Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi (1869-1948), full name Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, was the leader of the India's freedom movement. He is known as father of the nation. He was an Indian spiritual and political leader who led India to independence in 1947. He pioneered nonviolent resistance and was respected for his personal honesty and integrity. He was born in Porbandar, Kathiawar (Gujarat). He studied in London and came back to Bombay to set up lucrative law profession. However, in 1893, he gave up practive to live in British South Africa where he opposed discrimination against Indians. He returned to India in 1914 and became involved in Swaraj Movement.Mahatma Gandhi led nonviolent civil disobedience movements against British rule in India. He was arrested and jailed many times. He was against the partition of India. He argued for it, but unsuccessfully. He was assassinated in 1948 by a Hindu fanatic. His major works included The Story of My Experiment with Truth.
Wisdom & Quotes
- Manliness consists not in bluff, bravado, or lordliness. It consists in daring to do the right and facing consequences, whether it is in matters social, political, or other. It consists in deeds, not in words.
- Adaptability is imitation. It means power of resistance and assimilation.
- Why worry one's head over a thing that is inevitable? Why die before one's death?
- Purity of life is the highest and truest art.
- All truths, not merely ideas, but truthful faces, truthful pictures or songs, are highly beautiful.
- Blind adoration, in the age of action, is perfectly valueless, is often embarrassing and, equally, often painful.
- Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.
- Blaming the wolf would not help the sheep much. The sheep must learn not to fail into the clutches of the wolf.
- The cause is everything. Those even who are dearest to us must be shunted for the sake of the cause.
- The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from the grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children.
- Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants.
- Means are not to be distinguished from ends. If violent means are used, there will be bad results.
- One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed, they must be defended against the heaviest odds.
- Possession of arms implies an element of fear, if not of cowardice.
- Bullies are always to be found where there are cowards.
- Cowards can never be moral.
- Fear has its use, but cowardice has none.
- All crime is a kind of disease and should be treated as such.
- I know no diplomacy save that of truth.
- True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it.
- In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.
- Let our first act each morning be the following resolve: I shall not fear anyone on Earth. I shall fear only God.
- Fear of disease killed more men than disease itself.
- There would be no one to frighten you if you refused to be afraid.
- Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.
- The test of friendship is assistance in adversity - and that, too, unconditional assistance. Cooperation which needs consideration is a commercial contract, and not friendship. Conditional cooperation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.
- No one has the capacity to judge God. We are drops in that limitless ocean of mercy.
- Non-violence is not a garment to put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be and inseparable part of our very being.
- It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on a cloak of non-violence to cover impotence.
- Prayer is not an old woman's idle amusement. Properly understood and applied, it is the most potent instrument of action.
- A nonviolent revolution is not a programme of seizure of power. It is a programme of transformation of relationships, ending in a peaceful transfer of power.
- The moment the slave resolves that he will no longer be a slave, his fetters fall. He frees himself and shows the way to others. Freedom and slavery are mental states.
- Honesty is incompatible with amassing a large fortune.
- To a man with an empty stomach, food is God.
- Much that we hug today as knowledge is ignorance pure and simple. …It makes the mind wander and even reduces it to a vacuity.
- It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.
- Don not judge others. Be your own judge and you will be truly happy. If you will try to judge others, you are likely to burn your fingers.
- It is knowledge that ultimately gives salvation.
- Life is but an endless series of experiments.
- Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy.
- Love is the subtlest force in the world.
- To lose patience is to lose the battle.
- Power is of two kinds: one is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love.
- Breach of promise is no less an act of insolvency than a refusal to pay one's debt.
- Religion is not what is grasped by the brain, but a heart grasp.
- Where there is fear, there is no religion.
- Retreat itself is often a plan of resistance and may be a precursor of great bravery and sacrifice. Every retreat is not cowardice which implies fear to die.
- Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food.
- Restraint never ruins one's health.
- Does not the history of the world show that there would have been no romance in life if there had been no risks?
- The willing sacrifice of the innocents is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet to b conceived by God or man.
- 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.
- Who can deny that much that passes for science and art today destroys the soul instead of uplifting it and instead evoking the best in us, panders to our basest passions?
- All sins are committed in secrecy. The moment we realize that God witnesses even out thoughts, we shall be free.
- The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice.
- And he who would be a friend with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend.
- Heroes are made in the hour of defeat. Success is, therefore, well described as a series of glorious defeats.
- True suffering does not know itself and never calculates.
- Truth is superior to man's wisdom.
- Anger and intolerance are the twin enemies of correct understanding.
- Crime and vice generally require darkness for prowling. They disappear when light plays upon them.
- Increases of material comforts, it may be generally laid down, do not in any way whatsoever conduce to moral growth.
- If we develop the force of will, we shall find that we do not need the force of arms.
- Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
- It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
- Of all the evils for which man has made himself responsible, none is so degrading, so shocking, or so brutal as his abuse of the better half of humanity; to me, the female sex is not the weaker sex.
- If she (woman) is weak in striking, she is strong in suffering.
- May not men earn their bread by intellectual labour? No, the needs of the body must be supplied by the body.
Emma Goldman