These quotations are from "The Story Of My Experiments With Truth," the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi (1859-1948), published by the Beacon Press. This book is also available online at http://shubhayan.com.
A man of truth must also be a man of care.
A reformer cannot afford to have close intimacy with whom he seeks to reform . . . . for man takes in vice far more readily than virtue. And he who would be friends with God must remain alone, or make the whole world his friend.
Ethically [vegetarians] had arrived at the conclusion that mans supremacy over the lower animals meant not that the former should prey upon the latter, but that the higher should protect the lower, and that there should be mutual aid between the two as between man and man.
True knowledge is impossible without a Guru.
Three moderns have left a deep impress on my life, and captivated me: Raychandbhai by his living contact; Tolstoy by his book The Kingdom of God is Within You; and Ruskin by his Unto This Last.
The [Plymouth] Brother [an evangelical Christian sect, see http://www.gospeltruth.net] proved as good as his word. He knowingly committed transgressions, and showed me that he was undisturbed by the thought of them.
I had always heard the merchants say that truth was not possible in business.
Facts mean truth, and once we adhere to truth, the law comes to our aid naturally.
If God could have sons, all of us were His sons.
I felt that God could be realized only through service.
From God we could only ask for justice.
My experience has shown me that we win justice quickest by rendering justice to the other party.
But I can see today that we feel all the freer and lighter for having cast off the tinsel of 'civilization.'
I had in my speech described Western Civilization as being, unlike the Eastern, predominantly based on force.
It has become my firm conviction that it is not good to run public institutions on permanent funds.
So overpowering are the senses that they can be kept under control only when they are completely hedged in on all sides . . . .
To my mind the life of a lamb is no less precious than that of a human being. I should be unwilling to take the life of a lamb for the sake of the human body. I hold that, the more helpless a creature, the more entitled it is to protection by man from the cruelty of man.
As the elephant is powerless to think in terms of the ant, in spite of the best intentions in the world, even so is the Englishman powerless to think in terms of, or legislate for, the Indian.
It is a general practice, on the termination of a big war, to invest the Government of the day with special powers.
I understood the Gita teaching of non possession to mean that those who desired salvation should act like the trustee who, though having control over great possessions, regards not an iota of them as his own.
I have known only one way of carrying on missionary work, viz, by personal example and discussion with searchers for knowledge.
Experience has taught me . . . that it was wrong to have dwelt upon the relish of food. One should eat not in order to please the palate, but just to keep the body going.
[D]isinterested service of the people in any sphere ultimately helps the country politically.
The main thing was to rid the agriculturalists of their fear by making them realize that the officials were not the masters but the servants of the people, inasmuch as they received their salaries from the taxpayer.
When the fear of jail disappears, repression puts heart into the people.
The end of a Satyagrapha [civil disobedience] campaign can be described as worthy, only when it leaves the Satyagrahis stronger and more spiritual than they are in the beginning.
Before one can be fit for the practice of civil disobedience one must have rendered a willing and respectful obedience to the state laws. For the most part we obey such laws out of fear of the penalty for their breach, and this holds good particularly in respect of such laws as do not involve a moral principle.
A Satyagraphi obeys the laws of society intelligently and of his own free will, because he considers it to be his sacred duty to do so.
To see the universal and all-pervading Spirit of truth face to face one must be able to love the meanest of creatures as oneself.
[T]hose who say that religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion means.