Quotes and text excerpts about "Mahatma Gandhi"

“ Gandhi is that he has, after his return to India, kept himself steadfastly to those principles of life and living with the help of which he triumphed over his racial and political adversaries in South Africa. It is comparatively easy to rise to a moral altitude under the pressure of great emergencies ; but to remain there, making a permanent abode of it, after those exigencies have passed away, not lapsing into currents of thought more congenial to the changed conditions, is indeed demonstrative of the hero that was always alive in Mr. ”

“ Let critics of Mahatma Gandhi then look to History before they condemn him for trying to bring this much belauded Modern Civilisation down to the common starting point of all great civilisations. We are at the dawn of a New Era, and Mahatma Gandhi is the one leader who shows to us the right path. He at least is watering the roots, while all others who try to keep alive the Civilisation of the Western nations are like foolish gardeners who lavish water on the withering leaves of a dying tree and never think of watering its roots. ”

“ When yesterday we thought of nothing but New Delhi and the dead Gandhi, it was with penitence within our souls that he should have walked the way of life alone, or a few of us, perhaps, following afar and wishing unto God that we had the strength and courage and patience and long-suffering to be even as he. Yes, Gandhi is the immortal and omnipotent conqueror, for he possesses the hearts of men forever, and as long as there is a human race upon this planet, will be remembered and revered. ”

“ Very early in his career Gandhi discovered what he called “the law of conscious suffering”—the truth that the mastery of the world waits upon the man who is willing not to make others suffer, but to suffer himself; and his whole life has been a discipline to its attainment. ”

“ Ladies and gentlemen, it is superfluous for me or any other speaker to introduce the greatness of Mahatma Gandhi to any audience over the whole world. The 20th century has produced so many big names who have achieved great things in the world — statesmen, invaders, defenders, scientists, discoverers, inventors of all sorts — hut none of them occupies the place which Mahatma Gandhi occupies in the hearts of the world, and none of them got the fame, the undying fame and the noble name which Mahatma Gandhi obtained. ”

“ The irony that Mahatma Gandhi, the supreme preacher and practitioner, not only in our time but in all the ages gone by, of the great principle of nonviolence, should himself be called upon to fall as the victim of outrageous violence. The irony again, that with his life purpose accomplished, with India free and India’s people, after an initial ordeal of wild bloodshed, entering under his guidance upon the sure pathways of reconciliation and peace, he should he struck down on the very threshold of his sublime triumph. ”

“ With the incarceration of Mahatma Gandhi, his writings in Young India have passed beyond the pale of polemical politics and entered the realm of the “classic” literature. Far more than their practical value to India, at present or hereafter, is their value to the world at large, embodying in them a philosophy of life and practical conduct elaborated by the experience of the life time of a soul which will undoubtedly rank in history as that of one of the world’s greatest of men. ”

“ Gandhi is of a type which the world produces once in a way, a type that recalls after long gaps of time the height to which the power of human will can take one, and the conquest which lies within the reach of a great moral manhood. ”

“ Gandhi belongs; one is the service of a little developed man who serves in order to learn, to whom the duty of more developed people is that they should associate with him, that they should help him to educate himself, to help him to grow in strength, in purity and in knowledge. That is the service which is involuntary because practically compelled. Nature has not yet developed in such men the power to do aught save learn by service. Whatever body they may be born in, they are undeveloped in a true humanity of the spirit. ”

“ It is the testimony of Lord Lloyd, the Governor at that time of the Province of Bombay, that in 1921 and 1922 Gandhi came within the breadth of an eyelash of securing the emancipation of his people. So unconquerable is the non-resistant, so powerful the man who wields not the sword of steel but the sword of the spirit! Remember, dear friends, that Britain, like the Roman Empire yesterday, knew exactly what to do with a man who came armed against her. Every empire, every military power, knows how to handle an attack of violence. ”

“ Gandhi's greatness will necessarily surround him with men some of whom, basking for the while in the reflected light and glow of the interpreter of Ahimsa in politics,may endeavour to make him somewhat of a great man after their own heart. From all such influences he has been absolutely free of taint ; and he is a reserve power being outside parties and party politics and party machinations. The breath of politics is compromise, but there is compromise and compromise. There can be compromise for instance in the speed of one's progress. ”

“ Gandhi challenges not only the material but the moral foundations of British rule. He has passed judgment upon both British rule and Western civilisation, and, condemning both as "Satanic," his cry is away with the one and with the other, and "back to the Vedas," the fountain source of ancient Hinduism. That he is a power in the land none can deny, least of all since the new Viceroy, Lord Reading, almost immediately on his arrival in India, spent long hours in close conference with him at Simla. What manner of man is Mr. Gandhi, whom Indians revere as a Mahatma, i.e. ”

“ Never does the Mahatma forget the majestic warning: “All they that take the sword shall perish with the sword.” 44-16 Gandhi has written:
I call myself a nationalist, but my nationalism is as broad as the universe. It includes in its sweep all the nations of the earth. 44-17 My nationalism includes the well-being of the whole world. I do not want my India to rise on the ashes of other nations. I do not want India to exploit a single human being. I want India to be strong in order that she can infect the other nations also with her strength. Not so with a single nation in Europe today ”

“ Many critics and some friends of Mahatma Gandhi have found fault with his desire to introduce simpler methods of spinning and weaving and to do away with much of the complicated machinery of Modern Civilisation. The reason why they object is that they fear such methods mean not progress towards a higher state but relapse into a primitive condition of civilisation or even of barbarism. His denunciation of the age of machinery and of the Industrial System has been criticised by many as the ravings of a visionary and of one who is merely an impracticable idealist. ”

“ More truly, I believe, than any other man who has ever lived, this great Indian is the incarnation of a people’s soul.
Thirdly, as an explanation of Gandhi’s fame and influence at this moment, there is the repressive policy recently adopted by the English government. Why any government should turn to repression in a crisis like this, is explicable only on the supposition that governments are utterly ignorant of history and human psychology, and learn nothing from experience. For repression has never worked. ”

“ The lowly peasant has been able to rise to Gandhi’s high challenge. The Mahatma wholeheartedly believes in the inherent nobility of man. The inevitable failures have never disillusioned him. “Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times,” he writes, “the satyagrahi is ready to trust him the twenty- first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the very essence of the creed.” ”

“ Gandhi is endeavouring to perform for his compatriots similar services to those which Englishmen have always been ready to perform, and, when time has been afforded for cool reflection, it will be recognized that, however mistaken his methods, or however untenable his theses, it is the worst possible policy to treat him as an outcast and a pariah, because he is striving to secure what he considers to be the rights of his fellow-countrymen. It has always been the boast of Englishmen that they can take up a side without abandoning all fair play to their opponents. ”

“ To-day is Mahatma Gandhi's day. To-day is the day for us to express the afflictions of our heart. In days of prosperity we forget ourselves, but on evil days when fallen we realise ourselves and hear the message of God.
To-day at this national crisis we must search for the soul of the nation. This soul is to be attained by strength. What is that strength? It is not brute force, but the force of love. This is what Mahatma teaches us and this is the message of all India. The realisation of this message requires the abandonment of selfishness, envy, malice, and hatred. ”

“ When I learned that bullets had overcome the supreme figure of non-violence in our century, I could not help crying, ‘The sun has perished out of the Heavens.’
“What will forever live in remembrance and serve as an example and inspiration through the ages is the life of Gandhi, the man who dared to be himself; a man who, being utterly true to himself, became one of the supreme figures of a millennium.
“The bullet of a mad assassin felled him, and Gandhi’s remembrance is already become a shrine — in truth an altar — before which men of all faiths and races shall learn the ways of peace. ”

“ Colonists know that it would be dangerous to the well-being of the Colony to grant what Mr. Gandhi demands; they know that the fundamental and abiding racial distinctions between the Asiatic and European for ever preclude anything like social equality, and that no argument will ever bridge the gulf; they know that, even though abstract justice may apparently be against them, the instinct of self-preservation warns them that theirs is the only safe position; in short, they know that the Colony cannot remain a white Colony if no limit is put to Asiatic immigration. ”

“ It is not unknown to Indian intelligentia and particularly to Mahatma Gandhi that India will not be able to avoid the use of machinery in order to secure for her people the enormous gifts that their motherland treasures within her soil. The only concern they legitimately feel is about avoiding the machinery from becoming a curse, as it has become in the West, and about using it for the benefit of humanity. Human values must count first and not be overlooked. ”

“ The idea of a monster petition to the authorities from the people is not new in the modern political history of India. But when Mr. Gandhi revived the suggestion in connection with the Congress-Moslem-League scheme of reform, the moment was most opportune and the idea caught like magic. He himself undertook the propaganda in his own province of Gujarat and carried it out with characteristic thoroughness. The true patriot can never be idle, neither can he ever rest on his oars. ”

“ In order that the spiritual civilisation of the Future may have a real chance of growing in an atmosphere congenial to it, Mahatma Gandhi's demonstration of the right path should be welcomed. His emphasis on simplicity of life and on the simplification of the machinery of living must be realised as a supremely essential condition of the coming of the new Era. In the civilisation of the Future, an Era of natural harmonious living will be inaugurated, and artificial, luxurious and pompous living will be entirely rooted out. ”

“ Gandhi hold without hesitation or reserve that British rule in India is altogether an evil and that the people of India are to be taught so to regard it? He must hold it to be so evil that the wrongs it does outweigh the benefit it confers, for only so is non-co-operation to be justified at the bar of conscience or of Christ. ”

“ In choosing the six greatest men from the recorded history of the world, he has taken one Jew, one Greek, one Englishman, one American and two Indians, Gautam, the Buddha, and Emperor Ashōka. If Wells were to pick the six greatest living men of the present age, I believe that again he would choose two Indians, Gandhi and Tagore. The lives of both of these great sons of India are full of human pathos, sublimity of human conscience, unfaltering devotion to work which is the true lot of man, and above all, a restless urge toward the realization of human unity. ”

“ Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls; Where words come out from the depth of truth; Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection; Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit; Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action; Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake!” 29-4 RABINDRANATH TAGORE
29-1: The English writer and publicist, close friend of Mahatma Gandhi. Mr. Andrews is honored in India for his many services to his adopted land. ”

“ Our western civilization is in exactly the situation of Rome in the days of the great Caesar. It has mastered the world by the power of its arms, and is exploiting its resources and peoples to its own advantage. As its outward glory increases, however, its inward disintegration proceeds. At the critical moment in Roman history, there appeared Jesus and the Christians, who brought to the perishing world a new source of life which preserved its vitality for a period of two thousand years. At the critical moment in our not dissimilar age, there appears Gandhi! ”

“ Gandhi said:--"My own impression of these three months' extensive experience is that this movement of non-co-operation has come to stay, and it is most decidedly a purifying movement, in spite of isolated instances of rowdyism, as for instance at Mrs. Besant's meeting in Bombay, at some places in Delhi, Bengal, and even in Gujarat. The people are assimilating day after day the spirit of non-violence, not necessarily as a creed, but as an inevitable policy. ”