Gandhi's Quotations

On Various Subjects

Understanding

  • Reason has to be strengthened by suffering and suffering opens the eyes of understanding.

    • XXVI-271

  • Three-fourths of the miseries and misunderstandings in the world will disappear, if we step into the shoes of our adversaries and understand their standpoint.

    • XXVI-271

Unity

  • Unity among the difference races and the different communities belonging to different religions of India is indispensable to the birth of national life.

    • XXVI-241

  • A unity heart can be achieved between pure hearts, purged of distrust; and that can be achieved only outside the conference.

    • T-3-60

  • I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives.

    • XXV-390

  • My motto is 'Unite now, today if you can, fight if you must, but in every case avoid British intervention'.

    • XXVI-233

  • We are all leaves of a majestic tree whose truck cannot be shaken off its roots, which are deep down in the bowels of earth.

    • T-7-169

Universal

  • Nonviolence is a universal law acting under all circumstances.

    • T-5-35

  • Yajna having come to us with our birth, we are debtors all our lives and thus for ever bound to serve the universe.

    • TIG-138

University

  • The aim of university education should be to turn out true servants of the people, who would live and die for the country's freedom.

    • T-7-176

  • A university never needs a pile of majestic buildings and treasures of gold and silver. What is does need most of all is the intelligent backing of public opinion.

    • T-8-165

  • The State Universities should be purely examining bodies, self supporting through the fees charged for examinations.

    • EWE-26

  • University is at the top. A majestic top can only be sustained if there is a sound foundation.

    • EWE-27

  • It is not for a democratic state to find money for founding universities.

    • EWE-28

  • There is every reason for being cautious about founding new universities till India has digested the newly acquired freedom

    • EWE-28

  • The mechanical university study deprives us of the desire for originality, years of memorizing cause a fatigue of the mind that makes most of us fit for the clerical work.

    • T-4-166

Untouchability

  • Untouchability is a hydra-headed monster.

    • XXVI-330

  • Untouchability is an error of long standing

    • XXVI-268

  • Untouchability I hold is a sin, if Bhagwad Gita is one of our divine books.

    • XXVI-349

  • Untouchability of foreign cloth is as much a virtue with all of us as untouchability of the suppressed classes must be a sin with every devout Hindu.

    • T-2-53

  • Untouchability is a terrible reality.

    • XXV-25

  • The untouchability of Hinduism is probably worse than that of the modern imperialists.

    • XXV-397

  • 'Touch-me-not'ism that disfigures the present-day Hinduism is a morbid growth.

    • T-3-257

  • To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves.

    • XXV-479

  • The removal of untouchability is one of the highest expressions of ahimsa.

    • T-4-239

  • God never made man that he may consider another man as an untouchable.

    • XXVI-354

  • I regard untouchability as such a grave sin as to warrant divine chastisement.

    • T-3-249

  • I would far rather that Hinduism died than that untouchability lived.

    • T-3-128

  • I would not sell the vital interests of the untouchables for the sake of winning the freedom of India.

    • T-3-128

  • I would bend the knee before the poorest scavenger, the poorest untouchable in India, for having participated in crushing him for centuries, I would even take the dust off his feet.

    • T-3-114

  • In battling against untouchability, and in dedicating myself to that battle, I have no less an ambition than to see a full regeneration of humanity.

    • T-3-196

  • If untouchability lives, humanity must die.

    • MM-108

  • Men like me feel that untouchability is no integral part of Hinduism, it is an excrescence.

    • T-3-168

  • My flight against untouchability is a flight against the impure in humanity.

    • T-3-233

  • We shall dig our own grave if we do not purge ourselves of this curse of untouchability.

    • T-3-233

  • The more I study the Hindu scriptures, and the more I discuss them with Brahmins, the more I feel convinced that untouchability is the greatest blot upon Hinduism.

    • T-3-196

  • My mother would tell me that the shortest cut to purification after the unholy touch was to cancel the touch by touching any Mussalman passing by.

    • T-2-35

  • Let us by prayer purify ourselves and we shall not only remove untouchability but shall also hasten the advent of Swaraj.

    • XXV-515

  • When untouchability is rooted out, these distinctions will vanish and no one will consider himself superior to any other.

    • T-7-50

  • Untouchability is a blot on Hinduism. It is a canker eating into its vitals.

    • T-3-223

  • Hinduism dies if untouchability lives, and untouchability has to die if Hinduism is to live.

    • T-3-183

  • Hinduism has sinned in giving sanction to untouchability.

    • T-2-36

  • There is no ‘as far as possible' on the question of untouchability. If it is to go, it must go in its entirety from the temples as from everywhere else.

    • T-4-81

  • Harijan service is a duty the caste Hindus owe to themselves.

    • T-3-203

  • The Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal, it if closes its temple to the Harijans.

    • T-3-195

  • Untouchability is a many-headed monster and forms, some of them so subtle as not to be easily detected.

    • T-3-230

  • Ravana was a rakshasa but this rakshasi of untouchability is even more terrible than Ravana.

    • XIV-74

  • The removal of untouchability is a question of the purification of Hinduism.

    • T-2-342

  • If untouchability is an integral part of Hinduism, the latter is a spent bullet.

    • T-4-99

  • If untouchability lives, Hinduism perishes, but if untouchability is eradicated from the Hindu heart root and branch, then Hinduism has a definite message for the World.

    • T-4-99

  • Hindu-Muslim unity, khaddar and removal of untouchability are to me the foundation of Swaraj.

    • XXVI-444

  • So long as the untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility.

    • T-2-183

  • It is a crime and a sin to regard a person as untouchable because he is born in a particular community.

    • XXVI-349

  • To say that a single human being, because of his birth, becomes an untouchable, unapproachable or invisible, is to deny God.

    • XXVI-373

  • The attack on untouchability is an attack on this high-and low-ness.

    • MM-108

  • What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren?

    • T-2-36

  • Anger, lust and such other evil passions raging in the heart are the real untouchables.

    • T-2-36

  • A true man of piety will consider himself a sinner and, therefore, untouchable.

    • T-3-230

  • Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability.

    • T-3-230

  • We cannot have real independence unless the people banish the touch-me-not spirit from their hearts.

    • T-4-163

  • Whilst the Bihar calamity damages the body, the calamity brought about by untouchability corrodes the very soul.

    • T-3-248

  • For me there is a vital connection between the Bihar calamity and the untouchability campaign.

    • T-3-248

  • Our struggle does not end so long as there is a single human being considered untouchable on account of his birth.

    • T-3-239

  • We are too nearer the scene of tragedy to realize that this canker of untouchability has travelled far beyond its prescribed limits and has sapped the very foundations of the whole nation.

    • T-3-182

  • No stone should be left unturned to bring home to the family members that untouchability is a sin and a blot on Hinduism.

    • T-4-158

  • The purification required is not of untouchables but of the so-called superior castes.

    • XXV-479

Untruth

  • Truth and untruth often co-exist; good ad evil are often found together.

    • Tig-107

  • An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it.

    • Tig-97

  • A man of God never strives after untruth and therefore he can never lose hope.

    • XXV-198

  • When there us no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or Himsa.

    • T-2-311

  • My name on the lips and black caps on the heads, what a terrible contrast! What at lie!

    • XXVI-575

  • Experience convinces me that permanent good can never be the outcome of untruth and violence.

    • XXV-424

Utility

  • Every bone picked up is valuable raw material from which useful articles can be made or which can be crushed into rich manure.

    • T-4-17

  • The amount of public support that an institution can command affords a true measure of its utility.

    • T-2-370