Earning

• May not men earn their bread by intellectual labour? No. The needs of the body must be supplied by the body.

TIG-135

Earth

• This little globe of ours is not a toy of yesterday.

MM-286

Earthquake

• A man like me cannot but believe that this earthquake (Earthquake in Bihar, 15^th January, 1934) is a divine chastisement sent by God for our sins.

T-3-247

Eating

• Eating for the sake of pleasure is a sin like animal indulgence for the sake of it.

XXVI-453

Economics

• Economics that hurt the moral well-being of an individual or a nation are immoral and therefore sinful.

• That economics is untrue which ignores or disregards moral values.

• The study of Indian economics is the study of the spinning wheel.

• We can try to canalize economic trends, we can’t run against them in a head-on collision.

T-7-185

Education

• An education which does not teach us to discriminate between good and bad, to assimilate the one and eschew the other, is a misnomer.

• Education should be so revolutionized as to answer the wants of the poorest villager, instead of answering those of an imperial exploiter.

• Education in the understanding of citizenship is a short-term affair if we are honest and earnest.

• Basic education links the children, whether of the cities or the villages, to all that is best and lasting in India.

• Is not education the art of drawing out full manhood of the children under training?

• Literacy is itself is no education.

• Literacy is not the end of education nor even the beginning.

• Literary education should follow the education of the hand - the one gift that visibly distinguishes man from beast.

• Real education has to draw out the best from the boys and girls to be educated.

• True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is not a healthy growth.

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

• National education to be truly national must reflect the national condition for the time being.

• The function of Nayee -Talim is not to teach an occupation, but through it to develop the whole man.

• I believe that religious education must be the sole concern of religious association.

• By education I mean an all-round drawing out of the best in the child and man-body, mind and spirit.

• By spiritual training I mean education of the heart.

• Experience gained in two schools under my control has taught me that punishment does not purify, if anything, it hardens children.

• I consider writing as a fine art. We kill it by imposing the alphabet on little children and making it the beginning of learning.

• I do regard spinning and weaving as the necessary part of any national system of education.

• The aim of university education should be to turn out true servants of the people who will live and die for the country’s freedom.

• A balanced intellect presupposes a harmonious growth of body, mind and soul.

• Love requires that true education should be easily accessible to all and should be of use to every villager in his daily life.

• The notion of education though handicrafts rises from the contemplation of truth and love permeating life’s activities.

• The fees that you pay do not cover even a fraction of the amount that is spent on your education from the public exchequer.

• Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.

• If we want to impart education best suited to the needs of the villagers, we should take the vidyapith ot the villages.

• In a democratic scheme, money invested in the promotion of learning gives a tenfold return to the people even as a seed sown in good soil returns a luxuriant crop.

• All education in a country has got to be demonstrably in promotion of the progress of the country in which it is given.

• The schools and colleges are really a factory for turning out clerks for Government.

• The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English.

• The emphasis laid on the principle of spending every minute of one’s life usefully is the best education for citizenship.

EWE-24

Effort

• The pleasure lies in making the effort, not in its fulfillment.

T-5-174

Ego

• We are all like water; we have to strive so to rarefy ourselves that all the ego in us perishes and we merge in the infinite to the eternal good of all.

T-2-308

Employment

• Khadi will cease to have any value in my eyes if it does not usefully employ the millions.

T-7-187

Enemy

• I recognise no one as my enemy on the face of the earth.

• In the dictionary of satyagraha, there is no enemy.

• No man could look upon another as his enemy unless he first became his own enemy.

T-7-204

Englishman-English Language

• Englishmen must learn to be Brahmins, not banias.

• Civilization is not and incurable disease, but it should never be forgotten that the English people are at present afflicted by it.

• Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land.

• Swaraj means a state such that we can maintain our separate existence without the presence of the English.

• However virile the English language may be, it can never become the language of the masses of India.

• The English language is so elastic that you can find another word to say the same thing.

• If the English educated neglect, as they have done and even now continue, as some do, to be ignorant of their mother tongue, linguistic starvation will abide.

• We the English educated Indians often unconsciously make the terrible mistake of thinking that the microscopic minority of the English-speaking Indians is the whole of India.

• I am not anti-English, I am not anti-British, I am not anti-any Government, but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-injustice.

• I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social advantage.

• My love of the British is equal to that of my own people.

• My mission is to convert every Indian, every Englishman and finally the world to nonviolence for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic, social or religious.

• My personal religion enables me to serve my countrymen without hurting English, or for that matter anybody else.

• My plea is for banishing the English language as a cultural usurper, as we successfully banished the political rule of the English usurper.

• If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as a Indian.

• Personally I crave not for ‘independence’, which I do not understand, but I long for freedom from the English yoke.

• By patriotism I mean the welfare of the whole people, and if I could secure it at the hands of the English, I should bow down my head to them.

• Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner.

• To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj.

• A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women.

• Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with the handicap of having to think in English and transmit their thoughts chiefly in English.

• This belief in the necessity of English training has enslaved us. It has unfitted us for true national service.

• Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for imbibing ideas of liberty and developing accuracy to thought.

• The canker has so eaten into the society that in many cases the only meaning of education is a knowledge of English.

• We Hindus and Mohamedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed them to put us asunder.

• It would be a sad day for India if it has to inherit the English scale and the English tastes to utterly unsuitable to the Indian environment.

• My heart rebels against any foreigner imposing on my country the peace which is here called Pax-Britannica.

• Christianity in India is inextricably mixed up for the last hundred and fifty years with the British rule.

• No matter what the cause was and wherever it was, Indian governments must never requisition the services of British soldiers to deal with civil disturbances.

• There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before a proper settlement is arrived at.

• Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their won misdeeds.

• Man had the supreme knack of deceiving himself; the Englishman was supremest amongst men.

• The Britisher is the top dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country.

• That I want to destroy the British imperialism is another matter, but I want to do so by converting those who are associated with it.

• India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.

• The British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe.

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

• The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our number.

• My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention."

• Will Great Britain have an unwilling India dragged into war or a willing ally co-operating with her in the prosecution of a defence of true democracy?

• Boycott brought about anyhow of British cloth cannot yield the same results as such boycott brought about by hand-spinning and khaddar.

• I must fight unto the death the unholy attempt to impose British methods and British institutions on India.

• The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners.

• The way out of the riots, on the one hand, and the British bayonets on the other is frank acceptance of nonviolence.

• What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of the British or foreign rule.

• Our nonviolence vis-à-vis the British Government has been the non-violence of the weak.

• I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers.

• The builders of the British Indian Empire have patiently built its four pillars-the European interests, the army, the Indian princes and the communal divisions.

• The collector of revenue and the policeman are the only symbols by which millions in India’s villages know British rule.

• It was not through democratic methods that Britain bagged India.

• For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of English or the disappearance or Englishman.

• It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity or India, to entertain for one single moment hatred towards Englishmen.

• If you must kill English officials, why not kill me instead?

• I am just not thinking of India’s deliverance. It will come, but will it be worth if England and France fall, or if they come out victorious over Germany ruined and humbled?

• I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people.

• My attitude towards the British is one of utter friendliness and respect.

• I may fight the British ruler, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary treasures.

• By ahimsa we will be able to save the cow and also to win the friendship of the English.

XXV-520

Equality

• Equality of sexes does not mean equality of occupations.

• Economics equality of my conception does not mean that every one will literally have the same amount.

• The real meaning of economic equality is " To each’ according to his need."

• What is equality of rights between a giant and a dwarf?

• Economic equality is the master-key to nonviolent independence.

• The prince and the peasant will not be equalized by cutting off the prince’s head.

• No two leaves were alike, and yet there was no antagonism between them or between the branches on which they grew.

• Under ideal conditions, the barrister and the bhangi (sweeper) should both get the same payment.

• If a single man demanded as much as a man with a wife and four children, then that would be a violation of the concept of economic equality.

• "All men are born equal and free" is not Nature’s law in the literal sense.

• My idea of society is that while we born equal, meaning that we have a right to equal opportunity, all have not the same capacity.

• Let no one try to justify the glaring difference between the classes and the masses, the prince and the pauper by saying that the former need more.

• The real implication of equal distribution is that each man shall have the wherewithal to supply all his natural needs and no more.

• The elephant needs a thousand times more food than the ant but that is not an indication of inequality.

• No man is a true believer unless he desireth for his brother that which he desireth for himself.

• How can I even secretly harbour the thought that my neighbour’s faith is inferior to mine?

T-3-257

Ethics

• Teaching of fundamental ethics is undoubtedly a function of the state.

• By religion I have not in mind fundamental ethics but what goes by the name of denominationalism.

• To me God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality; God is fearlessness.

TIG-10

Euclid

• Euclid’s line is one without breadth, but no one has so far been able to draw it and never will.

• If Euclid’s pint, thought incapable of being drawn by human agency, has an imperishable value, my picture has its own for mankind to live.

• Absolute trusteeship is an abstraction like Euclid’s definition of a point, and its equally unattainable.

MM-372

Europe

• Europe is today only nominally Christian. It is really worshipping Mammon.

• European civilization is no doubt suited for the Europeans but it will mean ruin for India, if  we endeavour to copy it.

• An India prostrate at the feet of Europe can give no hope to humanity.

• A free India will claim to examine every European interest on its merits and that which conflicts with the national interest will go by the board.

T-5-192

Evil

• Not until we have reduced ourselves to nothingness can we conquer the evil in us.

• He who has a living faith in God will not do evil deeds with the name of God on his lips.

• Non-co-operation is a protest against an unwitting and unwilling participation in evil.

• Nonviolence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves.

• Real non-co-operation is non-co-operation with evil and not with the evildoer.

• In a strictly scientific sense God is at the bottom of both good and evil.

• Tolerance obviously does not disturb the distinction between right and wrong, or good and evil.

TIG-66

Evolution

• Like man, the meaning of great writings suffers evolution.

• The religion of our conception, thus imperfect, is always subject to a process of evolution and re-interpretation.

TIG-65

Experiments

• My experiments I hold to be infinitely more important than the best equipped Himalayan expeditions.

MM-8

Exploitation

• The divorce of intellect from body labour has made us perhaps the shortest-lived, most resourceless and most exploited nation on earth.

• Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war.

• Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western exploitation in which England is the greatest partner.

T-2-327