Great Throughts Treasury

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."

"Why worry one’s head over a thing that is inevitable? Why die before one’s death?"

"Where there is fear, there is no religion."

"Who can deny that much that passes for science and art today destroys the soul instead of uplifting it and instead of evoking the best in us, panders to our basest passions?"

"A "No" uttered from deepest conviction is better and greater than a "Yes" merely uttered to please, or what is worse, to avoid trouble."

"A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave."

"A life without religion is a life without principles, and a life without principles is like a ship without a rudder."

"A weak man is just by accident. A strong but nonviolent man is unjust by accident."

"A man is but a product of his thoughts; what he thinks, that he becomes."

"Ahlisma [nonviolence] means the largest love. It is the supreme law. By it alone can mankind be saved. He who believes in nonviolence believes in a living God."

"All humanity is one undivided and indivisible family, and each one of us is responsible for the misdeeds of all the others."

"As human beings, our greatness lays not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the Atomic Age - as in being able to remake ourselves."

"Don't bow before another person or another nation."

"Civilization, in the real sense of the term, consists not in the multiplication, but in the deliberate and voluntary reduction of wants. This alone promotes real happiness and contentment, and increases the capacity for service."

"As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything... keep it."

"Exploitation is the essence of violence."

"Fear gone, there can be no hatred."

"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

"For the poor, the economic is the spiritual."

"Good government is no substitute for self-government."

"High thinking is inconsistent with complicated material life based on high speed imposed on us by Mammon worship."

"Honest disagreement [differences] is often a good sign of progress."

"I will be truthful. I will suffer no injustice. I will be free from fear. I will not use force. I will be of good will to all men."

"If God were to appear to starving people, he would not dare to appear in any other form than food."

"If we are to reach peace in this world and if we are to carry on a real war against war, we shall have to begin with the children; and if they will grow up in their natural innocence, we won't have to struggle; we won't have to pass fruitless idle resolutions, but we shall go from love to love and peace to peace, until at last all the corners of the world are covered with that peace and love for which consciously or unconsciously the whole world is hungering."

"Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy. Action is no less necessary than thought to the instinctive tendencies of the human frame."

"I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not do unless I took part in politics."

"Liberty and democracy become unholy when their hands are dyed red with innocent blood."

"Man does not live by bread alone. Many prefer self-respect to food."

"Live simply, that others may simply live."

"Life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin... I want you all to treasure death and suffering more than life and to appreciate their cleansing and purifying character. Death which is an Eternal verity is revolution, as birth and after is slow and steady evolution. Death is as necessary for man's growth as life itself... All fear is a sign of want of faith... Hate the sin and love the sinner."

"Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I shall have the belief that I can do it. I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it, even if I may not have it at the beginning."

"Man lives freely only by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him."

"Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know."

"Morality is contraband in war."

"My life is my teaching."

"Monotony is the law or nature. Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises. The monotony of necessary occupations is exhilarating and life-giving."

"No one has the capacity to judge God. We are drops in that limitless ocean of mercy."

"Non-cooperation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views."

"No culture can live, if it attempts to be exclusive."

"Non-violence is not a garment to be put on and off at will. Its seat is in the heart, and it must be an inseparable part of our very being."

"Non-cooperation with injustice is a sacred duty."

"Prayer is the very soul and essence of religion and therefore prayer must be the very core of the life of man, for no man can live without religion."

"One must become humble as the dust before he can discover truth."

"Prayer is confession of one's own unworthiness and weakness."

"President means chief servant."

"Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible."

"Rights that do not flow from duty well performed are not worth having."

"Self-respect knows no considerations."

"The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty."