Mahatma Gandhi Quotes on Life
Mahatma Gandhi understood life as a unified moral and spiritual whole, and the quotes gathered here express that conviction. Life is one indivisible whole, he wrote, so that integrity in one sphere cannot be separated from conduct in another. For Gandhi the purpose of life is service: the body, he held, is meant solely for service, never for indulgence, and renunciation, far from being a denial of life, is life itself. He extended moral concern beyond humanity to all living things, finding in his understanding of Hinduism a brotherhood not only of all mankind but of all that lives. His widely quoted call to be the change is paired here with his fuller statement that we mirror the world and must therefore reform ourselves first. Drawn from his journals and addresses, these passages tie the conduct of life to service, simplicity, and self-reform.
Quotes
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“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
We but mirror the world . All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body . If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. -
Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi:
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
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“Ours is one continual struggle against a degradation sought to be inflicted upon us by the Europeans , who desire to degrade us to the level of the raw Kaffir whose occupation is hunting, and whose sole ambition is to collect a certain number of cattle to buy a wife with and, then, pass his life in indolence and nakedness.”
Address given in Bombay (26 September 1896), Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi , Vol. 1, p. 410 (Electronic Book), New Delhi, Publications Division Government of India, 1999, 98 volumes. -
“The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence . The secret of happy life lies in renunciation . Renunciation is life. Indulgence spells death.”
1940s | Harijan , (24 February 1946), p. 19 -
“For one man cannot do right in one department of life whilst he is occupied in doing wrong in any other department. Life is one indivisible whole.”
1920s | Young India (27 January 1927) -
“Now when we talk of brotherhood of men, we stop there and feel that all other life is there for man to exploit for his own purposes. But Hinduism excludes all exploitation.”
1920s | Young India (26 December 1926) -
“"To deprive a man of his natural liberty and to deny to him the ordinary amenities of life is worse than starving the body.”
1930s -
“Hinduism insists on the brotherhood of not only all mankind but of all that lives.”
1930s | Harijan, 28-3-1936