Quotes about Mahatma Gandhi

104 Sourced Quotes

No Gandhiji.... I could not treat all patients free. I came to Bombay not to treat Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi but to treat 'him', who, to me represents the four hundred million people of my country.

Bidhan Chandra Roy

Towards the end of May 1984, Indira Gandhi mentioned nonchalantly that some people had suggested to her to send the police into the golden temple complex to flush out militants entrenched therein, but he was not exactly convinced on this course as it was likely to have an unfavorable fall out. But at the same time, she said she could not see any alternative.

Men are likely to be not only the warriors of war but also the warriors of peace. Almost all those who risk their lives, are put in jail, or are killed for peace are men. While some of the peace warriors—Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Dag Hammarskjold—are remembered, most are forgotten. Remember Norm Morrison? After years of protesting the Vietnam war, Norm doused himself with gasoline and set himself on fire on the steps of the Pentagon[…] But Norm Morrison is forgotten.

Caste, religion, the political system, the economic system — all are helping the bonded labor owners … I believe in Gandhi's philosophy of the last man, that is, the bonded laborer is the last man in Indian society, that we are here to liberate the last man.

Kailash Satyarthi

Yes, in fact I was almost single-handed in protesting about holding the prisoners of war. It was largely on the pressure of Mujibur Rahman that Mrs Gandhi was holding them. Because she obviously recognised Bangladesh and his (Mujibur's) stand was clear: Let them recognise Bangladesh as an independent state and then we will free them. And that's what we did later.

Khushwant Singh

I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.

Home expands it becomes the country. It grows to be India that become the Himalayas and the Vindyachal, the Ganges... the Cauvery; it becomes Rameshwaram... it grows to be Rama: Rama and Lakshmana, the Buddha and the Shankaracharya, Mouniddin Ajmeri and Jalaluddin Akbar; it becomes Nanak and Kabir, Surdas, Tukaram, and Mirabai; it becomes Kalidas and Tulsidas; it becomes Mir, Ghalib and Anis; it becomes Vallathol and Tagore; it becomes Gandhi and Abul Kalam, Vinoba and Nehru.

Gandhi is dead, yet his mind pervades the earth. The thought of a gnani pervades humanity and works ceaselessly for good. Being anonymous, coming from within, it is more powerful and compelling. That is how the world improves-the inner aiding and blessing the outer. When gnani dies, he is no more, in the same sense in which a river is no more when it merges in the sea; the name, the shape, are no more, but the water remains and becomes one with the ocean. When a gnani joins the universal mind, all his goodness and wisdom become the heritage of humanity and uplift every human being.

Nisargadatta Maharaj

Like several other historical personages, Gandhi had a highly complex personality, his teachings, too, are incapable of over-simplified assessments on the lines of his being 'the inspirer of the national movement who roused the masses to anti-imperialist action', 'the counter-revolutionary who did all he could to prevent the development of our national movement on revolutionary lines', etc.

E. M. S. Namboodiripad

Whoever said Gandhi was against technology was wrong. I am not against industries. There are times when other things have to play a role—like food. But big industries are essential. Take electricity, or steel. These are essentially for big industries only.

If only Bapu [Gandhi] knew the cost of setting him up in poverty!

Love without courage and wisdom is sentimentality, as with the ordinary church member. Courage without love and wisdom is foolhardiness, as with the ordinary soldier. Wisdom without love and courage is cowardice, as with the ordinary intellectual. Therefore one with love, courage, and wisdom is one in a million who moves the world, as with Jesus, Buddha, and Gandhi.

They used us as an excuse to go mad and then blamed it on us. Gandhi says create and preserve the image of your choice. The image of my choice is not Beatle George — those who want that can go and see Wings. Why live in the past? Be here now.

George Harrison

I've been asked a lot for my view on American health care. Well, 'it would be a good idea,' to quote Gandhi.

Gandhi was everything the voting members of the Academy would like to be: moral, tanned and thin.

Joe Morgenstern

Gandhi was a completely unofficial man. He recognized the gulf that lay between the enjoyment of freedom and the exercise of authority. When the Indian National Congress, which he had led intermittently as a movement dedicated to achieving liberation by legal and extra‑legal means, itself grasped for power and became a political party, he withdrew. With an extraordinary persistence he made and kept himself one of the few free men of our time.

George Woodcock

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?

I have even acted in a children's film. It was a 10-minute role which I did somewhere around 1961. I had to quote from Gandhi. I spoke for 8 to 10 minutes continuously without any rehearsal, or writing, or retake. Not one word had to be changed. Because when you speak and act truthfully, you do not make a mistake. It comes naturally.

Gandhiji would always offer full details of his plans and movements to the police, thereby saving them a great deal of trouble. One police inspector who availed himself of Gandhi's courtesy in this matter is said to have been severely reprimanded by his chief. 'Don't you know,' he told the inspector, 'that everyone who comes into close contact with that man goes over to his side?'

Reginald Reynolds

Gandhi on many occasions declared himself an anarchist — of his own kind — and he created, partly from his readings of Tolstoy and Kropotkin and partly on the basis of Indian communitarian traditions, the plan of a decentralized society based on autonomous village communes.

George Woodcock

Public speaking is done in the public tongue, the national or tribal language; and the language of our tribe is the men's language. Of course women learn it. We're not dumb. If you can tell Margaret Thatcher from Ronald Reagan, or Indira Gandhi from General Somoza, by anything they say, tell me how. This is a man's world, so it talks a man's language.

Ursula K. Le Guin

Eleanor Roosevelt, Rosa Parks, Gandhi — all these peopled described themselves as quiet and soft-spoken and even shy. And they all took the spotlight, even though every bone in their bodies was telling them not to.

It was 12.30 in the night when I got two congratulatory telegrams - Indira Gandhi's and Jagjivan Ram's. Who has ever sent congratulatory telegrams to me? I went and woke him (Uncle) up and he came and sat with me. What did we do? We cried till dawn. Because of music... all that we had gone through... The joy was real. But we thought of the past.

Gangubai Hangal

"Bapu Gandhi said, 'All religions are true.' I just want to love God," I blurted out, and looked down, red in the face.

Gandhi, that great apostle of non-violence, and Aung San, the founder of a national army, were very different personalities, but as there is an inevitable sameness about the challenges of authoritarian rule anywhere at any time, so there is a similarity in the intrinsic qualities of those who rise up to meet the challenge.

Aung San Suu Kyi

... quite a number of Congressmen are disguised as communists. They will go with Mrs Gandhi to the ultimate end. They have always been enemies of democracy. Behind-them is the Right CPI and behind it is Soviet Russia.

In India the human being is a symphonic theme. 'The people' is not a compact, close-knit concept, but a sprawling one, flowing not only into different walks of life, but into the intricately woven multi-layers of privilege, wealth, and education. 'The people' created by Gandhi is a young concept.

Nayantara Sahgal

Just as Dr. King was a disciple of Gandhi and Christ, we must now be Dr. King's disciples.
Dr. King challenged us to work for a greater humanity. I only hope that we are worthy of his challenge.

But when she curbed the freedom of press during the emergency, I withdrew my support. Indira Gandhi had the habit of snubbing whoever opposed her. She was waiting for a chance to snub me. I never gave her the chance as I never met her after that.

Khushwant Singh

Even Gandhi, with all his charisma, did not "melt the hearts" of his oppressors, as he had hoped. After softening, hearts harden again. Asoka too was wrong to think that he was changing the course of history, and that his righteousness would last "as long as the sun and the moon."

Theodore Zeldin