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Comprehensive Website on the life and works of
Mahatma Gandhi
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+91-23872061
+91-9022483828
info@mkgandhi.org
Democracy must in essence mean the art and science of mobilizing the entire physical, economic and spiritual resources of all the various sections of the people in the service of the common good of all.
H, 27 May 1939
A born democrat is a born disciplinarian. Democracy comes naturally to him who is habituated normally to yield willing obedience to all laws, human or divine.
Ibid.
Willing submission to social restraint for the sake of the well-being of the whole society enriches both the individual and the society of which one is a member.
Ibid.
The spirit of Democracy is not a mechanical thing to be adjusted by abolition of forms. It requires change of the heart.
YI, 16 March 1927
The spirit of democracy cannot be established in that midst of terrorism whether governmental or popular. In some respects popular terrorism is more antagonistic to the growth of the democratic spirit than the governmental. For the latter strengthens the spirit of democracy, where as the former kills it.
YI, 23 Feb. 1921
Democracy disciplined and enlightened is the finest thing in the world. A democracy, prejudiced, ignorant, superstitious will land itself in the chaos and may be self-destroyed.
YI, 30 July 1931
The democracy of m conception is wholly inconsistent with the use of physical force for enforcing its will.
EF, p. 102
Democracy will break under the strain of apron strings. It can exist only on trust.
DD, p. 136
The highest form of freedom carries with it the greatest measure of discipline and humility. Freedom that comes from discipline and humility cannot be denied; unbridled license is a sign of vulgarity, injurious alike to self and one's neighbours.
YI, 3 June 1926
When people come into possession of political powers, the interference with the freedom of the people is reduced to a minimum. In other words, a nation that runs its affairs smoothly and effectively without such state interference is truly democratic. Where such a condition is absent, the form of Government is democratic in name.
H, 11 Jan. 1936
Democracy and violence can ill go together. The States that are today nominally democratic have either to become frankly totalitarian or, if they are to become truly democratic, they must become courageously non-violent. It is a blasphemy to say that non-violence can only be practiced by individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals.
H, 12 Nov. 1938
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.
H, 15 April 1939
In matters of conscience, the law of Majority has no place.
YI, 4 Aug. 1920
Let us not push the mandate theory to ridiculous extremes and become slave to resolutions of majorities. That would be a revival of brute force in a more virulent form. If rights of minorities are to be respected, the majority must tolerate and respect their opinion and action. It will be the duty of the majority to see to it that the minorities receive a proper hearing and are not otherwise exposed to insults.
YI, 8 Dec. 1921
The rule of majority has a narrow application, i.e., on should yield to the majority in matters of detail. But it is slavery to be amenable to the majority, no matter what its decisions are.
YI, 2 March 1922
Democracy is not a state in which people act like sheep. Under democracy, individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded. I, therefore, believe that the minority has a perfect right to act differently from the majority.
Ibid.
Keep a child in cotton wools and stunt it or kill it. If you will let it develop into a robust man, you will expose his body to all weathers teaching him how to defy them. Precisely in the same manner, a government worth the name has to show the nation how to face deficits, bad weathers and other handicaps of life through its own collective effort instead of its being effortlessly helped to live anyhow.
DD, p. 242
Possession of power makes men blind and deaf, they cannot see things which are under their very nose and cannot hear things which invade their ears. There is thus no knowing what power-intoxicated government may not do. So patriotic men ought to be prepared for death, imprisonment and similar eventualities.
YI, 13 Oct. 1921
Power that comes from service faithfully rendered ennobles. Power that is sought in the name of service and can only be obtained by a majority of votes is delusion and snare to be avoided.
YI, 11 Sept. 1924
Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by arts of love. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than the one derived from fear of punishment.
YI, 8 Jan. 1925
Whilst power, superimposed, always needs the help of police and military, power generated from within should have little or no us3e for them.
H, 4 Sept. 1937
Those who claim to lead the masses must resolutely refuse to be led by them, if we want to avoid mob law and desire ordered progress for the country. I believe that mere protestation of one's opinion and surrender to the mass opinion is not only not enough, but in the matters of vital importance, leaders must act contrary to the mass opinion if it does not commend itself to their reason.
YI, 14 July 1920
Love and Ahimsa are matchless in their effect. But, in their play there is no fuss, show, noise or placards. They presuppose self-confidence which in its turn presupposes self-purification. Men of stainless character and self-purification will easily inspire confidence and automatically purify the atmosphere around them.
YI, 6 Sept. 1928
The reformer's path is strewn not with roses, but with thorns, and he has to walk warily. He can but limps, dare not jump.
YI, 28 Nov.1929
The only code that guides a reformer is his own conscience in the last resort. The law would be corrected through the righteous suffering of a few if public opinion had not already secured either correction or disuse.
YI, 7 Feb. 1929
All is well with you even though everything seems to go dead wrong. If you are a square with yourself. Reversely, all is not well with you although everything outwardly may seem to go right, if you are not square with yourself.
H, 20 May 1939
My patriotism is not an exclusive thing. It is all-embracing and I should reject that patriotism which sought to mount upon the distress of the exploitation of other nationalities. The conception of my patriotism is nothing if it is not always, in every case, without exception, consistent with the broadest good of humanity at large.
YI, 4 April 1929
I do not believe that an individual may gain spiritually and those who surround him suffer. I believe in advita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter, of all that lives. Therefore, I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him and if one man falls the whole world falls to that extent.
YI, 4 Dec. 1924
Mankind is one, seeing that all are equally subject to the moral law. All men are equal in God's eyes. There are, of course, differences of race and status and the like, but the higher the status of man, the greater is his responsibility.
ER, p. 57
Just as the cult of patriotism teaches us today that the individual has to die for the family, the family has to die for the village the village for the district, the district for the province, and the province for the country, and so a country has to be free in order that it may die, if necessary, for the benefit of the world.
GIV, p. 170
A nation that is capable of limitless sacrifice is capable of rising to limitless heights. The purer the sacrifice the quicker the progress.
YI, 25 Aug. 1920