Quotations of Mahathma Gandhiji
Friendship
The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance, Co-operation which needs consideration is as a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.
It is easy enough to be friendly to one’s friends. But to befriend the one who regards himself as your enemy is the quintessence of true religion. The other is mere business.
Friendship that insists on agreement on all matters is not worth the name. Friendship to be real must ever sustain the weight of honest differences, however sharp they be.
Wealth
There is a sufficiency in the world for man’s need but not for man’s greed.
Capital as such is not evil; it is its wrong use that is evil. Capital in some form or other will always be needed.
God forbid that India should ever take to industrialism after the manner of the west… keeping the world in chains. If [our nation] took to similar economic exploitation, it would strip the world bare like locusts.
It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.
Golden fetters are no less galling to a self-respecting man that iron ones; the sting lies in the fetters, not in the metal.
Politics
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.
My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest… No country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak… Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism… True democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.
To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of Truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creation as oneself. And a man who aspires after that cannot afford to keep out of any field of life. That is why my devotion to Truth has drawn me into the field of politics; and I can say without the slightest hesitation, and yet in all humility, that those who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.
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 my be.
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?
It would conduce to national progress and save a great deal of time and trouble if we cultivated the habit of never supporting the resolutions either by speaking or voting for them if we had not either the intention or the ability to carry them out.
If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake from which one cannot get out, no matter how much one tries. I wish therefore to wrestle with the snake.
Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.
What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea.
What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red - not merely Germany and Japan.
Nations are born out of travail and suffering
I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides an my windows to be stuffed. I wan 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 refuse to live in other people’s houses as an interloper, a beggar or a slave.
Measures must always in a progressive society be held superior to men, who are after all imperfect instruments, working for their fulfillment.
This campaign of non-cooperation has no reference to diplomacy, secret or open. The only diplomacy it admits of is the statement and pursuance of truth at any cost.
I claim that human mind or human society is not divided into watertight compartments called social, political and religious. All act and react upon one another.
For me every ruler is alien that defies public opinion.
It is my own firm belief that the strength of the soul grows in proportion as you subdue the flesh.
The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires a change of heart.
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow men.