"We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change."
Mahatma Gandhi / From an article on dealing with snake bites, published in Indian Opinion dated August 9th, 1913, in the Gujarti language edition, English translation available in the Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 12, April 1913 - December 1914, p
"The Hindus have written to me complaining that I was responsible for unifying and awakening the Mussalmans and giving prestige to the Moulvis which they never had before. Now that the Khilafat question was over, the awakened Mussalmans have proclaimed a kind of jehad against the Hindu... The tales that are reported. from Bengal of outrages upon Hindu women are the most disquieting if they are even half-true."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India, 1924, quoted in M.A. Karandikar, Islam, 126 quoted in https://archive.org/stream/the-tragic-story-of-partition-hv-sheshasdri/The%20Tragic%20Story%20of%20Partition%20-%20HV%20Sheshasdri_djvu.txt
"Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth and if today it has become moribund, inactive, irresponsive to growth, it is because we are fatigued. As soon as the fatigue is over, Hinduism will burst forth upon the world with a brilliance perhaps never known before."
"Disobedience without civility, discipline, discrimination, non-violence, is certain destruction. Disobedience combined with love is the living water of life. Civil disobedience is a beautiful variant to signify growth, it is not discordance which spells death."
"I believe in absolute oneness of God and therefore also of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. The rays of the sun are many through refraction. But they have the same source. I cannot therefore detach myself from the wickedest soul (nor may I be denied identity with the most virtuous)."
"I hold the opinion firmly that Civil Disobedience is the purest type of constitutional agitation. Of course, it becomes degrading and despicable if its civil, i.e. non-violent character is a mere camouflage."
"The Indians do not regret that capable natives can exercise the franchise. They would regret if it were otherwise. They, however, assert that they too, if capable, should have the right. You, in your wisdom, would not allow the Indian or the native the precious privilege under any circumstances, because they have a dark skin."
Mahatma Gandhi / Times of Natal, October 26, 1894, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 1, pp. 166-67.
"If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence."
Mahatma Gandhi / Statement during his trial for "exciting disaffection toward His Majesty's Government as established by law in India" (18 March 1922)
"I cannot understand why the Ali Brothers are going to be arrested as the rumours go, and why I am to remain free. They have done nothing which I would not do. If they had sent a message to the Amir, I also would send one to inform the Amir that if he came, no Indian so long as I can help it, would help the Government to drive him back."
Mahatma Gandhi / Quoted in The Assassination of Mahatma Gandhi (1969), , p. 390.
"[I]t is not true that we shall necessarily progress if our political conditions undergo a change, irrespectively of the manner in which it is brought about. If the means employed are impure, the change will not be in the direction of progress but very likely in the opposite."
Mahatma Gandhi / As quoted in Gandhi’s Experiments With Truth: Essential Writings by and about Mahatma Gandhi, Richard L. Johnson (edit), Lexington Books (2006) p. 118. Original source: Forward to volume of Gokhale's speeches, Gopal Krishna Gokahalenan Vyak
"If we are to reach real peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle, we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions. But we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which, consciously or unconsciously, the whole world is hungering."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (19 November 1931, p. 361)
"Today, I rebel against orthodox Christianity, as I am convinced it has distorted the message of Jesus. He was an Asiatic whose message was delivered through many media, and when it had the backing of a Roman emperor, it became an imperialist faith as it remains to this day."
"The only thing lawful is non-violence. Violence can never be lawful in the sense meant here, i.e., not according to man-made laws, but according to the laws made by Nature for man."
"It is quite clear that you are today the one person in the world who can prevent a war which may reduce humanity to the savage state. Must you pay that price for an object however worthy it may appear to you to be? Will you listen to the appeal of one who has deliberately shunned the method of war not without considerable success?"
Mahatma Gandhi / Letter addressed to Hitler. 23 July 1939 (Collected Works, vol. 70, pp. 20–21). Available online at .
"We both may be killed by the Muslims, and must put our purity to the ultimate test, so that we know that we are offering the purest of sacrifices, and we should now both start sleeping naked."
Mahatma Gandhi / Gandhi's comments privately told to Manuben in 1947. Quoted from Hiro, D. (2015). The longest August: The unflinching rivalry between India and Pakistan. New York, NY: Nation Books.
"Self-government means continuous effort to be independent of government control, whether it is foreign government or whether it is national. Swaraj government will be a sorry affair if people look up for the regulation of every detail of life."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (6 August 1925) p. 276
"This [Christian] proselytization will mean no peace in the world. Conversions are harmful to India. If I had power and could legislate, I should certainly stop all proselytizing. For Hindu households, the advent of a missionary has meant the disruption of the family, coming in the wake of change of dress, manners, language, food and drink."
Mahatma Gandhi / ‘Harijan’, English weekly, Poona, founded by M.K. Gandhi, dated May 11, 1935
"In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy."
Mahatma Gandhi / Non-Violence in Peace and War (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton
"The man who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman."
Mahatma Gandhi / As quoted in Mahatma, edit., D.G. Tendulkar, Vol. 7 (1945-1947) first edition, New Delhi, India, Publication Division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (1953) p. 82
Mahatma Gandhi / As quoted in Mahatma, edit., D.G. Tendulkar, Vol. 7 (1945-1947), first edition, New Delhi, India, Publication Division of the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting (1953) p. 138
"Hitler killed five million [sic] Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.....It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany.... As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions."
Mahatma Gandhi / Mahatma Gandhi, June 1946, in an interview with his biographer Louis Fischer. Quoted in "Gandhi on the Holocaust", Jewish Virtual Library.
"What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?"
Mahatma Gandhi / Non-Violence in Peace and War, 1942, Vol. 1, Ch. 142
"Today my position is that though I admire much in Christianity, I am unable to identify myself with orthodox Christianity. I must tell you in all humility that Hinduism as I know it, entirely satisfies my soul, fills my whole being and I find a solace in the Bhagavad Gita and Upanishads that I miss even in the Sermon on the Mount."
Mahatma Gandhi / Vol.27 p.2 04-06.28 July, 1925 Speech at a Meeting of missionaries (Y.M C.A. Calcutta) Mahatma Gandhi, The Collected Works, Volume 27, New Delhi, 1968, p. 435, (also quoted in Goel, S.R. History of Hindu-Christian Encounters (1996))
"My ambition is much higher than independence. 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."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (12 January 1928). Quoted in The Essential Writings of Gandhi, edited by Judith Brown. Oxford University Press, 2008, (p. 153).
"God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the West. The economic imperialism of a single tiny island kingdom is today keeping the world in chains. If an entire nation of 300 million took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare."
Mahatma Gandhi / 1928, as reported in Development Without Destruction: Economics of the Spinning Wheel, p. 97
"I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (13 June 1929); also in All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections (2005) edited by Krishna Kripalani, p. 163
"I do not share the socialist belief that centralization of the necessaries of life will conduce to the common welfare, when the centralized industries are planned and owned by the State. The socialistic concept of the West was born in an environment reeking with violence."
"But to me both the parties [Axis and Allies] seem to be tarred with the same brush."
Mahatma Gandhi / Speech at Bardoli on 8 January 1942, which was printed in Harijanbandhu the same day and later in Collected Works (vol. 79, p. 205). Quoted in Gandhi and Godse: A Review and a Critique (2001) by Koenraad Elst, p. 49.
"I draw no distinction between error and sin. If a man commits a bona fide mistake and confesses it with a contrite heart before his Maker, the merciful Maker sterilizes it of all harm."
Mahatma Gandhi / Harijan (20 October 1946); as quoted in The Encyclopaedia of Gandhian Thoughts (1985)
"It is not possible to make a person or society non-violent by compulsion."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (13 September 1928). All Men Are Brothers: Autobiographical Reflections, compiled and edited by Krishna Kripalani, The Continuum, (2011) p. 34
"If individual liberty goes, then surely all is lost, for, if the individual ceases to count, what is left of society? Individual freedom alone can make a man voluntarily surrender himself completely to the service of society. If it is wrested from him, he becomes automaton and society is ruined."
"The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong."
Mahatma Gandhi / "Interview to the Press" in Karachi about the execution of Bhagat Singh (23 March 1931); published in Young India (2 April 1931), reprinted in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Online Vol. 51. Gandhi begins by making a statement on his fail
"The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least."
Mahatma Gandhi / From Discussion with BG Kher and others, 15 August 1940. Gandhi's Wisdom Box (1942), edited by Dewan Ram Parkash, p. 67 also in Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 79 (PDF), p. 122
"I went to Noakhali and let no one imagine that, because it is now to be included in Pakistan, I would not go there again. A part of me lies there. I shall tell the Hindus there that they should not fear anyone even if they are surrounded by [Muslim] murderers."
Mahatma Gandhi / Prarthana Pravachan - I, pp. 166-70; The Hindu, 17 June 1947.
"You may never be able to come back to the place you have left, nor can you undo the wrongs that you have done. But you can always begin again. You can cleanse the heart, you can remake your life, you can rebuild character."
Mahatma Gandhi / Harijan, 7 January 1939, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 68, p. 6.
"Hinduism is like the Ganga,, pure and unsullied at its source but taking in its course the impurities in the way. Even like the Ganga it is beneficent in its total effect. It takes a provincial form in every provinvce, but the inner substance is retained everywhere."
"Only the other day, a missionary descended on a famine area with money in his pocket, distributed it among the famine-stricken, converted them to his fold, took charge of their temple and demolished it. This is outrageous. The temple could not belong to the converted Hindus, and it could not belong to the Christian missionary. But this friend goes and gets it demolished at the hands of the very men who, only a little while ago, believed that God was there."
Mahatma Gandhi / ‘Harijan’, English weekly (founded by M.K. Gandhi), Poona, May 11, 1935
"Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (12 March 1931), p. 31