Mahatma Gandhi
Mahatma Gandhi
Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi; 2 October 1869 – 30 January 1948) was the preeminent leader of the Indian independence movement in British-ruled India. Employing nonviolent civil disobedience, Gandhi led India to independence and inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world. The honorific Mahatma—applied to him first in 1914 in South Africa,—is now used worldwide. He is also called Bapuin India. In common parlance in India he is often called Gandhiji. He is unofficially called the Father of the Nation...
NationalityIndian
ProfessionCivil Rights Leader
Date of Birth2 October 1869
CityPortbandar, India
CountryIndia
I believe in the absolute oneness of God and therefore of humanity. What though we have many bodies? We have but one soul. . . . I know God is neither in heaven nor down below, but in everyone.
H. G. Wells was not the only one to mention Churchill and Hitler in the same breath: "Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler."
Human nature will find itself only when it fully realizes that to be human it has to cease to be beastly or brutal.
All big things are made up of trifles. My entire life has been built on trifles.
We are the makers of our own state and...individuals who realize the fact need not, ought not, to wait for collective action.
It's not just words. Action expresses priorities.
No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice, no matter where it occurred.
My commitment is to truth not consistency.
There is nothing on earth that I would not give up, excepting of course, two things and two things only, truth and nonviolence.
I hold that without truth and nonviolence there can be nothing but destruction of humanity.
I am not at all concerned with appearing to be consistent. In my pursuit after Truth I have discarded many ideas and learnt many new things.
I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three months' stay in England and Europe that made me feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime it flourishes, and that if you approached people with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.
There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves. All birth takes place in a moment.
You can't shake hands with a closed fist.