Mohandas Gandhi (1869-1948) was born a Hindu Indian in western India, Gandhi studied law in London, and then lived in South Africa where he first employed nonviolent resistance in a campaign for civil rights. Returned to India, he organized peasants, farmers, and urban laborers to protest against discrimination. Later he led nationwide campaigns for easing poverty, expanding women's rights, building religious and ethnic amity, and ending untouchability. He inspired movements for civil rights and freedom across the world.

Below, you will find some particularly salient and provocative quotations of Gandhi, well-worthy of meditating carefully.

• God has no religion.
• To be a Christian means to forgive the inexcusable because God has forgiven the inexcusable in you. — God is, even though the whole world denies him. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self-sustained. Continue reading . . .
• Difficulties are meant to rouse, not discourage. The human spirit is to grow strong by conflict.
• If a man reaches the heart of his own religion, he has reached the heart of the others, too. There is only one God, and there are many paths to him.
• God is an unutterable sigh, planted in the depths of the soul.
• I hold it blasphemy to say that the Creator resides in a temple from which a particular class of His devotees sharing faith in it are excluded.
• God cannot be realized through the intellect. Intellect can lead one to a certain extent and no further. It is a matter of faith and experience derived from that faith.
• You will not pit one word of God against another word of God.
• My religion is based on truth and non-violence. Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.
• When we fear God, then we shall fear no man, however high-placed he may be.
• Nonviolence is an attribute of the Almighty whose ways of fulfilling Himself are inscrutable.
• This belief in God has to be based on faith which transcends reason.
• Even the atheists, who have pretended to disbelieve in God, have believed in Truth.
• This feeling of helplessness in us has arisen from our deliberate dismissal of God from our common affairs.

Edited by Fr. Lloyd Baugh SJ