Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi is recognized as one of history’s greatest spiritual and political leaders.
Born in 1869 in India, Gandhi earned the title “father of the nation” in India for pioneering mass nonviolent civil disobedience, a tactic used to resist tyranny. He was imprisoned multiple times for his activism through noncooperation.
Gandhi is credited with easing poverty, promoting religious harmony, expanding women’s rights and his role in freeing India from British domination, per Youth for Human Rights.
Civil rights leaders — such as Nelson Mandela and Martin Luther King Jr. — have credited Gandhi as an inspiration in their own battles for civil rights.
He was known as Mahatma or “the great-soul” by his followers. Here are 10 of his most famous quotes.
What are Gandhi’s best quotes?
- “A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes,” per Business Insider India.
- “There are two days in the year that we can not do anything, yesterday and tomorrow,” per Parade.
- “To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man’s superior,” per Business Insider India.
- “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony,” per India Times.
- “If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change. As a man changes his own nature, so does the attitude of the world change towards him. We need not wait to see what others do,” per Business Insider India.
- “In doing something, do it with love or never do it at all,” per Parade.
- “When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways 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,” per Youth for Human Rights.
- “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,” per India Times.
- “The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong,” per India Times.
- “The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others,” per Parade.