Top 433 Gandhi Quotes & Sayings

I always remind people why The Oscars got started in 1928: It was an effort by the studios to suppress the unions. They started the Academy because all the screenwriters and directors and actors were unionizing, and they thought, "We'll have something that resembles a union, but that's completely controlled by the moneyed interests in Hollywood." That's what it's been all these years. It's something that reinforces Hollywood's image of itself. The Best Picture one year was Gandhi. Nobody watched Gandhi, but that's the kind of picture that always wins.

People often ask me: Who has influenced you the most? Your father? Mahatma Gandhi? Yes, my choices were fundamentally influenced by them, by the spirit of equality they infused in me - my obsession for justice comes from my father, who in turn got it from Mahatma Gandhi.

Certainly, Gandhi is not inferior to Christ in goodness and sanctity, and he surpasses him in touching humility. Gandhi is the prophet of hope in this age of pessimism and disillusionment. He is a promise of sanity in the madness induced by our world's heedless drinking at the fount of war.

Between what is going on in Iraq and Mumia being locked up unjustly, things going on in Israel, Palestine, we don't really have anyone right now like Gandhi. We don't have anyone like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X anymore. It's really a reference to a vision of hope, like someone like Gandhi.

I've only cried at one book, but I'm too embarrassed to tell you which. It wasn't terribly intellectual. I will admit, though, to crying when I've read books aloud to my elementary class. We read a biography of Gandhi once, and it was very difficult to read the part where Gandhi was killed, because they were waiting for a happy ending.

I see my shows like Gandhi, and I've got little baby Gandhis, and they are changing the world. I know that I'm a bit delusional about that, but I do think of them like Gandhi. They are not celebrities: they are like Gandhi and Mother Teresa.

My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love. . . .

My father thought Gandhi was a great man. I suppose subconsciously, consciously even, I was aware that I wanted to please him and Ma, so I thought doing something like 'Gandhi' would be phenomenal.

Attenborough's 'Gandhi' shook me as a filmmaker.

I would love to play Indira Gandhi.

About Mahatma Gandhi: Great in taking decisions, great in executing them, Mahatma Gandhi was incomparably great in the last stand which he made on behalf of his country. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest men the world has ever seen. The world hath need of him, and if he is mocked and jeered at by "the people of importance," "the people with a stake in this country," - the Scribes and Pharisees of the days of Christ - he will be gratefully remembered, now and always, by a nation which he led from victory to victory.

Mr. Gandhi, you have been working fifteen hours a day for fifty years. Don't you think you should take a vacation?" Gandhi smiled and replied, "I am always on vacation.

I am a follower of Mahatma Gandhi.

Gandhi was a David with no material weapon.. not even a slingshot.

I'm a very gentle man, not unlike Gandhi.

The British Airways steward announced that the in-flight movie would be Chariots of Fire. 'Is that the only one?' I asked. 'We are also showing Gandhi,' he replied. 'Where do I have to sit to see it?" I responded. 'I'm sorry, sir, but Gandhi is only showing in first class.' The irony seemed to escape him.

Gandhi: Ninny of the 20th Century.

I have no desire to advise the Gandhi family.

Gandhi protested against restrictive policies. So did 'Guru.'

Unfortunately, though both Mahatma Gandhi and Narendra Modi hail from Gujarat, Gandhi never lied, and Modi never speaks the truth.

According to Gandhi, the seven sins are wealth without works, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, worship without sacrifice, and politics without principle. Well, Hubert Humphrey may have sinned in the eyes of God, as we all do, but according to those definitions of Gandhi's, it was Hubert Humphrey without sin.

For the Gandhi family, U.P. elections have always been a big picnic.

Gandhi was a strange guy. There was this simplistic manner; but nobody knows what it cost to provide the simple life of Mohandas Gandhi. Nobody. He traveled on a train by himself.

I know my limitations. I live and work according to my limitations. And my party only two weeks ago has clearly declared that the leader of the party after Ms Sonia Gandhi will be Mr Rahul Gandhi. And all of us, including me, have expressed our solid support to Mr Rahul Gandhi.

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving toward a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore Gandhi at our own risk.

Gandhi is the other person. I believe Gandhi is the only person who knew about real democracy — not democracy as the right to go and buy what you want, but democracy as the responsibility to be accountable to everyone around you. Democracy begins with freedom from hunger, freedom from unemployment, freedom from fear, and freedom from hatred. To me, those are the real freedoms on the basis of which good human societies are based.

I wish I could say to all those people who consider themselves anarchists or radicals: Please join the nonviolent movement. This is how Gandhi freed India. If Gandhi freed India, we can certainly free the United States from our racism, misogyny, and bigotry.

Ben Kingsley was my ideal choice for Gandhi, and he really lived up to the expectations of an international audience. I did not find any Indian actor worthy to perform the role of Gandhi in the early Eighties, though there were brilliant performers like Naseeruddin Shah in India.

Like Gandhi, my husband had struggled with the issue of materialism.

My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.

Gandhi wanted to meet with Churchill, his most bitter foe, when he visited London in 1931- but it didn't happen. Churchill wanted to go to India personally as prime minister in 1942 to negotiate a final settlement on India with Gandhi and the other nationalist leaders - but the fall of Singapore prevented it from happening.

I follow the ideology of Gandhi and Nehru.

Mandela didn't end Apartheid in South Africa, the poor guy was in jail for 27 years, it was the African people that ended it but he was a symbol of their struggle. Or Gandhi in India, Gandhi was a great believer in non-violence and he was in and out of jail, but India became free. I think it's better to look at what people can do collectively and that's why it's so important to encourage them.

There is a scene in Richard Attenborough's biopic where Gandhi argues with his wife because she refuses to clean their latrine. She says it is the work of untouchables; he tells her there is no such thing. Gandhi's tactics of encouraging brotherly love across caste boundaries and urging Indians to clean their own latrines had failed miserably.

Gandhi, who went to Wendy's and asked, "Where's the belief?" Never got a dinner!

Now, Rahul Gandhi has offered Rs 72,000 per annum scheme to every poor person in India. It is a miracle scheme. While Modi failed to give Rs 15 lakh he promised to every poor person, Congress will fulfil its promise as it did earlier. That is why Rahul Gandhi is hero while Modi is zero.

Where is the Palestinian Gandhi?

There is no one to talk to since Mahatma Gandhi died.

Indira Gandhi had been this very powerful, dominating, ambiguous mother figure. Ambiguous because she was tyrannical, she had imposed...she had suspended Indian democracy for a few years but she also was the woman who had defeated Pakistan in war at a time when most male politicians in India had secretly feared fighting that war, so that here in India even today Indira Gandhi is called by Indian nationalists the only man ever to have governed India.

There is no question in my mind: reading Gandhi's autobiography changed my life.

From my Christian formation've gotten my ideals and technique Gandhi action

If it was not for Rajiv Gandhi, urbanization in India would have been history.

I don't want to throw mud at anyone - I really admire Gandhi as a brilliant strategist - but Gandhi was pretty manipulative, you know.

By the time Gandhi met Muhammad Ali in Delhi in April 1915it was, Gandhi said, 'love at first sight.'

Let Rahul Gandhi become PM if he can. We experimented with Narendra Modi and look where we have landed. Let's experiment with Rahul Gandhi, or anybody. It can't be worse than this.

Sonia Gandhi and her husband have always been persons I look at with a lot of respect. Of course, one of the reasons we look at India with a lot of sympathy and enthusiasm is Sonia Gandhi. Now she is Indian, not Italian, but she will always represent a myth for Italians.

If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.

Sonia Gandhi is great. She is adorable.

Yes, he [Mahatma Gandhi] was a great man. However...between me and Gandhi there was never the understanding there was between me and my father.

I have nothing to do with this pseudo-religious approach that Gandhi is advocating.

I can't play Mahatma Gandhi.

Often, we feel that we need a leader outside of ourselves -a Buddha, a Gandhi, or a Martin Luther King, Jr.- to show the way. But we have the Buddha inside of us. We have Gandhi and King inside of us as well. We are interconnected. We don't need to wait for some other person to be the change we want to see in the world

Since when has the Congress become protector of judiciary? Do I have to remind how Indira Gandhi treat the judiciary when one verdict went against them? Rajeev Gandhi in 1988 almost brought the bill, and during that phase, how many cases were filed against the media? And their son and grandson is talking about press freedom.

I came to Bombay in January 1981. It was primarily for 'Gandhi.'

Congress is hiding the details of their party president Rahul Gandhi's citizenship. Rahul Gandhi's real name is Rahul Vincy. They are cheating people by hiding the real names of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra.

The leaders who we admire who have been able to bring great change in the past - Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela - they're all inspirational religious leaders and smart tacticians. It would be nice to find the Muslim Gandhi, wouldn't it?

In the wise words of Mahatma Gandhi: have a sense of humor.

I take it, then, Vijay, you are still a virgin?'Yes, and I find it extremely galling. When Gandhi was my age he had already been married three years.'No wonder Gandhi turned out to be a great man. When you get your love life nailed down that early, think of all the time it frees up to devote to Great Ideas.

I'm a liberal and I'm left of Gandhi and I don't like Trump.