Mahatma Gandhi

1869–1948 · Indian independence leader & apostle of nonviolence

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi led India’s independence movement through satyagraha — nonviolent civil resistance — and made a political method out of the claim that moral force outlasts physical force. He wrote constantly: his Collected Works run to roughly a hundred volumes, and he edited the weekly Young India for twelve years. That paper trail cuts both ways. It is why an unsourced Gandhi line deserves suspicion — and why a sourced one can be pinned down exactly, as this one is, to Young India of 11 August 1920 and volume 18 of the Collected Works.

Traced to source

8 quotes we’ve traced to Mahatma Gandhi

“Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.”

Verified

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong”

Verified

“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony”

Attributed

“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind”

Disputed

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”

Disputed

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”

Disputed

“I think it would be a good idea”

Disputed

“If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly”

Disputed

Not actually Mahatma Gandhi

Often misattributed to Mahatma Gandhi

Famous lines widely pinned on Mahatma Gandhi that we’ve traced to someone else.

“A patient is the most important person in our hospital. He is not an interruption to our work, he is the purpose of it”

actually Kenneth B. Elliott (original “customer” wording)

“An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind”

actually Unknown

“Be the change that you wish to see in the world”

actually Arleen Lorrance

“Be the change you wish to see in the world”

actually Arleen Lorrance

“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win”

actually Nicholas Klein

“God has no religion”

actually Henry Whitney Bellows

“I like your Christ. I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”

actually Unknown

“I think it would be a good idea”

actually Unknown

“If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly”

actually Earliest known use: George Hyde Preston, 1908 (QI unsure if he coined it)

“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever”

actually St Edmund of Abingdon (traditionally)

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

actually David Friedrich Strauss

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