I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, one hour in the day we should all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind.
Mental violence has no potency and injures only the person whose thoughts are violent. It is otherwise with mental non-violence. It has potency which the world does not yet know.
Purity of mind and idleness are incompatible.
The mind may wander, but let not the senses wander with it. If the senses wander where the mind takes them, one is done for.
I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind.
I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.
Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal responsibilities, federated into larger units in such a way that the temptation to abuse great power should not arise.
If you think the world is all wrong, remember that it contains people like you.
If we had the atom bomb, we would have used it against the British.
Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilized – the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.
A general belief seems to prevail in the colony that the Indians are little better, if at all, than the savages or natives of Africa. Even the children are taught to believe in that manner, with the result that the Indian is being dragged down to the position of a raw Kaffir.
There is always a limit to self-indulgence, but none to self-restraint.
As in laws or in war, the longest purse finally wins.
It hurts me to think that people in their rush for everything modern despise all their ancient traditions and ignore them in their lives.
The best politics is right action.
Faith is a function of the heart. It must be enforced by reason. The two are not antagonistic as some think. The more intense one’s faith is, the more it whets one’s reason. When faith becomes blind it dies.
The wind of God’s grace is incessantly blowing. Lazy sailors on the sea of life do not take advantage of it. But the active and strong always keep the sails of their minds unfurled to catch the favorable winds and thus reach their destination very soon.
Personally, I hold that a man, who deliberately and intelligently takes a pledge and then breaks it, forfeits his manhood.
Purity of life is the highest and truest art.
Why worry one’s head over a thing that is inevitable? Why die before one’s death?