Friday, October 02, 2009

Happy Birthday Gandhi-ji!!

Even Google says so. Some favorite Gandhi quotes below.
GANDHI ON SOUL
Desire for enjoyment creates bodies for the soul...The soul that is hidden beneath this earthly crust is one and the same for all men and women belonging to all climes. There is a real and substantial unity in all the variety we see around us...The force of spirit is ever progressive and endless...

GANDHI ON TRUTH
Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time....What may appear as truth to one person will often appear as untruth to another person. But that need not worry the seeker....Truth and untruth often co-exist; good and evil often are found together....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....


GANDHI ON SATYAGRAHA (TRUTH-FORCE)
Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth....Satyagraha is an attribute of the spirit within....Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence.... Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and makes itself irresistible....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....Satyagraha, of which civil-resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life....Satyagraha can rid society of all evils, political, economic, and moral...A genuine Satyagraha should never excite contempt in the opponent even when it fails to command regard or respect....

GANDHI ON FREEDOM
The spirit of political and international liberty is universal and, it may even be said, instinctive...The attainment of freedom, whether for a man, a nation or the world, must be in exact proportion to the attainment of non-violence by each...There is no such thing as slow freedom. Til we are fully free we are all slaves...I want freedom for the full expression of my personality. I must be free to build a staircase to Sirius if I want to...No action which is not voluntary can be called moral.

GANDHI ON GOVERNMENT
I look upon an increase in the power of the State with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality which lies at the heart of all progress...Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms as the blackest....We find the general work of mankind is being carried on from day to day be the mass of people acting as if by instinct....If they were instinctively violent the world would end in no time...It is when the mass mind is unnaturally influenced by wicked men that the mass of mankind commit violence.

GANDHI ON NON-VIOLENT GOVERNMENT
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by fear of punishment and the other by arts of love. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment....
When a respectable minority objects to any rule of conduct, it would be dignified of the majority to yield...No organization can run smoothly when it is divided into two camps, each growling at each other and each determined to have its own way by hook or by crook...


GANDHI ON NON-VIOLENT ECONOMICS
Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity... Economic equality is the master key to non-violent independence...A non-violent system of government is impossible as long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists....A violent and bloody revolution is a certainty one day unless there is a voluntary abdication of riches and the power riches give and a sharing of them for the public good....All have not the same capacity...I would not cramp talent...I want to bring about an equalization of status....

More at WhatWouldGandhiDo.net

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