Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, commonly known as Bapu, was an Indian lawyer, anti-colonial nationalist and political ethicist who employed nonviolent resistance to lead the successful campaign for India’s independence from British rule, and to later inspire movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.
Having a leadership position is different from being an influential leader. The latter is guided by principles and understanding the true nature of leadership. Follow the steps of one of the renowned leaders of all times. The Mahatma Gandhi Quotes will teach you what it means to be a revolutionary leader of your time.
The best way to find yourself, is to lose yourself in the service of others – Mahatma Gandhi
Most people have always thought that leading is a position where people serve you. The service that comes to you should be one that you rendered before. A good leader understands that they are chosen or appointed to serve others.
A leader whose main focus is the people he leads becomes happy and finds loyal subjects. This leadership skill is called the bottom to top leadership.
Motivational Quotes of Gandhi
“The future depends on what we do in the present.”
“Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself.”
“If you want to change the world, start with yourself.”
“My life is my message.”
“Compassion is a muscle that gets stronger with use.”
“Man should forget his anger before he lies down to sleep.”
“To lose patience is to lose the battle.”
“Find purpose. The means will follow.”
“Be the change you are trying to create.”
“Those who know how to think need no teachers.”
“Full effort is full victory.”
“Prayer from the heart can achieve what nothing else can in the world.”
“Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.”
“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
“People cannot hurt you without your permission.”
“Life is but an endless series of experiments.”
“Continue to grow and evolve.”
“Satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment, full effort is full victory.”
“Everyone who wills can hear the inner voice. It is within everyone.”
“Those with the greatest awareness have the greatest nightmares.”
“Live simply so that others may simply live.”
“No man loses his freedom except through his own weakness.”
“Whenever you are confronted with an opponent. Conquer him with love.”
“It is better to allow our lives to speak for us than our words.”
“Where there is love there is life.”
“Your action expresses your priorities.”
“Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening.”
“Self-respect knows no considerations.”
“Love is the strongest force the world possesses and yet it is the humblest imaginable.”
“I am a man of peace. I believe in peace. But I do not want peace at any price.”
“Our greatest ability as humans is not to change the world; but to change ourselves.”
“It does not require money, to live neat, clean and dignified.”
“Speak only if it improves upon the silence.”
“It’s easy to stand with the crowd. It takes courage to stand alone.”
Famous and Inspiring Gandhi Quotes.
“Strength does not come from winning. When you go through hardships and decide not to surrender, that is strength.”
“Carefully watch your thoughts, for they become your words. Manage and watch your words, for they will become your actions. Consider and judge your actions, for they have become your habits. Acknowledge and watch your habits, for they shall become your values. Understand and embrace your values, for they become your destiny.”
“Relationships are based on four principles: respect, understanding, acceptance and appreciation.”
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
“There are two days in the year that we can not do anything, yesterday and tomorrow.”
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold and silver.”
“Each night, when I go to sleep, I die. And the next morning, when I wake up, I am reborn.”
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
“Look at the sparrows; they do not know what they will do in the next moment. Let us literally live from moment to moment.”
“Man often becomes what he believes himself to be. If I keep on saying to myself that I cannot do a certain thing, it is possible that I may end by really becoming incapable of doing it. On the contrary, if I have the belief that I can do it, I shall surely acquire the capacity to do it even if I may not have it at the beginning.”
“Do not judge others. Be your own judge and you will be truly happy. If you will try to judge others, you are likely to burn your fingers.”
“The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“Many people, especially ignorant people, want to punish you for speaking the truth, for being correct, for being you. Never apologize for being correct, or for being years ahead of your time. If you’re right and you know it, speak your mind. Speak your mind. Even if you are a minority of one, the truth is still the truth.”
“Knowledge gained through experience is far superior and many times more useful than bookish knowledge.”
“The enemy is fear. We think it is hate but it is fear.”
“It’s the action, not the fruit of the action, that’s important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be in your power, may not be in your time, that there’ll be any fruit. But that doesn’t mean you stop doing the right thing. You may never know what results come from your action. But if you do nothing, there will be no result.”
“The law of love could be best understood and learned through little children.”
“Strength does not come from physical capacity, it comes from indomitable will.”
“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.”
“For me, the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore, they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect.”
“To believe in something, and not to live it, is dishonest.”
“When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books.”
“The real love is to love them that hate you, to love your neighbor even though you distrust him.”
“Truth is by nature self-evident. As soon as you remove the cobwebs of ignorance that surround it, it shines clear.”
“The future depends on what you do today.”
“A small group of determined and like-minded people can change the course of history.”
“When you are right, you have no need to be angry. When you are wrong, you have no right to be angry.”
“Nothing has saddened me so much in life as the hardness of heart of educated people.”
“If we want to reach real peace in this world, we should start educating children.”
“Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilization.”
“There is nothing that wastes the body like worry, and one who has any faith in God should be ashamed to worry about anything whatsoever.”
“A person who is worried about the outcome of his work does not see his goal; he sees only his opposition and the obstacles before him.”
“Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s needs, but not every man’s greed.”
“Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it. But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth.”
“It’s not too late at all. You just don’t yet know what you are capable of.”
“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.”
“A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act.”
“You yourself as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection.”
“Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.”
“The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems.”
“Nothing is impossible for pure love.”
“There is no school equal to a decent home and no teacher equal to a virtuous parent.”
“Every home is a university and the parents are the teachers.”
“I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.”
“Prayer is a confession of one’s own unworthiness and weakness.”
“I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen.”
“To give pleasure to a single heart by a single act is better than a thousand heads bowing in prayer.”
“Man is a product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
“The test of friendship is assistance in adversity, and that too, unconditional assistance, Co-operation which needs consideration is as a commercial contract and not friendship. Conditional co-operation is like adulterated cement which does not bind.”
“Each one has to find his peace from within. And peace to be real must be unaffected by outside circumstances.”
“One must become as humble as the dust before he can discover truth.”
“The good man is the friend of all living things.”
“I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.”
“Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.”
“You may think your actions are meaningless and that they won’t help, but that is no excuse, you must still act.”
“If you’re going to be a bear, be a grizzly.”
“Fear of disease killed more men than disease itself.”
“You can chain me, you can torture me, you can even destroy this body, but you will never imprison my mind.”
“My uniform experience has convinced me that there is no other God than Truth.”
“I look only to the good qualities of men. Not being faultless myself, I won’t presume to probe into the faults of others.”
“Love never claims, it ever gives.”
“Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them – a desire, a dream, a vision.”
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
“Let your life be your message.”
“My faith is brightest in the midst of impenetrable darkness.”
“We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor… Millions will always remain poor.”
“If patience is worth anything, it must endure to the end of time. And a living faith will last in the midst of the blackest storm.”
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“What is true of the individual will be tomorrow true of the whole nation if individuals will but refuse to lose heart and hope.”
“Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality. Cowards can never be moral.”
“People say true friends must always hold hands, but true friends don’t need to hold hands because they know the other hand will always be there.”
“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.”
“I believe that a man is the strongest soldier for daring to die unarmed.”
“To me I seem to be constantly growing. I must respond to varying conditions, yet remain changeless within.”
“I refuse to believe that the tendency of human nature is always downward.”
“There are many causes I would die for. There is not a single cause I would kill for.”
“You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing, there will be no results.”
“Change yourself – you are in control.”
“Peace is the most powerful weapon of mankind.”
“I learned from Hussain how to be wronged and be a winner, I learnt from Hussain how to attain victory while being oppressed.”
“I don’t reject Christ. I love Christ. It’s just that so many of you Christians are so unlike Christ.”
“The greatness of a nation and it’s moral progress can be judged by the way it’s animals are treated.”
“Power is of two kinds. One is obtained by the fear of punishment and the other by acts of love. Power based on love is a thousand times more effective and permanent then the one derived from fear of punishment.”
“You can’t shake hands with a closed fist.”
“To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that one that must be loved is not a friend. There is not merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend.”
“When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it – always.”
“Faith is not something to grasp, it is a state to grow into.”
“God can never be realized by one who is not pure of heart.”
“There is goodness as well as greatness in simplicity, not in wealth.”
“I will not let anyone walk through my mind with their dirty feet.”
“I know, to banish anger altogether from one’s breast is a difficult task. It cannot be achieved through pure personal effort. It can be done only by God’s grace.”
“I offer you peace. I offer you love. I offer you friendship. I see your beauty. I hear your need. I feel your feelings.”
“See the good in people and help them.”
“Where there is love there is light.”
“Seek not greater wealth, but simpler pleasure; not higher fortune, but deeper felicity.”
I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people – Mahatma Gandhi
How mistaken have we been in choosing leaders based on their outward appearance? The physically strong may not necessarily be strong in character. This quote shows that a good leader MUST have a good working relationship with his/her subjects.
If you do not get along with your subjects, how will you lead? You will not be able to command respect and provide direction to individuals under your leadership.
We 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 – Mahatma Gandhi
A good leader must hope and persevere. In other instances, you will encounter very different personalities. Some will not have the same mind as yours. Others will have poor judgment of who you are or even good ideas. These few individuals should not discourage you from continuing to serve.
You should also not be misguided by a few individuals to allow you to make blanket conclusions for the rest. Understand the diversity of humanity and the purity it contains. Do not lose hope.
These Gandhi Quotes are respected because of the nature of life that the author lived. These sayings must have guided him to be the person that he was during his lifetime. If you follow these quotes and heed to their direction, you are guaranteed to succeed and be happy in any position you find yourself in.