Mahatma Gandhi quotes for UPSC

In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.

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

Any action that is dictated by fear or by coercion of any kind ceases to be moral.

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.

The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can only be achieved by uttermost self-sacrifice.

I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest number. It means in its nakedness that in order to achieve the supposed good of 51 per cent the interests of 49 per cent may be, or rather, should be sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine and has done harm to humanity.

You assist an unjust administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance. Allegiance to it means partaking of the evil. A good person will resist an evil system with his whole soul. Disobedience of the laws of an evil state is therefore a duty.

My life is my message.

For one man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

When there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than to remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.

A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.

Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.

The police... should never go on strike. Theirs was an essential service and they should render that service, irrespective of their pay. There were several other effective and honourable means of getting grievances redressed.

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. That State is the best governed which is governed the least.

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.

I suggest that, if India is to evolve along nonviolent lines, it will have to decentralize many things. Centralization cannot be sustained and defended without adequate force . . .Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society.

We who seek justice will have to do justice to others.

An unjust law is itself a species of violence. Arrest for its breach is more so.

Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.

There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves.

To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body.

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.

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.

For me the only training in Swaraj we need is the ability to defend ourselves against the whole world and to live our natural life in perfect freedom, even though it may be full of defects. Good government is no substitute for self-government.

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.

I have always held that social justice, even to the least and lowliest, is impossible of attainment by force.

I am uncompromising in the matter of woman's rights. In my opinion she should labour under no legal disability not suffered by man, I should treat the daughters and sons on a footing of perfect equality.

Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.

Earth provides enough to satisfy every man's need but not for every man's greed.

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.

In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.

It has always been easier to destroy than to create.

It is not possible to make a person or society non-violent by compulsion.

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.

There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

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?

By its very nature, non-violence cannot ‘seize’ power, nor can that be its goal. But non-violence can do more; it can effectively control and guide power without capturing the machinery of government. That is its beauty.

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines.

We are our own slaves, not of the British. This should be engraved on our minds. The whites cannot remain if we do not want them. If the idea is to drive them out with firearms, let every Indian consider what precious little profit Europe has found in these.

Truth never damages a cause that is just.

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.

An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.

Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.

The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike

For me the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect.

In reality there are as many religions as there are individuals.... Religions are different roads converging to the same point. What does it matter that we take different roads, so long as we reach the same goal. Wherein is the cause for quarreling?

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.

One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects.

You may never know what results come of your actions. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.

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.

A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.

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.

Remember that there is always a limit to self-indulgence but none to self-restraint, and let us daily progress in that direction.

I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.

It is far easier and safer to prevent illness by the observance of the laws of health than to set about curing the illness which has been brought on by our own ignorance and carelessness. Hence it is the duty of all thoughtful men to understand aright the laws of health (Introduction)