300 Most Inspiring Mahatma Gandhi Quotes and Sayings
Mahatma Gandhi (Mohan Das Karamchand Gandhi) is one of the most inspiring figures around the world. He brought the greatest change in India during its Independence in 1947. We have compiled some of his most inspiring and famous quotes, sayings, and proverbs (with images and pictures).
Throughout his early life in South Africa and later in India, Gandhi has propagated for the rights and dignity of all people, supported non-violence and equality, and left his mark all around the world. He was famous for his courageous and calm nature and his immense compassion for poor people.
Famous Quotes of Mahatma Gandhi
- “Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.”
- “Nobody can hurt me without my permission.”
- “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”
- “An ounce of practice is worth a thousand words.”
- “The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.”
- “I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
- “A man is but a product of his thoughts. What he thinks he becomes.”
- “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is an attribute of the strong.”
- “Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
- “God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.”
- “A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.”
- “Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.”
- “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
- “The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members.”
- “Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.”
- “I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles, but today it means getting along with people.”
- “To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
- “You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”
- “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.”
- “There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.”
Mahatma Gandhi Quotations and Proverbs
- “My life is my message.”
- “Hate the sin, love the sinner.”
- “Truth is one, paths are many.”
- “Find purpose. The means will follow.”
- “True beauty consists of purity of heart.”
- “In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
- “The future depends on what you do today.”
- “Live simply so that others may simply live.”
- “An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind.”
- “If you want real peace in the world, start with children.”
- “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises.”
- “Doubt is invariably the result of want or weakness of faith.”
- “Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.”
- “Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it.”
- “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
- “Whenever you are confronted with an opponent, conquer him with love.”
- “Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.”
- “Interviewer: “What do you think of Western Civilization?” Gandhi: “I think it would be a good idea”.”
- “If I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
- “Even if the paradise of material satisfaction, which they envisage as their final goal, realized on earth, it would not bring mankind either contentment or peace.”
Mahatma Gandhi Quotes About Life
- “God has no religion.”
- “Full effort is a full victory.”
- “Action expresses priorities.”
- “Nonviolence is impossible without humility.”
- “Common sense is the realized sense of proportion.”
- “Service without humility is selfishness and egotism.”
- “Truth without humility would be an arrogant caricature.”
- “In matters of conscience, the law of the majority has no place.”
- “I cannot conceive of a greater loss than the loss of one’s self-respect.”
- “You don’t know who is important to you until you actually lose them.”
- “God sometimes does try to the uttermost those whom he wishes to bless.”
- “There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.”
- “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
- “First, they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
- “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
- “Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”
- “He who would sacrifice his life for others has hardly time to reserve for himself a place in the sun.”
- “Providence has its appointed hour for everything. We cannot command results, we can only strive.”
- “You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.”
- “To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
- “One, who abandons all desires, is free from pride and selfishness and behaves as one apart, finds peace.”
- “When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.”
- “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”
- “True humility means the most strenuous and constant endeavor entirely directed towards the service of humanity.”
- “My imperfections and failures are as much a blessing from God as my successes and my talents and I lay them both at his feet.”
- “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 main purpose of life is to live rightly, think rightly, act rightly. The soul must languish when we give all our thought to the body.”
- “Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.”
- “I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.”
- ‘The very first step in nonviolence is that we cultivate in our daily life, as between ourselves, truthfulness, humility, tolerance, loving-kindness.”
Inspirational Mahatma Gandhi Quotes
- “Peace is its own reward.”
- “Where there is love there is life.”
- “Imitation is the sincerest flattery.”
- “Self-respect knows no considerations.”
- “Fear has its use but cowardice has none.”
- “Healthy discontent is the prelude to progress.”
- “There is no ‘way to peace’, there is only ‘peace’.”
- “I am a humble but very earnest seeker after truth.”
- “Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.”
- ‘Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.”
- ‘The real ornament of woman is her character, her purity.”
- “A man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.”
- “That service is the noblest which is rendered for its own sake.”
- “It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”
- “Anger and intolerance are the enemies of correct understanding.”
- “A nation’s culture resides in the hearts and in the soul of its people.”
- “It is the quality of our work which will please God and not the quantity.”
- “Man will ever remain imperfect, and it will always be his part to try to be perfect.”
- “Whatever you do may seem insignificant to you, but it is most important that you do it.”
- “Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
- “There are two days in the year that we can not do anything – yesterday and tomorrow.”
- “My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.”
- ‘There is a force in the universe, which, if we permit it, will flow through us and produce miraculous results.”
- “A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.”
- “The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
- “Literary training by itself adds not an inch to one’s moral height and that character-building is independent of literary training.”
- “Confession of errors is like a broom that sweeps away the dirt and leaves the surface brighter and clearer. I feel stronger for confession.”
- “We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word, and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it.”
- “Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.”
- “All compromise is based on giving and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals, Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all given and no take.”
Motivational Sayings By Gandhi
- “To lose patience is to lose the battle.”
- “Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”
- “What barrier is there that love cannot break?”
- “Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment.”
- “The enemy is fear. We think it is hate; but, it is fear.”
- “In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all.”
- “My faith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness.”
- “There is no principle worth the name if it is not wholly good.”
- “It’s easy to stand in the crowd but it takes courage to stand alone.”
- “Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err.”
- “Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.”
- “They cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.”
- “I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill.”
- “Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world, but to change ourselves.”
- “The rich cannot accumulate wealth without the co-operation of the poor in society.”
- “A weak man is just by accident. A strong but non-violent man is unjust by accident.”
- “Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.”
- “Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of the heart of educated people.”
- “Gentleness, self-sacrifice, and generosity are the exclusive possession of no one race or religion.”
- “Infinite striving to be the best is man’s duty; it is its own reward. Everything else is in God’s hands.”
- “The unwearied ceaseless effort is the price that must be paid for turning faith into a rich infallible experience.”
- “Study not a man in his animal nature – man following the laws of the jungle – but study man in all his glory.”
- “It is better to be violent if there is violence in our hearts than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.”
- “What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.”
- “Before the throne of the Almighty, man will be judged not by his acts but by his intentions. For God alone reads our hearts.”
- “Do not judge others. Be your own judge and you will be truly happy. If you will try to judge others, you are likely to burn your fingers.”
- “It is any day better to stand erect with a broken and bandaged head then to crawl on one’s belly, in order to be able to save one’s head.”
- “A ‘No’ uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a ‘Yes’ merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble.”
- “I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.”
- “The golden rule of conduct is mutual toleration, seeing that we will never all think alike and we shall always see Truth in fragment and from different points of vision.”
Mahatma Gandhi Quotes On Leadership
- “Be congruent, be authentic, be your true self.”
- “I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.”
- “Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.”
- “I want freedom for the full expression of my personality.”
- “For me, every ruler is an alien that defies public opinion.”
- “The culture of the mind must be subservient to the heart.”
- “Perfect nonviolence is difficult. It admits to no weakness.”
- “It is a weakness that breeds fear, and fear breeds distrust.”
- “An ounce of practice is worth more than tons of preaching.”
- “Men aspiring to be free can hardly think of enslaving others.”
- “No man loses his freedom except through his own weakness.”
- “Glory lies in the attempt to reach one’s goal and not in reaching it.”
- “It is difficult, but not impossible, to conduct strictly honest business.”
- “I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.”
- “Definite forgiveness would mean a definite recognition of our strength.”
- “A leader is useless when he acts against the promptings of his own conscience.”
- “The difficulty one experiences in meeting himsa arise from weakness of mind.”
- “The greater our innocence, the greater our strength and the swifter our victory.”
- “God’s word is: ‘He who strives never perishes’. I have implicit faith in that promise.”
- “Those who cannot renounce attachment to the results of their work are far from the path.”
- “The best way of losing a cause is to abuse your opponent and to trade upon his weakness.”
- “Let us all be brave enough to die the death of a martyr, but let no one lust for martyrdom.”
- “It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.”
- “Some form of common worship and a commonplace of worship appear to be a human necessity.”
- “If your heart acquires strength, you will be able to remove blemishes from others without thinking evil of them.”
- “Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort.”
- “If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.”
- ‘Man has always desired power. Ownership of property gives this power. Man hankers also after posthumous fame based on power.”
- ‘If we were strong, self-respecting and not susceptible to frightfulness, the foreign rulers would have been powerless for mischief.”
- ‘Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection, which is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections.”
“Gandhi Quotes Be the Change”
- “Be the change that you want to see in the world.”
- “Change yourself – you are in control.”
- “The Swaraj of my dream recognizes no race or religious distinctions.”
- “Distinguish between real needs and artificial wants and control the latter.”
- “A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline.”
- “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”
- “The richest grace of ahimsa will descend easily upon the owner of hard discipline.”
- “As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him.”
- “The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.”
- “Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the state becomes lawless or corrupt.”
- “Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights.”
- “Independence means voluntary restraints and discipline, voluntary acceptance of the rule of law.”
- “Man is oftentimes weak-minded enough to be caught in the snare of greed and honeyed words.”
- “Not to have control over the senses is like sailing in a rudderless ship, bound to break to pieces on coming in contact with the very first rock.”
- “The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence. The secret of a happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation is life. Indulgence spells death.”
- “For winning Swaraj one requires iron discipline.” (Swaraj can mean self-governance or “self-rule” but the word usually refers to Gandhi’s concept for Indian independence from foreign domination)
Quotes On Violence And Non-Violence
- “It’s my conviction that nothing enduring can be built on violence.”
- “Nonviolence and truth are inseparable and presuppose one another.”
- “Nonviolence requires a double faith, faith in God and also faith in man.”
- “Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”
- “Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation.”
- “Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”
- “Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.”
- “Violent men have not been known in history to die to a man. They die up to a point.”
- “Nonviolence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
- “Nonviolence is not to be used ever as the shield of the coward. It is the weapon of the brave.”
- “Unless discipline is rooted in nonviolence, it might prove to be a source of infinite mischief.”
- “Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.”
- “If co-operation is a duty, I hold that non-co-operation also under certain conditions is equally a duty.”
- “Intolerance is itself a form of violence and an obstacle to the growth of a true democratic spirit.”
- “Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.”
- “I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary, the evil it does is permanent.”
- “My life is dedicated to the service of India through the religion of nonviolence which I believed to be the root of Hinduism.”
- “Nonviolence 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 being.”
- “Nonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.”
- “I have nothing new to teach the world. Truth and nonviolence are as old as the hills. All I have done is to try experiments in both on as vast a scale as I could.”
Quotes About Peace By Mahatma Gandhi
- “If you want real peace in the world, start with children.”
- “Unity to be real must stand the severest strain without breaking.”
- “Living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind.”
- “I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.”
- “Justice that love gives is a surrender, justice that law gives is a punishment.”
- “The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace.”
- “Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.”
- “I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.”
- “If we are to teach real peace in this world, and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children.”
- “The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.”
Mahatma Gandhi Quotes On Education
- “Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.”
- “There is no need for a teacher for those who know how to think.”
- “Craft, art, health, and education should all be integrated into one scheme.”
- “Education must be of a new type for the sake of the creation of a new world.”
- “You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them.”
- “The purity of personal life is the one indispensable condition for building up a sound education.”
- “Responsibility will mellow and sober the youth and prepare them, for the burden they must discharge.”
- “A wise parent allows the children to make mistakes. It is good for them once in a while to burn their fingers.”
- “Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.”
- “Knowledge without character is a power for evil only, as seen in the instances of so many talented thieves and ‘gentlemen rascals’ in the world.”
Mahatma Gandhi Pictures Quotes And Images
Inspirational Quotes And Sayings By Mahatma Gandhi
Motivational Picture Quotes By Gandhi Ji
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About The Author
Ananya Bhatt
I am Ananya, a professional speaker and I love motivating people and inspiring them to pursue their dreams. Sharing quotes, proverbs, and sayings of great authors to touch people's lives to make it better.
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