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Language Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

65 Language quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

All Language quotes Mahatma Gandhi’s page

Language here is used to call for unity and to push back against foreign control. The speaker says the fight is against exploitation, not against people, and he mixes respect for the British with a strong wish for freedom from their rules. He also urges letting go of an English obsession to achieve true self‑rule.

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Faith is not imparted like secular subjects. It is given through the language of the heart.

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Languages proclaim that woman is half of man, and by parity of reasoning, man is half of woman.

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What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of the British or foreign rule.

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The English language is so elastic that you can find another word to say the same thing.

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It was not through democratic methods that Britain bagged India.

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A smattering of English is worse than useless; it is an unnecessary tax on our women.

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It's not just words. Action expresses priorities.

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My attitude towards the British is one of utter friendliness and respect.

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It is derogatory to the dignity of mankind, it is derogatory to the dignity of India, to entertain for one single moment…

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My personal religion enables me to serve my countrymen without hurting the English or, for that matter, anybody else.

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Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds.

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We Hindus and Mohamedans would have to blame our folly rather than the English, if we allowed them to put us asunder.

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Through the deliverance of India, I seek to deliver the so-called weaker races of the earth from the crushing heels of Western…

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Of all the superstitions that affect India, none is so great as that a knowledge of the English language is necessary for…

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My mission is to convert every Indian, every Englishman and finally the world to nonviolence for regulating mutual relations, whether political, economic,…

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I refuse to put the unnecessary strain of learning English upon my sisters for the sake of false pride or questionable social…

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Human language can but imperfectly describe God's ways. I am sensible of the fact that they are indescribable and inscrutable. But if…

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“If we have lost faith in our vernaculars, it is a sign of want of faith in ourselves; it is the surest…

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Ram Mohan Roy would have been a greater reformer and Lokmanya Tilak a greater scholar if they had not to start with…

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To get rid of the infatuation for English is one of the essentials of Swaraj.

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India is less manly under the British rule than she ever was before.

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The British are weak in numbers, we are weak in spite of our numbers.

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My love of the British is equal to that of my own people.

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Human language can but imperfectly describe God's ways.

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I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers.

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Englishmen must learn to be Brahmins, not banias.

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Our nonviolence vis-а-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak.

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The British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe.

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I claim to have been a lifelong and wholly disinterested friend of the British people.

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If you must kill English officials, why not kill me instead?

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Man can only describe God in his own poor language.

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The Britisher is the top dog and the Indian the underdog in his own country.

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If we have listening ears, God speaks to us in our own language, whatever that language be

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A language is an exact reflection of the character and growth of its speakers.

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There is as much need for a change of heart among the Hindus and Mussalmans as there is among the British, before…

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I am just not thinking of India's deliverance. It will come, but will it be worth if England and France fall, or…

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For my own part, I do not want the freedom of India if it means extinction of English or the disappearance of…

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The collectors of revenue and the policeman are the only symbols by which millions in India's villages know British rule.

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I may fight the British ruler, but I do not hate the English or their language. In fact, I appreciate their literary…

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A satyagrahi is sometimes bound to use language which is capable of two meanings, provided both the meanings are obvious and necessary…

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More by Mahatma Gandhi

I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death…

Devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness.

No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation.

So long as we fear the outside world, we must cease to think of Swaraj.

I do not want a kingdom, or heaven; what I want is to remove the trouble of the oppressed, the poor, and the needy.

Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them.

I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to…

“Where there is life.”

If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the…

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison.

My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention."

I have no disciples, being myself an aspirant after discipleship and in search of a guru.

Man becomes not the lord and master of all creation but he is its servant.