Gandhi, Mohandas K.

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

But one thing took deep root in me - the conviction that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality.

I had already crossed the Sahara of atheism.

I have experienced five or seven times in my life that one, whom God wishes to save, cannot fall even if he will. If I did not fall I cannot take any credit for it to mysef.

Formerly, men were made slaves under physical compulsion. Now they are enslaved by temptation of money and of the luxuries that money can buy.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms.

History is really a record of every interruption of the even working of the force of love or of the soul.

Everybody admits that sacrifice of self is infinitely superior to sacrifice of others. Moreover, if this kind of force is used in a cause that is unjust, only the person using it suffers. He does not make others suffer for his mistakes. Men have before now done many things which were subsequently found to have been wrong. No man can claim that he is absolutely in the right or that a particular thing is wrong because he thinks so, but it is wrong for him so long as that is his deliberate judgment. It is therefore meet that he should not do that which he knows to be wrong, and suffer the consequence whatever it may be. This is the key to the use of soul-force.

It is a superstition and ungodly thing to believe that an act of a majority binds a minority. Many examples can be given in which acts of majorities will be found to have been wrong and those of minorities to have been right. All reforms owe their origin to the initiation of minorities in opposition to majorities.

Who is the true warrior - he who keeps death always as a bosom-fried, or he who controls the death of others?

Passive resistance is an all-sided sword, it an be used anyhow; it bless him who uses it and him against whom it is used. Without drawing a drop of blood it produces far-reaching results. It never rusts and cannot be stolen. Competition between passive resisters does not exhause. The sword of passive resistance dies not require a scabbard.

When a man abandons truth, he does so owing to fear in some shape or form.

The things that will destroy us are:
politics without principle;
pleasure without conscience;
wealth without work;
knowledge without character;
business without morality;
science without humanity;
and worship without sacrifice.

To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.

Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.

I am endeavoring to show to my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that as evil can only be sustained by violence, withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence.

No empire intoxicated with red wine of power and plunder of weaker races has yet lived long in this world, and this British Empire, which is based upon organized exploitation of physically weaker races of the earth and upon a continuous exhibition of brute force, cannot live if there is a just God ruling the universe.

Before one can be fit for the practice of civil disobedience one must have rendered a willing and respectful obedience to the state laws. For the most part we obey such laws out of fear of the penalty for their breach, and this holds good partucularly in respect of such laws as do not involve a moral principle.

There are two aspects, the outward and the inward. It is purely a matter of emphasis with me. The outward has no meaning to me at all except in so far as it helps the inward. All true Art is the expression of the soul. The outward forms have value only in so far as they are the expression of the inner spirit of man.

The student Ramachandran asked, But cannot Beauty be separated from Truth and Truth from Beauty?
The Mahatma: I should want to know exactly what is Beauty. If it is what people generally understand by that word, then they are wide apart. Is a woman with fair features necessarily beautiful?
Ramachandran: Yes.
Gandhiji: Even if she may be of an ugly character?

Ramachandran: But the artists claim to see and to find Truth through outward beauty, said Ramachandran. Is it possible to see and find Truth in that way?
Gandhiji said, I would reverse the order. I see and find beauty through Truth.

But, Bapuji, said Ramachandran eagerly, the most beautiful things have often been created by men whose lives were not beautiful.
That, said Gahdhiji, only means that Truth and Untruth often co-exist; good and evil are often found together. In an artist also not seldom the right perception of things and the wrong co-exist. Truly beautiful creations only come when right perception is at work.

All true Art must help the soul to realize its inner self. In my own case I find that I can do entirely without external forms in my soul's realization. I can claim, therefore, that there is truly sufficient Art in my life, though you might not see what you call works of Art about me. My room may have blank walls; and I may even dispense with the roof, so that I may gaze out upon the starry heavens overhead that stretch in an unending expanse of beauty. What conscious Art of man can give me the scene that opens before me when I look up to the sky above with all its shining stars.?

That renunciation was the highest form of religion appealed to me greatly.

Speaking of being hired as an attorney in South Africa: ... should I add arrogance and fraud to my ignorance, and increase the burden of debt I owed to the world?

This civilization [speaking of the English] takes note neither of morality nor of religion. Its votaries calmly state that their business is not to teach religion. Some even consider it to be a superstitious growth. Others put on the cloak of religion, and prate about morality.

Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty. Performance of duty and observance of marality are convertible terms.

Politics, divorced from religion, has absolutely no meaning.

Two paths are open before India today,either to introduce the western principle of "Might is right" or to uphold the eastern principle that truth alone conquers, that truth knows no mishap..."

A satisfactory solution of the condition of labor must include the following:

1. The hours of labor must leave the workmen some hours of leisure.
2. They must get facilities for their own education.
3. Provision should be made for an adequate supply of milk, clothing and necessary education for their children.
4. There should be sanitary dwellings for the workmen.
5. They should be in a position to save enough to maintain themselves during their old age.

My belief in the Hindu Scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every sense as divinely inspired. ... I decline to be bound by any interpretation, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense.

"Cow Protection" to me is one of the most wonderful phenomena in all human evolution; for it takes the human being beyond his species. The cow to me means the entire sub-human world.

Hindus will be judged, not by their correct chanting of sacred texts, not by their pilgrimages, not by their most punctilious observance of Caste rules, but by their ability to protect the cow.

But I think that idol-worship is part of human nature. We hanker after symbolism. Why should one be more composed in a church than elsewhere? Images are an aid to worship. No Hindu considers an image to be God. I do not consider idol-worship sin.

Let us give today first the vital things of life, and all the graces and ornaments of life will follow.

Here again come that same greed, our spiritual enemy. There dangles before the country the bait of getting a thing of inestimable value, dirt cheap and in double-quick time. It is like the faqir with his goldmaking trick. With such a lure men cast so readily to the winds their independent judgment and was so mightily wroth with those who will not do likewise. So easy is it to overpower, in the name of outside freedom, the inner freedom of man.

I doubt if the steel age is an advance upon the flint age. I am indifferent. It is the evolution of the soul to which the intellect and all our faculties have to be devoted.

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