Abstinence is forgiveness only when there is power to punish; it is meaningless when it pretends to proceed from a helpless creature.

The best way of losing a cause is to abuse your opponent and to trade upon his weakness.

Action for one's own self binds, action for the sake of others delivers from bondage.

What is faith worth if it is not translated into action?

You assist an administration most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees. An evil administration never deserves such allegiance.

I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives.

Every affliction has its own rich lesson to teach, if we would learn it.

The commerce between India and Africa will be of ideas and services, not of the manufactured goods against raw materials after the fashion of the Western exploiters.

The aggressor always had a purpose behind his attack; he wanted something to be done, some object to be surrendered by the defender.

To forget how to dig the earth and tend the soil is to forget ourselves.

Weeding is as necessary to agriculture as sowing.

Agricultural colleges to be worthy of the name must be self-supporting.

The removal of untouchability is one of the highest expressions of ahimsa.

America is today able to hold the world in fee by selling all kinds of trinkets, or by selling her unrivalled skill, which she has a right to do.

It reflects the greatest credit on the determined minority in America that by sheer force of its moral weight it was able to carry through the prohibition measure, however shortlived.

Fasts could not be undertaken out of anger. Anger was a short madness.

True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill-will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all.

The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.

Rectify one angle of a square and the other angles will be automatically right.

A friendly approach was not one of appeasement. An appeasement was possible between enemies.

In no case can there be any appeasement at the cost of honour. Real appeasement is to shed all fear and do what is right at any cost.

If the mad race for armaments continues, it is bound to result in a slaughter such as has never occurred in history.

For India to enter into the race for armaments is to court suicide.

The power of unarmed non-violence is any day far superior to that of armed force.

What faith can you place in a general of a soldier who lacks resolution and determination, who says 'I shall keep guard as long as I can'?

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

Art to be art must soothe.

All true art must help the soul to realize its inner self.

Purity of life is the highest and truest art.

True art must be evidence of happiness, contentment and purity of its authors.

True art takes note not merely of form but also of what lies behind.

The art that is in the machine-made article appeals only to the eye, the art in khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye.

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.

There is a beauty and an art in simplicity which he who runs may see.

A life of sacrifice is the pinnacle of art, and is full of true joy.

Whatever can be useful to those starving millions is beautiful to my mind.

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

A semi-starved nation can have neither religion nor art not organization.

Why should I need an artist to explain a work of art to me? Why should it not speak out to me itself?

Painters and poets are obliged to exaggerate the proportions of their figures in order to give true perspective.

To a true artist only that face is beautiful which, quite apart from its exterior, shines with the truth within the soul.

By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount, but then you will have to take sackcloth and ashes.

I know nothing of the science of astrology and I consider it to be a science, if it is a science, of doubtful value, to be severely left alone by those who have any faith in Providence.

God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist.

The atom bomb brought an empty victory to the Allied arms but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan.

Mobocracy is autocracy multiplied a million times.