• Ahimsa does not simply mean non-killing. Himsa means causing pain to or killing any life out of anger or for a selfish purpose or with the intention of injuring it. Refraining from so doing is ahimsa. Ahimsa means not to injure any creature by thought, word or deed. True ahimsa should mean a complete freedom from ill- will and anger and hate and an overflowing love for all. Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul and therefore to be practiced by everybody in all the affairs of life.
   
• Nonviolence is an active force of the highest order.
   
• The common factor of all religion is nonviolence.
   
• Nonviolence is not merely a personal virtue. It is also a social virtue to be cultivated like other virtues.
   
• All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be vain if at the same time you do not build your character and attain mastery over your thoughts and actions.
   
• I believe that true democracy can only be an outcome of nonviolence. The structure of a world federation can be raised only on a foundation of nonviolence and violence will have to be totally given up in world affairs.
   
• I will give you a Talisman. Whenever you are in doubt or when the self becomes too much with you, apply the following test: Recall the face of the poorest and the weakest man whom you may have seen and ask yourself if the step you contemplate is going to be of any use to him. Will he gain anything by it? Will it restore him to control over his own life and destiny? In other words, will it lead to Swaraj for hungry and spiritually starving millions? Then you will find your doubts and yourself melting away.
   
• Truth is what the voice within tells you. Truth and nonviolence are perhaps the active forces you have in the world. Truth alone will endure; all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.
   
• Truth is my religion and ahimsa is the only way of its realization. Search for truth is search for God. Truth is God. God is because truth is. The freedom from all attachment is the realization of God as truth.
   
• Hate the sin, love the sinner.
   
• Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.
   
• I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.
   
• You must be the change, You want to see in the world.
   
• An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.
   
• My faith burns bright, as I hope it will even if I stood alone.
   
• I shall be alive in my grave, and what is more, speaking from it.
   
• I know of no greater sin than to oppress the innocent in the name of God.
   
• I do not want to foresee the future. I am concerned with taking care of the present. God has given me no control over the moment following.
   
• The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.
   
• The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still voice within.
   
• There is more to life than simply increasing its speed.
   
• The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.
   
• Peace will not come out of a clash of arms but out of justice lived and done by unarmed nations in the face of odds.
   
• Democracy and violence can ill go together. Evolution of democracy is not possible if we are not prepared to hear the other side.
   
• A coward is incapable of exhibiting love; it is the prerogative of the brave.
   
• What kind of victory is it when someone is left defeated?
   
• Violent means will give violent freedom.
   
• You assist an evil system most effectively by obeying its orders and decrees.
   
• Destruction is not the law of humans.
   
• Man’s nature is not essentially evil.
   
• If we could erase the “I’s” and “mine’s” from religion, politics, economics, etc., we should soon be free and bring heaven upon earth.
   
• I have learnt through the bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted in to a power which can move the world.
   
• I am but a seeker after truth….. To find Truth completely is to realize oneself and one’s destiny, i.e., to become perfect. I am painfully conscious of my imperfections, and therein lay all the strength I possess.
   
• Defeat cannot dishearten me. It can only chasten me. Im know that God will guide me. Truth is superior to man’s wisdom.
   
• Often in my progress I have had faint glimpses of the absolute Truth, God; and daily, the conviction is growing upon me that He alone is real and all else is unreal.
   
• Life is an aspiration. Its mission is to strive after perfection. This is self-realization. The ideal must not be lowered because of our weaknesses or imperfections.
   
• In the final analysis a man is guided in his conduct by his own inner prompting's, though the examples of others may sometimes seem to guide him.
   
• There only is life where there is love. Life without love is death. Love is the reverse of the coin of which is the obverse is the truth. It is my firm faith that we can conquer the whole world by truth and love.
   
• I can see that in the midst of darkness light persists. Hence I gather that God is Life and Truth. He is Love. He is the supreme Good.
   
• I have no special revelation of God’s will. My firm belief is that He reveals Himself daily to every human being, but we shut our ears to the “the still small voice”. We shut our eyes to “the pillar of fire” in front of us. I realize His Omnipresence.
   
• I may be despicable person, but when Truth speaks through me I am Invincible.
   
• I know that I can do nothing. God can do every thing. O God, make me Thy fit instrument and use me as Thou wilt!
   
• God simply is to those who have faith. He is all things to all men. He is in us and yet above and beyond us. He cannot cease to be because hideous immoralities or inhuman brutalities are committed in His name. He is long-suffering. He is patient but He is also terrible.
   
• I am endeavoring to see God through service to humanity. For I know that God is neither in heaven, nor down below, but in everyone.
   
• All the power I may have come from God. But He does not work directly. He works through His numberless agencies.
   
• When every hope is gone, “when helpers fail and comforts flee” I experience that help arrives somehow, from I know not where. Supplication, worship, prayer are no superstition; they are more real acts than the acts of eating, drinking sitting or walking. It is no exaggeration to say that they (thoughts of God) alone are real, all else is unreal.
   
• Prayer needs no speech. It is in itself independent of any sensuous effort. I have not the slightest doubt that prayer is an unfailing means of cleansing the heart of passions. But it must be combined with the utmost humility.
   
• As food is necessary for the body. Prayer is necessary for the soul. Prayer is an impossibility without a living faith in the presence of God within. God demands nothing less than complete self-surrender as the price for the only real freedom that is worth having.
   
• God never answers the prayer of the arrogant, nor the prayers of those who bargains with Him. If you would ask Him to help you, go to Him in all your nakedness; approach Him without reservations, also without fear or doubts as to how He can help a fallen being like you.
   
• Prayer is the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening. “It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart”. (Bunyan)
   
• I have found people who envy my peace. That peace comes from prayer; I am not a man of learning but I humbly claim to be a man of prayer. I am indifferent as to the form. Everyone is a law unto Himself in the respect.

The word for “Peace” in different languages

• Salaam – Arabic/Iranian
   
• Heping –Chinese, Mandarin
   
• Kapayapaan - Filipino
   
• Paix - French
   
• Friede - German
   
• Irini - Greek
   
• Maluhia - Hawaiian
   
• Shalom - Hebrew
   
• Shanti - Indian
   
• Pace - Italian
   
• Heiwa - Japanese
   
• Pyonghwa - Korean
   
• Pax - Latin
   
• Mari Rangi Maria – Maori
   
• Meleilei – Micronesia, Pohnpei
   
• Mir - Russian
   
• La Paz - Spanish
   
• Amani - Swahili
   
• Shite - Tibetan
   
• Thanh Binh - Vietnamese