25 quotes of Mahatma Gandhi

[burythehatchet]

1. Always aim at complete harmony of thought and word and deed. Always aim at purifying your thoughts and everything will be well.
   
   
2. As long as you derive inner help and comfort from anything, keep it.
   
   
3. Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
   
   
4. Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
   
   
5. Hate the sin, love the sinner.
   
   
6. Honest differences are often a healthy sign of progress.
   
   
7. Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
   
   
8. I believe in equality for everyone, except reporters and photographers.
   
   
9. I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.
   
   
10. I want freedom for the full expression on my personality.
    
    
11. In the attitude of silence the soul finds the path in a clearer light, and what is elusive and deceptive resolves itself into crystal clearness.
    
    
12. Our life is a long and arduous quest after Truth.
    
    
13. Indolence is a delightful but distressing state; we must be doing something to be happy.
    
    
14. It is better to be violent, if there is violence in our hearts, than to put on the cloak of nonviolence to cover impotence.
    
    
15. It is unwise to be too sure of one's own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
    
    
16. One needs to be slow to form convictions, but once formed they must be defended against the heaviest odds.
    
    
17. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
    
    
18. Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is very important that you do it.
    
    
19. You must be the change you want to see in the world.
    
    
20. You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean; if a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.
    
    
21. What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?
    
    
22. Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
    
    
23. An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
    
    
24. Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err. It passes my comprehension how human beings, be they ever so experienced and able, can delight in depriving other human beings of that precious right.
    
    
25. I think it would be a good idea.
    Mahatma Gandhi, when asked what he thought of Western civilization
    

[Nothing Without Hope]

1. Thanks for this! Includes some of my favorites. Two more:

"There is more to life than increasing its speed"

and the famous one often used around here:
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Here are several of my favorite Einstein quotes:

The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of the people who are evil, but because of the people who don't do anything about it." - Albert Einstein

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones." -- Albert Einstein

I know of only two things that are infinite.
1. The universe
2. Man's capacity for stupidity
And I am not sure about the former. –Albert Einstein

Laws alone cannot secure freedom of expression; in order that every man present his views without penalty there must be a spirit of tolerance in the entire population.—Albert Einstein

Great spirits have always found violent opposition from mediocrities. The latter cannot understand it when a man does not thoughtlessly submit to hereditary prejudices but honestly and courageously uses his intelligence.—Albert Einstein

“Unthinking respect for authority is the greatest enemy of truth.” --Albert Einstein

"Force always attracts those of low morality." -- Albert Einstein

“Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age seventeen.” –Albert Einstein

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.—Albert Einstein


Thanks again and good night! So nice to meet these two great souls again before going off for a night of dreams. :hi:

[burythehatchet]

2. every day should end this way

:) Good night to you.

[Nothing Without Hope]

4. oops, put it in the wrong place - I left you one more, this time

from Albert Schweitzer.

This time for sure: good night!

[Nothing Without Hope]

3. Oh. how lovely. One more for you - a special favorite - and that's it

for tonight:

"In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit." -–Albert Schweitzer, philosopher, physician, and musician (1875-1965)

[burythehatchet]

5. Wonderful. Never heard that one. Sublime.

[Vitruvius]

34. Another: "Live as tho' you're going to die tomorrow, learn as tho' you're

going to live forever."
-- Mahatma Ghandi

[dysfunctional press]

6. "I like your Christ- I do not like your christians..."

"I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ."

truer words were never spoken, mohandas

[burythehatchet]

8. Funny how he knew this way back before

Ayatollah Falwell started crapping on Christianity.

[sandnsea]

7. Very nice k&r

[Nothing Without Hope]

9. More quotes on real spirituality vs. rigid, limited, judgmental thinking:

Here's one from a famous Zen master:
"There are no enlightened persons, just enlightened actions." --Suzuki Roshi

Nice contrast from the kind of "Christians" Gandhi is commenting on, the kind we've been seeing so much of among the loud, bullying RW fundies. Others have expressed parallel thoughts:

"Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction." -Blaise Pascal, philosopher and mathematician (1623-1662)

"Keep me away from the wisdom which does not cry, the philosophy which does not laugh and the greatness which does not bow before children." –Kahlil Gibran, mystic, poet and artist (1883-1931)

"If God created us in his own image, we have more than reciprocated."
-Voltaire, philosopher (1694-1778)

“The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are always so certain of themselves, but wiser people so full of doubts.”
-- Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), Welsh philosopher and reformer

“The true fanatic is a theocrat, someone who sees himself as acting on behalf of some superpersonal force: the Race, the Party, History, the proletariat, the Poor, and so on. These absolve him from evil, hence he may safely do anything in their service.”
-- Lloyd Billingsley, "Religion's Rebel Son: Fanaticism in Our Time", Multnomah Publishers (1986)

"The more I study religions the more I am convinced that man never worshipped anything but himself."
-Richard Francis Burton, explorer and writer (1821-1890)

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought." --John F. Kennedy, 35th US president (1917-1963)

"Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Hate multiplies hate, violence multiplies violence, and toughness multiplies toughness in a descending spiral of destruction...The chain reaction of evil, hate begetting hate, wars producing more wars, must be broken, or we shall be plunged into the dark abyss of annihilation." --Martin Luther King, Jr.

"None of us are good, but all of us are sacred."
- Bill Moyers

"Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." -- Martin Luther King Jr.

"The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control."
--Bible

[burythehatchet]

11. when one thinks of the people who are in power

and their acolytes, it is a sad reminder of what we face in our daily struggle to live the kind of life suggested by these words.

But the quote that inspired this thread, about tyrants always falling, is the one that keeps many of us going.

[burythehatchet]

28. One day we must have a thread dedicated to Gibran

We can chat all day long about The Prophet.

[Bluerthanblue]

10. you left off one of my personal favorites of his- ....

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall - think of it, ALWAYS." Mahatma Gandhi

that one speaks to me in the frequent times of darkness in this life.

Thanks for this great list-

[burythehatchet]

12. that's actually the one that WIll Pitt had posted which

inspired this thread.

[goforit]

19. Yes, this one has hit home with me always as well!!!

[procopia]

23. It's my favorite too

:)

[Just Me]

13. Nominated. Thank you.

Words of strength and wisdom,...are ALWAYS appreciated. Always.

[H2O Man]

14. Here are a few:

When it is relevant, truth has to be uttered, however unpleasant it may be.

Silence is the true language of cosmic adoration.

What you think, you become.

Truth is God.

Only living things bring living joy to the soul and must elevate the soul.

It seems to be so very hard to maintain detachment of mind in the midst of raging fire.

In matters of the conscience, the law of the majority has no place. It is slavery to be amenable to the majority no matter what its decisions are.

Intolerance betrays a want of faith in one's cause.

It is beneath human dignity to lose one's individuality and become a mere cog in the machine.

[burythehatchet]

15. Intolerance betrays a want of faith in one's cause.

Shall we send this to the right wing noise machine?

[H2O Man]

I always loved that one.

A few more:

Anxiety about the future is sheer atheism.

A tree has a million leaves. There are as many religions as there are men and women, but they are all rooted in God.

You must not lose faith in humanity. Humanity is an ocean. If a few drops of the ocean are dirty, the ocean does not become dirty.

Socrates, we are told, was the most truthful man of his time and yet his features are said to have been the ugliest in Greece. To my mind he was beautiful because he was struggling after truth ... Truth is the first thing to be sought for, and beauty and goodness will be added unto you.

[burythehatchet]

17. Anxiety about the future is sheer atheism.

this is the thing I have always struggled with (generalized anxiety disorder). I think it would be helpful to include this in my daily affirmation.

[Fountain79]

16. Apparently other things that Ghandi said...

http://www.trinicenter.com/WorldNews/ghandi.htm

[burythehatchet]

18. thanks for your input.

early in his life Mohanda was under the spell of the British, and western values. You do a disservice to yourself by believing that you have provided some "new" information that will shock people. Live some of what you have read in these posts and you will be walking a fine path.

[mdmc]

21. Peace and low stress

:kick:

[Fountain79]

22. Simply pointing out...

That even wise men can be stupid sometimes....

Are you telling me that if I posted a bunch of quotes about Lincoln and equality there wouldn't be a few naysayers?

[burythehatchet]

24. Well

don't be a naysayer:)

Seriously, its OK. Personally, I sense that in these times the wisdom of our historical heroes is needed more than ever.

[H2O Man]

26. One might be tempted

to question why a person would feel the need to dig up questionable "quotes" to try to discredit a person like Gandhi. It would not seem likely that it would be viewed as a sincere attempt to add to this thread in a meaningful way. No one with an IQ higher than the low teens would assume that Gandhi was as wise as a young man as he was as an old man. If one does not learn and indeed become wiser between, say, the ages of 25 and 75, they have wasted 50 years of life.

With many of the great people we do well to study in our own attempts to learn, we find that they underwent significant transformations. Yet if someone were to jump in a conversation on Francis of Assisi and say his message was compromised by a wild youth, that person has surely compromised his own message. Those who dislike Malcolm X because Malcolm Little was a pimp and drug dealer are only able to view the world in Little terms.

I do not mean to imply that we should create saints in our mind. Just as it is beneficial to take Jesus off that stained glass window and see him as part of humanity, it is important to recognize there are no saints. We are all people, and as Gandhi said, "It is impossible for us to realize perfect truth so long as we are imprisoned in this mortal frame."

[burythehatchet]

29. An appropriate time to throw in The Rolling Stones

"Just as every cop is a criminal, and all sinners saints". Yin and Yang. I suspect the greatest failing of Western theology (in my simple mind) is the affinity for the separation of God, Nature and Man. The segregation of Good and Evil, Heaven and Hell. It sure is easier to put ourselves in the box we prefer, while suppressing the reality that we are an embodiment of the opposite, as well.

[H2O Man]

30. That is

a wonderful topic to consider, and one that offers the current US culture an avenue towards forgiveness and healing. One of the examples that comes to mind for me involves the Haudenosaunee, or Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy. And I'm tempted to call it "Woodland Therapy," in recognition that a few of the things that our culture takes credit for have roots in Iroquois soil. For example, when we think of "dream analysis," we think of Freud, yet the Jesuits who traveled in the northeast recorded that the Iroquois had group meetings to discuss the meaning of their dreams. Or, when we think of 12 step recovery programs, we think of Bill, even though the first such groups were started in 1979 by Handsome Lake in upstate New York.

I've mentioned before that one of the key figures in the history of the Iroquois, and indeed the world, was a man named Tadodaho, who lived in approximately 400 ad. He was an Onondaga who was considered the most dangerous man of his time. He killed human beings for pleasure, and ate their flesh. It was said he had snakes for hair, which of course is symbolic of his thought-processes. But the man we call the Peace Maker, along with his assistant, Hianawatha, were able to comb the snakes from his mind over a period of years, and the forgiveness and healing resulted in the Tadodaho becoming the first "chief among chiefs" of the Confederacy. His name is still used to signify that position.

In Iroquois society, a person's past is not viewed as compromising who they are today. In fact, the Tadodaho could not have become so great a man, if he had not once been so evil. We find traces of that same type of thinking, which is far healthier, in today's black communities. There are people like our sick republican siblings who will bring up King's love of women to try to taint his great works, and who wanted to crucify Clinton for sins of the flesh. But the black community served as our nation's conscience, time and again, including in their support for Clinton in his most trying days as president.

We need more of that. We need to sit down as groups, and to discuss the meanings of our dreams -- all of them -- and to try to heal the grossly infected wounds that have been caused by angry, unforgiving fools like Pat Robertson, Randal Terry, and George Bush.

[burythehatchet]

32. I Googled Tadohado and the one book that comes up the most

is To Become a Human Being: The Message of Tadodaho Chief Leon Shenandoah. I look forward to reading this book. On the subject of forgiveness: My belief is that forgiveness is a reflection of the strength of ones character. Lack of forgiveness is a reflection of ones own lack of self acceptance. That is the core aspect of today's charlatans. They begin from a point of self-loathing, and they compensate by making wealth the measure of their existence. They convince their flock to accept this "morality" in their lives, and the weak-minded integrate this dead-end road to spiritual existence.

This is a interesting bridge to the study and practice of meditation, as developed in Hinduism. Rather than try to describe it, I will transcribe and paraphrase some passages from my "little book of life".

"A very large part of our mind remains unconscious. Impulses from the unconscious mind keep coming to the conscious mind. On the one hand the conscious mind maintains contact with the commands and instigation of the unconscious mind. On the other hand it remains aware of the outside world. It is subject to the pressures of society and culture. As the unconscious mind wishes to satisfy its inclinations through the medium of the conscious mind, the conscious mind accepts and acts upon only those that are considered acceptable. This is the source of turmoil, and when the turmoil rises it leads to emotional friction.

The unconscious mind does not know logic and it is much more powerful than the conscious mind. {b]The collected emotions and suppressed desires of the unconscious mind keep expressing themselves in our waking and sleeping states (dreams).

To end the conflict an explicit understanding of the unconscious mind is essential. Only then can there be a catharsis of the desires and emotions hidden in it. Only then will the mental conflict be ended and the mind unified"

This is along and arduous process and, I suspect, one that very few of our "leaders" care to even acknowledge. Therefore, they live in a permanent state of emotional turmoil, and indeed, mental illness.

[H2O Man]

33. Leon is featured

in the book "Wisdomkeepers" and in two National Geographic articles (9-87 and 3-89). He worked as a grounds-keeper at Syracuse University in his later years, and I remember thinking it curious that so many young people barely noticed a quiet old man picking up the trash they dropped on campus.

"Everything is laid out for you. Your path is straight ahead of you. Sometimes it's invisible, but it's there. You may not know where it's goin, but still you have to follow that path. It's the path to the Creator. It's the only path there is."

"I myself have no power. It's the people behind me who have the power. Real power comes only from the Creator. It's in his hands. But if you're asking about strength, not power, Then I can say that the greatest strength is gentleness."

One of my favorite memories of Uncle Leon was sitting at a booth in the diner just off I-81, at the edge of the Territory, meeting with a representative of a business who hadliterally brought a brief case filled with money to try to influence Leon on a case involving Sacred Ground. The guy said to our small group of three chiefs and two others that "our scientists have found this isn't a significant site." Leon countered, "I do not need your scientist to tell me what makes Sacred Ground." Little was resolved that afternoon, and the case eventually went into court. But we had a good meal. At the end of it, when the waitress brough the bill, Chief Waterman said, "Hey, give it to that guy. He's got a lot of money on him."

Here is a picture of Leon on the day the NYS Museum returned the belts:

[progressoid]

20. Nice list.

[Nothing Without Hope]

25. Another non-Gandhi favorite of mine:

If of thy mortal goods thou art bereft
And from thy slender store two loaves alone to thee are left
Sell one, and with the dole
Buy hyacinths to feed thy soul.
--Moslih Saadi

I've always suspected it is especially marvelous in its original language, since it is so fine even in English.

[Road Scholar]

27. Thank you for sharing. nt

[Douglas Carpenter]

31. another great Gandi quote

First they ignored us,

then they laughed at us,

then they fought us,

then we won.

---Mohandas Gandhi