Daridranarayana

• Daridranarayana is insatiable and there is room enough in his belly for all the money and the ornaments you can give.

• The real Daridranarayana even I have not seen, but know only through my imagination.

• I would like to assure those who would serve Daridranarayana that there is music, art, economy and joy in the spinning wheel.

• Of all the myriad of God, Daridranarayana is the most sacred, inasmuch as it represents the untold millions of poor people as distinguished from the few rich people.

• It is my great misfortune that I have to measure your love by the money gifts you give for Daridranarayana.

T-2-354

Death

• Death is at any time blessed, but it is twice blessed for a warrior who dies for his cause, that is, truth.

• Death is no fiend, he is the truest of friends. He delivers us from agony.

• Death on the battlefield is welcome to a soldier.

• To die in the act of killing is in essence to die defeated.

• Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.

• It is as clear to me as daylight that life and death are but phases of the same thing, the reverse and obverse of the same coin.

• A courageous man prefers death to the surrender of self-respect.

• Life becomes livable only to the extent that death is treated as a friend, never as an enemy.

• If love was not the law of life, life would not have persisted in the midst of death.

• True ahimsa should wear a smile even on deathbed brought about by an assailant. It is only with that ahimsa that we can defined our opponents and win their love.

• It was the cowards who died many times before their death.

• If we weep for all the deaths in our country, the tears in our eyes would never dry.

• Running away for fear of death, leaving one’s dear ones, temples or music to take care of themselves, is irreligion; it is cowardice.

• No amount of casuistry can defend the penalty of stoning to death in any event or that of death, whether by stoning or otherwise, for apostasy.

• Where death without resistance or death after resistance is the only way, neither party should think of resorting to law-courts or help from government.

• What is imprisonment to the man who is fearless of death itself?

• I came alone in this world, I have walked alone in the valley of the shadow of death, and I shall quit alone when the time comes.

• Only my death will determine whether I am ‘Mahomed Gandhi’, Jinnah’s slave, destroyer of the Hindu religion or its true servant and protector.

• I can see that in the midst of death life persists, in the midst of untruth truth persists, in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is life, Truth, Light. He is Love. He is the supreme good.

• You may pluck out my eyes, but that cannot kill me. You may chop off my nose, but that will not kill me. But blast my belief in God, and I am dead.

• It is much more difficult to live for nonviolence than to die for it.

• History is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents.

• 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-141

Debt

• In the billiard room and on the tennis-court think of the big debt that is being piled against you from day to day.

• What God may have enabled me to do is but a repayment of debt, and he who repays a debt deserves no praise.

T-4-257

Deception

T-2-20

Defeat

• Heroes are made in the hour of defeat. Success is, therefore, well described as a series of glorious defeats.

• Never own defeat in a sacred cause and make up your minds henceforth that you will be pure and that you will find a response from God.

• Defeat has no place in the dictionary of nonviolence.

T-4-139

Defense

• It is the Maginot Line* that has made the Siegfried Line** necessary and vice versa.

• Whether one or many, I must declare my faith that it is better for India to discard violence altogether even for defending her borders.

T-5-178

Democracy

• Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war to the knife between different ideas.

• Democracy can only represent the average, if not less than the average.

• The very essence of democracy is that every person represents all the varied interests which compose the nation.

• Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine.

• Democracy demands patient instruction on it before legislation.

• Democracy, disciplined and enlightened, is the finest thing in the world.

• Democracy and dependence on the military and police are incompatible.

• Democracy is a great institution and, therefore, it is liable to be greatly abused.

• Democracy is an impossible thing until the power is shared by all, but let not democracy degenerate into monocracy.

• Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep.

• Democracy and violence can ill go together.

• Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.

• The spirit of democracy cannot be imposed from without. It has to come from within.

• In the days of democracy there is no such thing as active loyalty to a person. You are, therefore, loyal or disloyal to institutions.

• Democracy will break under the strain of apron strings. It can exist only on trust.

• Islam was nothing if it did not spell complete democracy.

• My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest.

• To safeguard democracy the people must have a keen sense of independence, self-respect and their oneness.

• What is really needed to make democracy function is not knowledge of facts, but right education.

• Intolerance, discourtesy and harshness are taboo in all good society and are surely contrary to the spirit of democracy.

• The line of demarcation between democracy and monocracy is a often thin, but rigid and stronger than unbreakable steel.

• In true democracy every man and woman is taught to think for himself or herself.

• The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

• The spirit of democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of the heart.

• People in a democracy should be satisfied with drawing the Government’s attention to mistake, if any.

• You have to uphold democracy, and democracy and dependence on the military and the police are incompatible.

• Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.

• No perfect democracy is possible without perfect nonviolence at the back of it.

• The only force at the disposal of democracy was that of public opinion.

• True democracy is not inconsistent with a few persons representing the spirit, the hope and the aspirations of those whom they claim to represent.

• The voice of the people may be said to be God’s voice, the voice of the Panchayat.

• A born democrat is a born disciplinarian.

• A democrat must be utterly selfless. He must think and dream not in terms of self or of party, but only of democracy.

• The true democrat is he who with purely non-violent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country’s and ultimately that of the whole of mankind.

• A democratic organization has to dare to do the right at all costs.

• If fighting for the legislatures meant a sacrifice of truth and non-violence, democracy would not be worth a moment'’ purchase.

• Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are today.

T-3-301

Dependence

• No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attaching to those gifts imposed by the conquering nation.

T-2-13

Desire

• By means of a desire for enjoyment we have created and continue to maintain this encumbrance in the shape of the body.

• When there is no desire for fruit, there is also no temptation for untruth or Himsa.

T-2-311

Despair

• "Despair" is a term which does not occur in my dictionary.

• I shall despair when I despair of myself, of God and humanity.

XXVI-266

Destiny

• Man is the marker of his own destiny, and I therefore ask you to become makers of your own destiny.

• To find Truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, to become perfect.

T-2-73

Devotee – Devotion (Bhakti)

• Devotion to this Truth is the sole justification for our effusiveness.

• Devotion required by the Gita is not soft-hearted effusiveness.

• Without devotion, action and knowledge are cold and dry, and may even become shackles.

• A devote may use, if he likes, rosaries, forehead marks, make offerings, but these things are not test of his devotion.

• A devote of Rama may be said to be the same as the steadfast one (sthitaprajnya) of the Gita.

• The path of Bhakti, karma, love, as expounded in the Gita, leaves no room for the despising or man by man.

• Knowledge without devotion will be like a misfire.

• Renunciation is the central sun, round which devotion, knowledge and the rest revolve like planets.

• Knowledge and devotion, to be true, have to stand the rest of renunciation of the fruits of action.

• One rupee can purchase for us poison or nectar, but knowledge or devotion cannot buy us either salvation or bondage.

• In order that knowledge may not run riot, the author of the Gita has insisted on devotion accompanying it and has given it the first place.

T-2-309

Diagnosis

• A correct diagnosis is three-fourths the remedy.

T-5-129

Dignity

• The truest test of civilization, culture and dignity is character and not clothing.

XXVI-258

Diplomacy

• I know no diplomacy save that of truth.

XXV-423

Disarmament

• A free India will throw all her weight in favour of world disarmament and should herself be prepared to give a lead in this.

T-5-319

Discipline

• True discipline gives enthusiastic obedience to instructions even though they do not satisfy the reason.

• A disciplined army of a few hundred picked men has, times without number, routed countless undisciplined hordes.

• Conscience is the ripe fruit of strictest discipline.

XXV-23

• A student’s life has been rightly likened to the life of a sanyasi. He must be the embodiment of simple living and high thinking. He must be discipline incarnate. His pleasure is derived from his studies.

• Unless the discipline is rooted in non-violence, it might prove a source of infinite mischief.

• For winning Swaraj one requires iron discipline.

• A born democrat is a born disciplinarian.

• A man who would interpret the scriptures must have the spiritual discipline.

• Chastity is one of the greatest disciplines without which the mind cannot attain requisite firmness.

• No general ever won a victory by following the principle of ‘being vigilant so long as he could’.

• I have not known of a war gained by a rabble, but I have known of wars gained by disciplined armies.

• Non-co-operation is a measure of discipline and sacrifice, and it demands respect for the opposite views.

T-2-12

Disease

• We are like the nurses who may not leave their patients because they are reported to have an incurable disease.

T-4-73

Dishonesty

• A businessman who lies and cheats his simple minded and ignorant customers cannot hope to be saved.

T-7-124

Distinctions

• Labour was a great levelers of all distinctions.

T-8-97

Distrust

• It is weakness which breeds fear, and fear breads distrust.

T-2-123

Divine Rights

• There is no such thing as the divine right of the kings to rule and the humble duty of the ryots to pay respectful obedience to their masters.

T-8-31

Divinity

• Divine knowledge is not borrowed from books. It has to be realized on oneself.

• The meaning of prayer is that I want to evoke that Divinity without me.

• The Divine Radio is always singing if we could only make ourselves ready to listen to it, but it is impossible to listen without silence.

• There is a divine purpose behind every physical calamity.

• I cannot ascribe exclusive divinity to Jesus. He is a divine as Krishna or Rama or Muhammad or Zoroaster.

• My belief in the Hindu scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired.

TIG-75

Doctor

• A doctor who uses his talent to pander to the vice of his patient degrades himself and his patient.

TIG-114

Dominion Status

• Dominion status is nothing if it does not mean the ability of the dominion in question to stand by itself.

• My conception of dominion status implies present ability to sever the British connection if I wish to.

T-2-382

Dream

• Close the day with prayer so that you may have a peaceful night free from dreams and nightmares.

TIG-43

Drink

• Drink makes a man forget himself. He ceases to be a man for the time being. He becomes less than a beast.

• It is wrong and immoral for a nation to supply intoxicating liquor to those who are addicted to drink.

XXV-474

Duty

• Civilization is that mode of conduct which points out to man the path of duty.

• A duty religiously performed carries with it several other important consequences.

• A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty or a grave dereliction.

• Means to be means must always be within our reach, and so ahimsa is our supreme duty.

• Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practise it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence.

• Performance of duty and observance of morality are convertible terms.

• Out of the performance of duties flow rights, and those that knew and performed their duties came naturally by the rights.

• A pure fast, like duty, is its own reward.

• The true source of rights is duty.

• A teetotaller would regard it as his duty to associate with his drunkard brother for the purpose of weaning him from the evil habit.

• If leaving duties unperformed we run after rights, they will escape us like a will-o’-the-wisp.

• If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek.

• A wretched parent who claims obedience from his children, without first doing his duty by them, excites nothing but contempt.

• He who is ever brooding over result often loses nerve in the performance of his duty.

• No people have risen who thought only of rights. Only those did so who thought of duties.

• You cannot neglect the nearer duty for the sake of a remote.

• Violence becomes imperative when an attempt is made to assert rights without any reference to duties.

• In my humble opinion, non-co-operation with evil is as much a duty as is co-operation with good.

• I know, too, that performance of one’s duty should be independent of public opinion.

• I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it.

• No displeasure, even of the dearest friends, can put me off the duty I see clearly in front of me.

T-5-296