Mahatma  Gandhi

Mohandas Karamchand "Mahatma" Gandhi (1869-10-02 – 1948-01-30) was an advocate and pioneer of nonviolence. He led the struggle for India's independence from British colonial rule.

 Unsourced     Gandhi On Love

Satisfaction does not come with achievement, but with effort. Full effort is full victory.
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.
Corruption ought not to be an inevitable product of democracy.
The Natives in our hands proved to be most unreliable and obstinate. Without constant attention, they would as soon have dropped the wounded man as not, and they seemed to bestow no care on their suffering countryman. - on the native Africans, when Gandhi was practising law there.
Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not any man’s greed.
You can't kill a Hindu (famous last words)
Post-dated cheque on a failing bank. - on Cripp's Cabinet Mission Plan to the Indian National Congress
The Rich must live more simply so that the Poor may simply live.
Find purpose, the means will follow.
I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest good of the greatest number. The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all.
I do not want my house to be walled in on sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.
I don’t know which is the greater task: to decentralize a top-heavy civilization or to prevent an ancient civilization from becoming centralized and top-heavy. In both cases the core of the problem is to discover what constitutes a good civilization, then proclaim it to the people and help them to erect it.
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.
Now let us turn our attention to another and entirely unrepresented community - the Indian. He is in striking contrast with the native. While the native has been of little benefit to the State, it owes its prosperity largely to the Indians. While native loafers abound on every side, that species of humanity is almost unknown among Indians here.
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.
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.
Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.
Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.
The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world's problem.*
We cannot be speakers who do not listen. But neither can we be listeners who do not speak.
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest.
The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.
The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
To believe in something, and not live it, is dishonest.
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 or democracy?
Why change the world when we can change ourselves?
You should be the change that you want to see in the world.
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
If you don't ask, you don't get.
If my faith burns bright, as I hope it will even if I stand alone, I shall be alive in the grave, and what is more, speaking from it!
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man's injustice to woman. If by strength is meant brute strength, then, indeed, is woman less brute than man. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior. Has she not greater intuition, is she not more self-sacrificing, has she not greater powers of endurance, has she not greater courage? Without her, man could not be. If nonviolence is the law of our being, the future is with woman. Who can make a more effective appeal to the heart than woman? - Young India, 10/4/1930
Everyone wants to be strong and self sufficient, but nobody is willing to put in the work necessary to achieve these goals
My life is my message.
I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.

On nonviolence
For this cause I too am prepared to die, but for no cause, my friend, will I be prepared to kill.
There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.
I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13, May 3, 1919
"The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy."
"Collected works of Mahatma Gandhi" Vol. 79, Page 122
Things undreamt of are daily being seen, the impossible is ever becoming possible. We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.
Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.
describing the stages of establishment resistance to a winning strategy of nonviolent activism
We must always seek to ally ourselves with that part of the enemy that knows what is right.
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.
March 18, 1922, during his trial for "exciting disaffection toward His Majesty's Government as established by law in India"
Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.
If we were to drive out the English with the weapons with which they enslaved us, our slavery would still be with us even when they have gone.
That which looks for mercy from an opponent is not non-violence
If love or non-violence be not the law of our being, the whole of my argument falls to pieces.
Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being.
Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
There is no way to peace; peace is the way.
An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.
The Story of My Experiments with Truth

 Seven social sins, seven blunders
At least two sources and versions exist:

Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice.
(From a list closing an article in Young India, 22 October 1925 - Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi vol.33 p.135 )
The seven blunders that human society commits and cause all the violence: wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principles.
(From a written list given to his departing grandson Arun in October 1947 , as told by Arun Gandhi )
(Some alternative or erroneous translations exist that use intros "There are seven sins in the world:", "Seven Blunders of the world:", "The things that will destroy us are", and items "politics without principle", "education without character", or "business without morality".)


On truth
A 'No' uttered from the deepest conviction is better than a 'Yes' merely uttered to please, or worse, to avoid trouble.
Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.
Use truth as your anvil, nonviolence as your hammer and anything that does not stand the test when it is brought to the anvil of truth and hammered with nonviolence, reject it.
When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, always.
Even If I am a minority of one, truth is still the truth.
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of the truth.
Truth never damages a cause that is just.
Hope is eternal - Its worship never goes in vain.
Speak only if it improves upon the silence.
If one is able to stop smoking, he may continue, if he is unable to quit, then he must!

On Satyagraha
Satyagraha was a term Gandhi coined for his overall activist strategy. One literal translation would be "truth force"or rather "insistence upon the truth". Satya(the truth)+ Agraha(to insist upon)= Satyagraha.

The fight of Satyagraha is for the strong in spirit, not the doubter or the timid. Satyagraha teaches us the art of living as well as dying.
In the code of the Satyagrahi (one who practices Satyagraha), there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.
In the dictionary of Satyagraha, there is no enemy.
A Satyagrahi loves his so-called enemy even as he loves his friend. He owns no enemy.
(When beginning a protest against the British rule of India, by breaking a law whereby Indians were not permitted to manufacture salt from seawater. Spoken after picking up a piece of raw salt from the seashore.) With this salt I am shaking the foundations of the [British] empire.


On the West
On Showing up to meet His Majesty King Edward VII of England in just a loincloth, a reporter wondered aloud if this was disrespectful to the king.
Gandhi replied simply, "The King was wearing enough for the both of us."

 
In reply to a reporter's question "What do you think of Western Civilization?"  I think it would be a good idea!

I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed
Background for the above quote: It was made in May of 1940, when the battles of World War II were just beginning, where the Germany's blitzkrieg was indeed swift and relatively bloodless compared to the battle trenches of the World War One. Also at the time the persecution of the Jews in the eyes of the world was limited to lowered civil rights, concentration camps and ghettos. Just a few years before even so notable an adversary to Hitler as Winston Churchill, in his book Great Contemporaries (1937) had declared: "One may dislike Hitler’s system and yet admire his patriotic achievement. If our country were defeated, I hope we should find a champion as admirable to restore our courage and lead us back to our place among the nations."
I appeal for cessation of hostilities ... because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours are not as thorough as the Germans ... I venture to present you with a nobler and a braver way, worthy of the bravest soldiers. I want you to fight Nazism without arms or ... with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them ... I am telling His Excellency the Viceroy that my services are at the disposal of His Majesty's Government, should they consider them of any practical use in advancing the object of my appeal.
Appeal "To Every Briton" (1940)
Just as a man would not cherish living in a body other than his own, so do nations not like to live under other nations, however noble and great the latter may be.
It is my firm opinion that Europe does not represent the spirit of God or Christianity but the spirit of Satan. And Satan’s successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.
I consider western Christianity in its practical working a negation of Christ’s Christianity.
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.
Comment to biographer Louis Fischer (June, 1946).
Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the act of depriving a whole nation of arms, as the blackest.
Gandhi, An Autobiography, page 446 (Beacon Press paperback edition)

On Customers
A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. he is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us an opportunity to do so.

 Quotes about Mohandas Gandhi
Generations to come, it may be, will scarcely believe that such a one, as this, ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth. — Albert Einstein
I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men of our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence for fighting for our cause, but by non-participation of anything you believe is evil. — Albert Einstein
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
The greatness of this man, lies in his simplicity. - Anonymous
A prophet, a visionary, a spiritual leader. But first and foremost he was a man. - Edward Gunn
 

Gandhi On Love