Epigrams from Gandhiji - M
Machine - Machinery
The spinning wheel is itself an exquisite piece of machinery. My head daily bows in reverence to its unknown inventor. XXV-476
The supreme consideration is man. The machine should not tend to make atrophied the limbs of man. XXV-251
The machine should not be allowed to cripple the limbs of man. T-2-162
Today machinery merely helps a few to ride on the backs of millions. T-2-161
My machinery must be of the most elementary type which I can put in the home of the millions.
T-3-135
I would not weep over the disappearance of machinery or consider it a calamity. MM-234
What I object to is the craze for machinery, not machinery as such. T-2-161
Mahabharata
The author of the Mahabharata has not established the necessity of physical warfare, on the contrary he has proved its futility. TIG-97
The immortal but unknown author of the Mahabharata weaves into his story sufficient of the supernatural to warn you against taking him literally. XXV-128
I look upon Gibbon and Motley as inferior editions of the Mahabharata. XXV-128
I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. MOG-17
Mahatma
I have never, even in my dream, thought that I was mahatma and that others were alpatma (little soul). T-5-161
Majority
A minority does not always fear majority because it is a majority. XXVI-161
The principle of majority does not work when differences on fundamentals are involved. XXV-140
To say that there was danger in numbers was as true as to say that there was safety in numbers. T-8-33
Man – Mankind
A man who throws himself on God ceases to fear man. T-2-369
Man believes and lives. T-4-244
Man can only conceive God within the limitation of his own mind. TIG-45
Man can only describe God in his own poor language. T-4-244
The man of prayer will be at peace with himself and with the whole world. TIG-43
Man is sent into the world to perform his duty even an the cost of his life. T-7-115
The more a man gives his life, the more he saves it. XXV-437
Man will ever remain imperfect, and it will always be his part to try to be perfect. T-4-11
Man’s triumph will consist in substituting the struggle for existence by a struggle for mutual service. T-4-36
Man’s nature is not essentially evil, brute nature has been known to yield to the influence of love.
T-4-296
Man lives freely by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. TIG-39
Men aspiring to be free can hardly think of enslaving others. MM-314
Man does not live by destruction. TIG-17
A man of faith does not bargain or stipulate with God. XXV-88
Man is not at peace with himself till he has become like unto God. MOG-4
A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline. TIG-96
Man is neither mere intellect not the gross animal body, nor the heart or soul alone. EWE-222
Man cannot breathe with borrowed lungs. XXV-275
Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food. XXVI-66
Men of stainless character and self purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them. TIG-57
Man becomes not the lord and master of all creation but he is its servant. XXVI-545
Man is the maker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny. XXV-I294
Man has always desired power. Ownership of property gives this power. Man hankers also after posthumous fame based on power. T-2-367
Man the law-giver will have to pay a dreadful penalty for the degradation he has imposed upon the so called weaker sex. XXVI-516
Man in the flesh is essentially imperfect. He may be described as being made in the image of God but is far form being God. T-7-73
The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it. T-7-61
A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect. MM-462
The man who fears man, falls from the estate of man. Fear God alone. T-2-302
Nonviolence is the virtue of the manly. The coward is innocent of it. XXV-138
Bravery is not man’s monopoly. MM-297
A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction. T-2-324
Man is not to drown himself in the well of the Shastras, but he is to dive in their broad ocean and bring our pearls. T-7-324
Man is oftentimes weak-minded enough to be caught in the snare of greed and honeyed words.
MM-169
A man nor a woman who serves the country with all his or her heart stands on a par with the tallest Congress-man. T-7-139
Man is born of woman, he is flesh of her flesh and bone of her bone. T-2-300
Men to be men must be able to trust their womenfolk, even as the latter are compelled to trust them. T- 2-249
God has made of man and woman one complete whole. In the scheme of nature, both of them are equal. T-7-380
If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. T-3-33
Man has regarded woman as his tool. She has learnt to be his tool and in the end found it is easy and pleasurable to be such, because when one drags another in his fall, the descent is easy.
T-4-45
No man could look upon another as his enemy, unless he first became his own enemy. T-7-204
Man cannot be transformed from bad to good overnight. MM-75
My love of nationalism is that my country may become free, that if need be the whole of the country die, so that the human race may live. T-2-200
The man who eats to live, who is friends with the five powers – earth, water, ether, sun and air and who is a servant of God, the creator of all of these, ought not to fall ill. MM-394
It is for you and me to show that no vice is inherent in man. XXVI-294
Man falls from the pursuit of the ideal of plain living and high thinking the moment he wants to multiply his daily wants. MM-490
I must refuse to believe that the Germans contemplate with equanimity the evacuation of cities like London for fear of destruction to be wrought by man’s inhuman ingenuity. T-5-161
I cannot think of permanent enmity between man and man. MM-422
Truth and ahimsa demand that no human being may debar himself from serving any other human being, no matter how sinful he may be. XXVI-374
My own opinion is that just as fundamentally man and woman are one, their problem must be one in essence. T-5-226
The Swaraj of my dream is the poor man’s Swaraj. T-3-65
It is my firm faith that man is by nature going higher. T-5-305
I can neither serve God nor humanity, if as Indian I do not serve India, and as a Hindu I do not serve the Indian Mussalmans. XXV-260
I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him, and if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent. XXV-390
I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives.
XXV-390
I believe in what Max Muller said years ago, namely, that truth needed to be repeated as long as there were men who disbelieved it. TIG-143
If Euclid’s point, though incapable of being drawn by any human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live. T-7-169
I believe in conversion of mankind, not its destruction. XXV-531
If it is possible for the human tongue to give the fullest description of God, I have come to the conclusion that God is Truth. T-3-144
I hold no man to be indispensable for the welfare of the country. T-2-137
I cannot picture to myself a time when all mankind will have one religion. XXVI-285
I regard Duryodhana and his party as the baser impulses in man, and Arjuna and his party as the higher impulses. MOG-17
I have discovered that man is superior to the system he propounds. T-2-49
I trust men only because I trust God. XXV-390
If I am true to myself, if I am true to mankind, if I am true to humanity, I must understand all the faults that human flesh is heir to. T-2-199-200
I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward. XXV-475
My creed is service of God and therefore of humanity. XXV-260
A man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins. T-3-247
My errors have been errors of calculation and judging men, not in appreciating the true nature, of truth and ahimsa or in their application. T-2-204
Mankind is one, seeing that all are equally subject to the moral law. All men are equal in God’s eyes. MM-459
It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity of India, to entertain for one single moment hatred towards Englishmen. T-2-199
So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened finest feeling that has sustained mankind for ages. TIG-142
God’s ways are more than man’s arithmetic. T-5-151
Some form of common worship and a common place of worship appear to be a human necessity.
MM-105
Man’s upward progress means ever increasing difficulty, which is to be welcomed. MM-286
God is certainly one. He has no second. He is unfathomable, unknowable and unknown to the vast majority of mankind. XXV-178
Every man has an equal right to the necessaries of life even as birds and beasts have. MM-199
A selfish basis would not serve the purpose of taking a man higher and higher along the paths of evolution. T-3-140
All the great religions of the world inculcate the equality and brotherhood of mankind and the virtue of toleration. T-3-257
I believe in absolute oneness of God, and, therefore, also of humanity. T-2-149
A man who wants to control his animal passions easily does so if he controls his palate. MM-306
Through realization of freedom of India, I hope to realize and carry on the mission of brotherhood of man. T-2-353
An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity. T-2-46
No two men are absolutely alike, not even twins, yet there is much that is indispensably common to all mankind. T-2-216
The human society is a ceaseless growth, an unfoldment in terms of spirituality. T-2-225
Let India become alive by self-purification, that is self-restraint and self-denial, and she will be a boon to herself and mankind. T-2-56
History shows that the priesthood has not always interfered with the political matters to the benefit of mankind. T-2-352
Mankind has to get out of violence only though non-violence. T-7-144
Living faith in God means acceptance of the brotherhood of mankind. T-4-252
Human dignity demands courage to defend oneself. XXVI-220
The golden way was to be friends with the world and to regard the whole human family like the members of one family. T-7-250
A man’s true wealth hereafter is the good he has done to his fellowmen. T-7-341
The fact that mankind persists shows that the cohesive force is greater than the disruptive force, centripetal force greater than centrifugal. MM-417
By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man – body, mind and spirit. MM-379
That which makes man the mere plaything of fate is God. XXVI-571
That which impels man to do the rights is God. XXVI-571
The whole existence of man is a ceaseless duel between the forces of life and death. T-7-143
What distinguishes the man from the brute is his conscious striving to realise the spirit within.
MM-168
Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and to be self-contained.
T-2-361
If it is man’s privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter – dependent. T-2-361
A man of truth must ever be confident, if he has also equal need to be diffident. T-2-204
Study men following the law of their higher nature, the law of love, so that when you grow to manhood, you will have improved your heritage. T-3-138
Man had the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman was supremest among men.
T-8-44
Man through the cow is enjoined to realize his identity with all that lives. T-2-51
When a man wants to make up with his maker, he does not consult a third party. T-2-150
The path of bhakti, karma and love, expounded in the Gita, leaves no room for the despising of man by man. T-2-278
God cannot be so cruel and unjust as to make the distinction between man and man, even as there is no distinction between animal and animal. T-3-235
There can be in the eyes of God no distinction between man and man, even as there is no distinction between animal and animal. T-3-235
Human language can but imperfectly describe God’s ways. MM-77
Human life is a series of compromises, and it is not always easy to achieve in practice what one has found to be true in theory. MM-39
A man without religion is like a ship without a rudder. T-3-223
That which is inherent in man is his virtue. XXVI-294
God in His wisdom has circumscribed man’s vision, and rightly too, for otherwise man’s conceit would know no bounds. T-3-255
Men are good. But they are poor victims making themselves miserable under the false belief that they are doing good. X-127
Truth is superior to man’s wisdom. T-2-143
Imperfect men had no right to judge other imperfect men. T-8-162
The woman has circumvented man in a variety of ways in her unconsciously subtle ways, as the man has vainly and equally consciously struggled to thwart the woman in gaining ascendancy over him. T-2-367
It is degrading both for man and woman that woman should be called upon or induced to forsake the hearth and shoulder the rifle for the protection of that hearth. T-5-227
God has blessed man with seed that has the highest potency; and woman with a field richer than richest earth to be found anywhere on this globe. T-4-60
To call women the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. T-3-33
If we could all give our own definitions of God, there would be as many definitions as there are men and women. XXVI-224
The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary. XXV-450
Ahimsa is nothing if not a well-balanced, exquisite consideration for one’s neighbour, and an idle man is wanting in that elementary consideration. T-2-354
Khaddar is an activity that can absorb all the time of all available men and women and grown-up children, if they have faith. XXV-365
The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms invented by man’s ingenuity. T-5-281
Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion the two sides of the same coin. XXV-519
Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world. T-5-273
To bear all kinds of tortures without a murmur of resentment is not possible for a human being without the strength that comes from God. T-5-98
What is impossible with man is child’s play with God. T-3-137
Often does good come out of evil. But that is God’s, not man’s plan. TIG-141
God gifted man with intellect that he might know his Maker. X-28
Do not flatter yourselves with the belief that a mere recital of that celebrated verse in St. John makes a man a Christian. TIG-68
If treachery is the reward of trust, will the man who trusts come to harm? XXV-509
Literary education should follow the education of the land – the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast. EWE-21
All great religions have rightly regarded kama as the arch-enemy of man, anger or hatred coming only in the second place. MM-299
Unlike the animal, God has given man the faculty of reason. MM-429
Study not man in his animal nature – man following the laws of the jungle – but study man in all his glory. T-3-138
He who runs may see that opium and such other intoxicants and narcotics stupefy a man’s soul and reduce him to a level lower than that of beasts. XXV-555
Repression does for a true man or a nation what fire does for gold. XXV-487
We are all very imperfect and weak things, and if we are to destroy all whose ways we do not like, there will be not a man left alive. XXV-531
All the four stages in a man’s life are devised by the seers in Hinduism for imposing discipline and self-restraint. XXVI-375
Speed is not the end of life. Man sees more and lives more truly by walking to his duty. T-5-171
The field of research in the the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man’s life must not be frequent. T-3-297
Speed is not the end of life. Man sees more and lives more truly by walking to his duty. T-5-171
The field of research in the doctrine of civil resistance is necessarily limited, as the occasions for civil resistance in a man’s life must not be frequent. T-3-297
Religion is more than life. Remember that his own religion is the truest to every man even if it stands low in the scales of philosophic comparison. XXV-47
Every species, human and subhuman, has some distinguishing mark, so that you can tell a man from a beast, or a dog from a cow. T-3-280
No one should dogmatize about the capacity of human nature for degradation of exaltation.
T-5-278
Study men laying down their lives without hurting anyone else in the cause of their country’s freedom. T-3-138
We burn the evil men do with their mortal remains. We treasure the memory of the good they do, and distance magnifies it. T-3-201
Life becomes liable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy.
MM-462
A fear-stricken person can never know God, and one who knows God will never fear a mortal man.
T-2-304
Marriage
Marriage is a natural thing in life and to consider it derogatory in any sense is wholly wrong. MM-278
Marriage is a matter if choice. XXVI-286
Marriage is not an act of service. It is a comfort man or a woman seeks for himself or herself.
XXVI-285
The privilege of marriage presupposes temperamental and other affinity. XXVI-285
Marriage loses its sanctity when its purpose and highest use is conceived to be the satisfaction of the animal passion without contemplating the natural result of such satisfaction. T-4-60
Undefiled love between husband and wife takes one nearer God than any other love. MM-279
Those marriages which are undertaken for the sake of joint service carry their own blessings.
MM-279
With me marriage is no necessary test of friendship even between husband and wife, let alone their respective clans. XXVI-285
There is an indissoluble marriage between matter and spirit. Our ignorance of the results of the union makes it a profound mystery and inspires awe in us but it cannot undo them. T-3-251
Masses
Nothing can so quickly put the masses on their legs as the spinning wheel and all it means.
XXVI-538
A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses. XXVI-140
Character alone will have real effect on the masses. T-3-234
A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a mass scale. XXVI-140
If we are true servants of the masses, we would takes pride in spinning for their sake. T-3-300
Whatever cannot be shared with the masses is taboo to me. T-3-136
An organization, which looks to money for everything, can ever serve the masses. T-7-52
I defy anyone to give for independence a common Indian word intelligible to the masses. T-2-326
I am myself an insignificant being, but I am supposed to have some hold over the dumb millions.
T-5-232
How to link the classes with the masses is for me one of the greatest problems. XXVI-379
Those who play upon the passions of the masses injure them and the country’s cause. T-5-225
Slow and inglorious self-imposed starvation among the starving masses is every time more heroic than the death of the scaffold under false exaltation. XXVI-14
Military – Militarization
Militarization of India will mean her own destruction as well as of the whole world. MM-156
All I want to say, with the utmost emphasis at my command, is that the description of India as a military country is wrong. T-5-171
Refusal of military service is more superficial than non-co-operation with the system which supports the state. T-3-145
A general is none the worse for the realization of his weakness and for atoning for his sin. T-5-112
If the Commander-in-Chief will look beyond the defence forces, he will discover that real India is not military but peace-loving. T-5-171
To refuse to render military service when particular time arrives is to do the thing after all the time for combating the evil is gone. T-3-145
Millions
I claim to know my millions. All the hours of the day I am with them. They are my first care and last because I recognise no God except that God that is to be found in the hearts of the dumb millions. TIG-27
The hungry millions ask for one poem, invigorating food. T-2-65
It is a tragedy of the first magnitude that the millions have ceased to use their hands as hands.
T-2-251
A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. T-6-26
Mind
A mind that is once hooked to the Star of Stars becomes incorruptible. T-4-52
Every submission to merited punishment strengthens the mind of man, every avoidance saps it.
MM-395
The mechanical university study deprives us of the desire for originally; years of memorizing causes a fatigue of the mind that makes most of us fit for the clerical work. T-4-166
Man can only conceive God within the limitations of his own mind. TIG-45
I always welcomes an honest difference of opinion, for I have always an open mind and have no axe to grind. T-2-284
Minority
A minority does not always fear a majority because it is a majority. XXVI-161
In a well-ordered society, there should be no minority. T-8-99
My nonviolence bids me dedicate myself to the service of the minorities. MM-332
Hindus, if they want unity among different races, must have the courage to trust the minorities.
T-2-133
We the English-educated Indians often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indian is the whole of India. T-2-326
Misdeeds
Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds. XXV-397
Missionary
This motive of mass proselytization lurking in the background vitiates missionary effort. T-2-342
Mistrust
Trusting one another, however, can never mean trusting with the lip and mistrusting in the heart. XXV-436
Mobs – Mobocrary
Mobocracy is autocracy multiplied million times. XXV-531
Nothing is so easy as to train mobs, for the simple reason that they have no mind, no meditation.
T-2-8
Moral Force – Morality
Moral result can only be produced by moral restraints. XXVI-280
Moral restrictions tend to become lax in a foreign country, since the fear of social opinion disappears. XXVI-58
Moral authority is never retained by any attempt to hold on to it. It comes without seeking and is retained without effort. MM-458
True morality consists not in following the beaten track, but in finding out the true path for ourselves and in fearlessly following it. MM-485
To observe morality is to attain mastery over our mind and our passions. X-37
That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values. XXV-475
To me God is truth and love, God is ethics and morality, God is fearlessness. XXVI-224
Khaddar delivers the poor from the bonds of the rich and creates a moral and spiritual bond between the classes and the masses. T-2-225
The very essence of our civilization is that we give a paramount place to morality in all our affairs, public or private. MM-321
Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and, therefore, sinful. T-2-63
If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior. T-3-3
Satan mostly employs comparatively moral instruments and the language of ethics to give his aims an air of respectability. T-2-17
The object of basic education is the physical, intellectual and moral development of children through the medium of handicraft. EWE-24
In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected or are as if elected when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file. T-4-298
A country that is governed by even its national army can never be morally free and, therefore, its so-called weakest member can never rise to his full moral height. T-7-105
It is difficult for me to regard anyone who obeys no moral principle in his conduct to be a religious man. XXVI-58
Whatever may be the pros and cons of going to the public theatre, it is a patent fact that it has undermined the morals and ruined the character of many a youth in his country. T-2-352
A democrat relied upon the force not of the arms his state could flaunt in the face of the world, but on the moral force his state could put at the disposal of the world. T-8-40
The popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to its assistance. T-8-163
Mortification
Mortification of the flesh has been held all the world over as a condition of spiritual progress. TIG-53
Mother – Motherhood
Every mother is a scavenger in regard to her own children, and every student of modern medicine is tanner inasmuch as he has to dissect and skin human carcasses. T-3-182
My mother was certainly as scavenger inasmuch as she cleaned me when I was a child. XXVI-152
Only a prospective mother knows what it is to carry. The onlookers notice her illness and pity her. But she alone knows the travail. T-5-104
Mother – Tongue
I must cling to my mother-tongue as to my mother’s breast, in spite of its shortcomings. It alone can give me the life-giving milk. EWE-41
Murder
Is it not possible for us all to realize that masses will never mount to freedom through murder?
T-5-258
Museums
Museums of ancient things which have disappeared from our economic life have their use and place, but not in our programme which concentrates on industries and crafts which are capable of being revived. T-4-56
Music
The music of life is in danger of being lost in the music of the voice. T-7-27
The art of producing good music from a cultivated voice can be achieved by many, but the art of producing that music from the harmony of a pure life is achieved very rarely. TIG-109
To know music is to transfer it to life. T-2-230
Work for Swaraj fails to appeals to us because we have no music in us. T-2-231
There can be no Swaraj where there is no harmony, no music. T-2-230
I would make compulsory a proper singing in company of national songs. T-2-8
Where there is filth, squalor and misery, there can be no music. T-2-231
