

- For a fallen India to aspire to move the world and protect the weaker races is seemingly an impertinence.T-2-327

- Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world. T-5-273

- Nonviolence being the mightiest force in the world and also the most elusive in its working, it demands the greatest exercise of faith. T-5-17

- Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it. XXVI-292

- So long as we fear the outside world, we must cease to think of Swaraj. XXVI-162

- The greatest menace to the world today is the growing, exploiting, irresponsible imperialism. XXV-19

- An India awakened and free has a message of peace and goodwill to a groaning world. T-2-46

- I have made the world’s faith in God my own, and as my faith is ineffaceable, I regard that faith as amounting to experience. TIG-4

- I hold that the world is sick of armed rebellions. XXVI-140

- I own no property and yet I feel that I am perhaps the richest man in the world. XXVI-561

- When I see a cow, it is not an animal to eat, it is a poem of pity for me and I worship it and I shall defend its worship against the whole world. XXV-459

- The golden way was to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family like the members of one family. T-7-250

- The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world. MM-90

- Love is the subtlest force in the world. XXV-392

- The world is changing every moment, and is therefore unreal. It has non-permanent existence. TIG-11

- That which you look upon as your own you may keep only so long as the world allows you to own it. MM-169

- The world cannot be successfully fooled for all time. MM-33

- It is indeed a million times better to appear untrue before the world than to be untrue to ourselves. T-2-85

Worship

- Some form of common worship and a common place of worship appear to be a human necessity. MM-105

- God is omnipresent; even a pebble in the Narmada* (a river) can represent Him and serve as an object of worship. XXVI-309

*cf of a popular saying that all pebbles (Kanakrs) in the Narmada are the Shankars (stones to be worshipped)

Wrong

- Wrong has no prescriptive right to exist merely because it is of a long standing. T-7-98

Y

Yajna

- Yajna is not yajna if one feels it to be burdensome or annoying. MOG-21

- Yajna having come to us with our birth, we are debtors all our lives, and thus forever bound to serve the universe. MOG-19

- Yajna is duty to be performed, or service to be rendered, all twenty-four hours of the day. MM-2298

- I have called spinning the yajna of this age for India. XXVI-29

- The yajna of our age and for us is the spinning-wheel. T-2-247

- The spinning—wheel is the auspicious symbol of sharir yajna(body labour). XXV-562

- Every single act of one who would lead a life of purity should be in the nature of yajna. MOG-19

- There is no yajna (sacrifice) greater than spinning calculated to bring peace to the troubled spirit, to soothe the distracted student’s mind, to spiritualize his life. XXV-577

Youth

- Responsibility will mellow and sober the youth and prepare them for the burden they must discharge. T-2-271

- Literature, full of the virus of self-indulgence, served out in attractive forms, is flooding this country from the West and there is the greatest need for West and there is the greatest need for our youth to be on their guard. T-2-319

KEY TO SOURCES

Numerals after each epigram refer to the pages of volumes indicated by the following abbreviations. Where publisher is not mentioned, it is Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad.

MM

Mind of Mahatma Gandhi (Ed. Prabhu & Rao), 3rd Edn., 1968

T

(Followed by Vol. No.) Mahatma (D.G. Tendulkar) Vols. 1-8; 2nd Edn.(1960), Publications Division

I to XXVI

The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Publications Division

TIG

Truth is God, Ed. R. K. Prabhu(1955)

EWE

Evil Wrought by the English Medium, R. K. Prabhu(1958)

MOG

The Message of the Gita, R. K. Prabhu (1959)

MGCG

Mahatma Gandhi: Correspondence with the Government (1959)

Bunch

A Bunch of Old Letters, J. Nehru (Asia, 1958)

YI

Young India (1919-1932): English weekly journal, published from Bombay as a bi-weekly, under Gandhiji's supervision from May 7, 1919, and as a weekly from Ahmedabad, with Gandhiji as editor from October 8, 1919.

GLOSSARY

Acharya

Teacher

Advaita

Hindu philosophy of Monism or Non-dualism

Agiari

Zoroastrian fire-temple

Ahimsa

Nonviolence ; in its positive aspect-love for all living things

Allah

Muslim name of God

Amanitvam

Humility

Aparigraha

Non-possession

Arati

Blessing with lights

Ardhangana

Woman; the better half

Ashram

Abode of spiritual teacher; place for disciplined community living; stage of life

Asoka

Indian monarch of 3rd century B.C. famed for his renunciation of empire andconquest andfor his rock-edicts embodying Buddhist dharma

Asthis

Burned bones collected from a funeral fire

Atman

Soul

Atishudra

One lower than the Kshudra, the fourth caste at the bottom of Hindu social hierarchy; ‘untouchable’

Avatar

Literally’ a ‘descent’ : incarnation of a deity, especially of Vishnu in the Hindu Trinity

Bansi

Bamboo flute as of the divine cowherd, Sri Krishna

Bapu, Bapuji

Father, term of affection used for Gandhi

Bardoli

Gujarat village, connected with the Civil Disobedience Movement

Bhagwadgita

(see ‘The Gita’)

Bhakti

Devotion

Bhangi

Scavenger, sweeper

Bharat Mata

Mother India

Bibhishan

Brother of Ravana, in the Ramayana, known for his wise counsel

Bhogabhumi

Land of Enjoyment

Boodan Yajna

Land Gift

Brahma

Hindu name of God the Creator, one of the Trinity

Brahmachari

A Celibate; one who observes Brahmacharya

Brahmacharya

Celibacy; code of conduct involving strict observance of chastity or continence in the pursuit of learning, philosophy and God Member of the first of the four castes, whose first duty is the study and teaching of the Vedas and the performance of sacrifices and other religious rituals

Buddha

The Founder of Buddhism, b. about 563, d. about 483 B.C.; also known as Gautama, Siddhartha, Sakyamuni, etc

Chaddar

Shawl

Chaintanya

Bengali religious reformer of the 15th century A.D., WHO IS WORSHIPPED BY HIS FOLLOWERS as an incarnation of Sri Krishna

Chakki

Grinding wheel or mill

Chapati

Thin flat cakes made of flour; unleavened bread

Charkha

Spinning wheel

Dal

Dal

Dandi March

March undertaken by Gandhiji from March 12 to April 5, 1930, from his Sabarmati Ashram to the coastal village of Dandi, about 100 miles distant, with a view to breaking the Salt Law by picking up natural salt from the sea-shore. His arrest at Dandi was followed by a country-wide movement of Civil Disobedience famous as the Salt Satyagraha.

Damayanti

Damayanti

Daridranarayana

God in the form of the poor and the destitute

Darshan

The vision of the sanctity

Dasharatha

King of Ayodhya, father of Rama, in the Ramayana

Devanagri

The alphabet usually employed in writing Sanskrit, as well as various vernacular languages of central, western, and northern India

Dayanand

Swami Dayanand Saraswati (1824-83), founder of the Arya Samaj

Dharma

Religion; law of one’s being; righteousness; Hindu code of religion and morals or religious and moral duty

Dharmaja

One born from a sense of duty

Dharmayuddha

War fought for a righteous end by righteous means and methods

Dheds

A community in Gujarat traditionally treated as ‘untouchable’

Dhoti

The long cloth worn by Indians from the waist

Dhurna

‘Sit-down’ strike; an early and crude form of Satyagraha

Dnyandev

Boy poet-saint of Maharashtra of the 13th century A. D., AUTHOR OF DYANESWARI, A Marathi commentary on the Gita; also spelt as Dnyaneshwar or JNANESHWAR

Draupadi

Consort of the Pandava PRINCES, IN THE Mahabharata

Dublas

A backward shudra community of Gujarat

Duryodhana

Head of the Kaurava Princes, in the Mahabharata

Dyer

British General who fired on an unarmed assembly in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar on April 13, 1919, killing over 400 people

Forecaster

Founder of religious system known as Zoroastrianism. He is also known as Zoroastrianism. He is also known as Zarathustra or Zerdusht. The Parsis of India, who are emigrants from Persia, are followers of this prophet.

Ganga

The Sacred river Ganges of Northern India

Ganja

Narcotic from the flower of Indian hemp

Ghani

Village oil mill

Gita

The ‘Song Celestial’; a Hindu scriptural work in Sanskrit verse, composed some centuries before the Christian era, in which Sri Krishna sums up the essence of Hindu religion and philosophy.

Ghee

Clarified butter

Gokhale

Gopal Krishna Gokhale (1866-1915), Indian politician, member of the Servants of India Society, whom Gandhiji acknowledged as his political guru.

Goonda

A rowdy or hooligan

Goondaism

Rowdyism

Gopal

Cowherd; a name of Sri Krishna

Gur

Jaggery, indigenous form of sugar molasses

Guru

Teacher; Preceptor

Goseva

Service of the cattle; cow-protection

Gram Panchayat

Village tribune or 'Council of five'

Gramseva

Village service

Gram sevak

Person employed in village service

Granth Saheb

The sacred book of the Sikhs

Hakim

Practitioner of indigenous form of medicine

Hanuman

The ‘Monkey-God’ who serves Rama in the Ramayana

Harijans

Literally, children of god

Hartal

Strike, suspension of normal business

Hooghli

Westernmost branch of the River Ganges in the banks of which Calcutta is situated.

Ishopanishad

One of the major Upanishads

Jainism

Ancient Indian religion, one of the cardinal principles of which is non-violence

Jains

Followers of Jainism

Janak

Philosopher-king of Videha, foster-father of Sita, in the Ramayana

Kabir

Poet-saint of northern India, who lived in the 15th century A.D. and who in his devotional songs, dwelt on the essential oneness of the Godhead and the harmony between Hinduism and Islam.

Kama

lust

Kamaja

One born of lust

Karmabhumi

Land of duty

Karmayogi

One who has devoted his life to action in the selfless service of others

Khaddar, khadi

Hand-spun and hand-woven cloth

Khilafat

The Caliph is the spiritual leader of Muslims. The Khilafat refers to his office

Kisan

Peasant

Koran

Muslim scripture

Krishna

Divine hero and central figure of the epic, Mahabharata, who is worshipped by the Hindus as the 8th incarnation of God.

Kshatriya

Member of the second (warrior) caste among Hindus

Kukri

Curved knife or sword

Lathis

Wooden pole, usually iron-tipped

Lila, leela

Divine play or sport; the creation is often explained by the Vaishnavas as the leela of God, a conception that introduces elements of spontaneity and freedom into the universe.

Lok Sevak Sangh

Society or association for the service of the people

Mahabharata

The Hindu epic having for its theme the story of the great war between the Pandavas and the Kauravas, princes of the Lunar race who were cousins, rival claimants to the throne of Hastinapur, (ancient Delhi)

Mahatma

Great soul, title given to Gandhiji

Mahavir

24th Tirthankar or Prophet of Jainism (b. about 540, d. about 468 B.C.) who is popularly regarded as its greatest promulgator, originally named Vridhamana

Mahayajna

The great sacrifice or ritual of propitiation

Mantra, Mantram

Sacred or magical incantation

Manushya

Man

Maulana

Title of respect given to learned Muslims

Maulvi

Religious teacher

Maya

Illusion; in Hindu philosophy Maya is the divine power which has created the cosmos

Meerabai

Rajput princess of the 16th century A.D., who was a great devotee of Sri Krishna and who composed and sang innumerable songs in the praise of Him which have since become popular all over India.

Moksha

Liberation from earthly bondage

Muni

Sage; ancient seer

Nai Talim

Literally, ‘new education’, name given to basic or craft education

Namaskar

The Indian salute with folded hands

Guru Nanak

Founder of Sikhism (b. 1469—d. 1538 or 1539 A.D.)

Nirvana

Salvation, Buddhist equivalent of ‘Moksha’

Pancha, Panchayat

The five; the communal tribune or ‘council of five’

Panchayat Raj

Rule of the Panchayat

Pandavas

The five brothers, princes of the Lunar Race, who were the victors in the Mahabharata war.

Pandit

Scholars

Pinjrapoles

Institutions for looking after old and disabled cattle

Poorna Swaraj

Full-self-government or complete independence

Prahlad

Son of Hiranyakashipu, a mythological demon-king; Prahlad’s worship of Vishnu led to persecution by his father who was ultimately slain by Narasimha, the ‘Man-Lion’ avatar of Vishnu.

Pritam

Pritamdas, Gujarati poet of the 16thcentury A.D., who composed numerous devotional songs

Raj

Kingdom, rule, regime

Rajachandra

Raychandbhai Jain Saint and Philosopher, contemporary of Gandhiji, whom the latter acknowledged as his spiritual guru. He died in 1900.

Ram, Rama

Hero of the epic, Ramayana, who is regarded as an ideal man and king, and worshipped as the 7th incarnation of God.

Ramakrishna

Bengali saint (1836-86 A.D.) who was the guru of Swami Vivekananda and who taught the oneness of the Godhead and the basic harmony of all religions. The Ramakrishna Mission is named after him.

Ramanama

Literally, kingdom of Rama; and ideal system of government

Ramayana

The Hindu epic narrating the story of the abduction of Sita, wife of Rama; prince of Ayodhya, by Ravana, demon-king of Lanka (Ceylon), and her rescue after the conquest of Lanka by the armies led by Rama and the death of Ravana at the hands of Rama.

Ramdhun

A song made up of repetitions of God's name

Ramji Mandir

Rama’s temple

Ravana

The demon-king of Lanka, whose abduction of Sita, led to his destruction at Rama’s hands, in the Ramayana.

Sadavrat

Charity

Sadhu

Ecstasy, and by extension the place where a great

Sahadharmini

Wife

Samadhi

Ascetic

Samagra Gramseva

All-round village service

Samskaras

Innate tendencies inherited from past life; religious customs

Sanatanist

Faithful follower of ancient Vedic religion

Sannyas

Abandonment of all worldly ties with view to fixing the mind on the Supreme Being

Sannyasi

One who has taken to sannyas

Sarvodaya

Welfare of all

Satvika

Tending of truth

Satya

Truth

Satyagraha

Nonviolence Civil Disobedience or Recourse to truth-force or soul-force or passive resistance.

Satyagrahi

One who practices Satyagraha

Savitri

Wife of Satyavan who, according to legend, reclaimed his life from the God of Death

Shankara

Hindu philosopher of the 8th century A.D., who was one of the foremost exponents of Non-dualism of the Vedanta school of philosophy

Shastras

The Hindu Scriptures

Shloka

Metrical verse or composition

Shudra

Member of the fourth or menial caste among Hindus

Sita

Wife of Rama

Smritis

The Codes, bases on recollection of the Shastras

Sthitaprajna

Literally, ‘one of steadfast mind’; a soul unaffected by extremes of joy and sorrow

Sudama

The indigent boyhood friend and associate of Sri Krishna, whom the latter honours, in the Bhagavata

Surdas

Blind Hindi poet of northern India who lived in the 16th century A.D.; his poetical work, Sursagar, narrating the story of Krishna, is immensely popular with Hindi-speaking Hindus

Swadeshi

Belonging to or made in one’s country

Swaraj

Self-rule

Swargarohan Parva

The name of the last of the eighteen sections of the epic Mahabharata which describes how, when Yudhisthira, the eldest of the five Pandava brothers, retired to the Himalayas, towards the close of his life, and lost his wife and four brothers one after another, Indra appeared in his chariot to take him in the flesh to his (INDRA’S) Swarga, i.e., his heaven where mortals after death enjoy the results of their good deeds on earth.

Tadgud

Jaggery prepared from the juice of palmyra fruit

Tapascharya

Penance

Tilaks

Caste-marks on the forehead

Tonga

Two-wheeled horse-driven cart

Tukaram

Poet-saint of Maharashtra who lived in the 17th century A.D. and who composed thousands of devotional songs

Tulsidas

Hindi poet of Maharashtra who lived in the 17th century A.D. AND who composed, among other works, Ramacharitamanasa, (lit. The Holy Pool of the Life of Rama), retelling the epic story of the highest veneration by all Hindi-speaking Hindus

Upanishad

Ancient Hindu philosophical treaties, appended to the Vedas and regarded as equally authoritative as the Vedas

Urdu

Language based on Persian and Sanskrit dialects of North India

Vaidyas

Practitioners of Ayurveda system or indigenous medicine

Vaishnava

A votary of the cult of Vishnu

Vaishyas

Members of the third (cultivator and mercantile) class among Hindus

Vakil

Lawyer

Valmiki

First of Sanskrit poets and author of the Hindu epic, Ramayana

Varna

Color; one of the four divisions of the Hindu society (i.e., Brahman, Kshatriya, Vaishya and Shudra) based on hereditary occupations

Varnashram

Four-fold divisions of Hindu society

Vedanta

A system of philosophy springing from the Upanishads

Vedas

Most ancient Hindu scriptures, composed of hymns to various deities. There are four collections of theses hymns, known as Rigveda, Samaveda, Yajurveda and Atharveda

Vidyapith

Vidyapith

Vidura

The low-born but ‘wise one' in the Mahabharata honoured by Sri Krishna

Yajna

Ritual or religious sacrifice

Yoga

Hindu system of contemplation for effecting union of the human soul with the Supreme Being

Yogi

One who practices yoga

Yudhishthira

Eldest of the Pandava Princes, celebrated for his right conduct

Zamindar

Landholder

Zend Avesta

Zoroastrian scriptures

Table of Contents

A

B

C

D

E

F

G

H

I

J

K

L

N

O

P

R

S

T

U

V

W

Y

GLOSSARY