Quotes about Mahatma Gandhi

104 Sourced Quotes

I worked as a volunteer at that session and heard Mahatma Gandhi for the first time. I was profoundly impressed by his personality. Mahatama Gandhi was explaining his weapon of non-violent struggle for securing Swaraj.... Mahatma Ganndhi told his young companions – May be you don't agree today with what I say. But I am confident that within twenty five or thirty years, we will get Swaraj by this method. This purportedly proved true and just 31 years later India became independent.

"Muslims are bullies and Hindus cowards," Mahatma Gandhi once said. He was right — at least about Hindus.

François Gautier

When in public, Hillary smiles and acts graciously. As soon as the cameras are gone, her angry personality, nastiness, and imperiousness become evident … Hillary Clinton can make Richard Nixon look like Mahatma Gandhi.

What matters most is whether or not India will continue to remain a secular state committed to socialism or become a Hindu Rashtra wearing a secular mask with an agenda of its own, including building a mammoth Ram Mandir at Ayodhya, preserving the Ram Setu and other relics associated with Hinduism. The choice is between an India of the dreams of Mahatma Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru on the one side (secular), and those of Vir Savarkar and Guru Golwalkar on the other (Hindutva). By no stretch of the imagination can it be called secular. We have to choose between remaining what we are or opt to become a Hindu Rashtra.

Khushwant Singh

As a theory of [satyagraha] which must of necessity grow and expand because it carries within itself the immortal function of life. The fire of satyagrha had been kindled in the temple or ashrama where Mahatma Gandhi is the high priest or guru.

Great in taking decisions, great in executing them, Mahatma Gandhi was incomparably great in the last stand which he made on behalf of his country. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest men the world has ever seen. The world hath need of him, and if he is mocked and jeered at by the people of importance, the people with a stake in this country, – the Scribes and Pharisees of the days of Christ – he will be gratefully remembered, now and always, by a nation which he led from victory to victory.

Chittaranjan Das

Really, just looking around, you feel a twinge of pity for the poor souls who succeeded in getting past the Pearly Gates. One can't help but picture the lackluster VIP lounge in Heaven, a kind of nonalcoholic ice-cream social starring Harriet Beecher Stowe and Mahatma Gandhi. Hardly anyone's idea of a "with-it" social register.

Chuck Palahniuk

In our times, significantly, the three outstanding voices against violence have been silenced by murder — Mahatma Gandhi in India, Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and Dr. Martin Luther King, here at home.

Millicent Fenwick

Already, in the decades before Independence our people were giving thought to their vision of an Independent India. Pandit Motilal Nehru drafted the well-known Nehru Report on the Constitution of free India. The Karachi Session of the Indian National Congress held in March, 1931 adopted the famous Resolution moved by Mahatma Gandhi which contained our charter on Fundamental Rights. It is against this historical backdrop of a long and arduous struggle and the crystallization of our vision of a sovereign, democratic nation that the first session of the Constituent Assembly was held in 1946, when, as Panditji said, we embarked on the high adventure of giving shape, in the printed and written word, to a nation's dream and aspiration.

Shankar Dayal Sharma

Mahatma Gandhi once said, "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty." Besides, two wrongs do not make a right. President Obama is right: Peace is the only path to true security.

It would make a positive difference in world security and counterterrorism by setting our mind on pursuing peaceful solutions rather than escalating the war on terror. Mahatma Gandhi once said, "You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is like an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty."

... the Indian tradition of non-violence and purity of motive and means, the tradition of ethical and religious approach to all political questions and noted that these had found a perfect embodiment in Mahatma Gandhi... One could draw up a whole declaration of human rights in terms of ahimsa. If individuals and nations are animated by such a belief in a beneficent Supreme Power; in truth and in human brotherhood, we can look forward to a future free from anxiety and fear and full of hope and promise of happiness.

Jayachamarajendra Wadiyar

He ran a gas station down in St. Louis… No, Mahatma Gandhi was a great leader of the 20th century.

Hillary Clinton

Very often, unfortunately the wrong kind of publicity appears in the press... That happens. Is God free from it? Was Mahatma Gandhi free from it? It's due to ignorance also. Some of these people deliberately misquote.

Celibacy is not only my view, but also that of several others', including the Roman Catholic Church. I don't say that this can be prescribed to the people. Here again, people say that I am imposing my will on them. I am not alone, Mahatma Gandhi was also against all artificial methods of family planning. He felt strongly about it. He said that by using it, you're turning women into prostitutes. He used such hard language. But, I know that the government doesn't run on individual opinions. Celibacy depends on self will. Only one in a million people can do it. It's necessary to have family planning. But, it doesn't lead to mental strength.

Mahatma Gandhi's dream of self-reliance can be attained by making use of Internet and technology.

A lot of people are waiting for Martin Luther King or Mahatma Gandhi to come back — but they are gone. We are it. It is up to us. It is up to you.

Marian Wright Edelman

In an autobiography, I will have to write the truth, I should not hide anything. Just to avoid people's feelings, I should not be hiding things. If I don't present events as they happened, truthfully, it is not an autobiography at all. I have read Mahatma Gandhi's autobiography and if I can muster up the kind of courage that he had, I will write one.

There have been a couple of key-points, for example in 1942, we had to close down the papers at the behest of Mahatma Gandhi, and during the emergency when we had to face the full wrath of the government. On both the occasions, we carried our policy to its logical conclusion.

The menace inherent in any form of coercion is greatly reduced if those who act in behalf of victims of oppression voluntarily submit to suffering. Mahatma Gandhi... furnishes the most illuminating contemporary example...

For a democracy to be healthy and effective, three political parties fight elections so that they can replace one another in Governments every few years. Dictatorial governments are either communist, or fascist, or military or personal. Nothing can control the power and wealth of a dictator. History has shown that there were no benevolent dictators and even if a saint became a dictator, he would be corrupted by the unlimited power and wealth at his command, and soon become a despot and tyrant. Mahatma Gandhi, who got us freedom by the unique method of non-violent resistance against evil was an ideal democrat.

According to Gandhi, the seven sins are wealth without works, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle. Well, Hubert Humphrey may have sinned in the eyes of God, as we all do, but according to those definitions of Gandhi's, it was Hubert Humphrey without sin.

As beatific as Gandhi was, I'm sure there was some guy in a Bombay bar going, "I knew Gandhi…he was a prick. He was sucking down a pork hot dog, hitting on Mother Teresa. He kept saying, "Who's your diaper daddy? Who's your diaper daddy?"

I supported her [Indira Gandhi] when I thought she was right in imposing the emergency. With some reservations, I supported the Emergency proclaimed by Indira Gandhi on June 25, 1975. Let me explain why. I concede that the right to protest is integral to democracy. You can have public meetings to criticize or condemn government actions. You can take out processions, call for strikes and closure of businesses. But there must not be any coercion or violence. If there is any, it is the duty of the government to suppress it by force, if necessary.

Khushwant Singh

As Gandhi wisely points out, even as we serve others we are working on ourselves; every act, every word, every gesture of genuine compassion naturally nourishes our own hearts as well. It is not a question of who is healed first. When we attend to ourselves with compassion and mercy, more healing is made available for others. And when we serve others with an open and generous heart, great healing comes to us.

Some of the people of the year include Gandhi, Stalin, Churchill, Nixon, Putin, Obama, and Hitler. So Trump is definitely fitting in there — you decide where he fits in for yourself.

Passivity can be a provoking modus operandi;
Consider the Empire and Gandhi.

Catherine the Great, Golda Meir, Indira Gandhi: These may not be women you'd want to fuck, but you definitely don't want to fuck with them. And if you don't think a woman can handle a war, ask the Argentinians.

Everywhere we walked we got plenty of attention due to the camera and sound men. The locals love to get on camera. [...] I'd seen footage of Gandhi surrounded like this and always thought it was because he was very popular, but now I wonder if it was just because he had a camera crew with him.

Karl Pilkington

Our century of war, militarism, and political terror has produced great — and successful — advocates of true peace, among whom Mohandas Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., are the paramount examples. The considerable success that they achieved testifies to the presence, in the midst of violence, of an authentic and powerful desire for peace and, more important, of the proven will to make the necessary sacrifices.