"Before [Hindus and Moslems] dare think of freedom, they must be brave enough to love one another, to tolerate one another's religion, even prejudices and superstitions, and to trust one another. This requires faith in oneself."
"[ An american clergyman once asked Gandhi what caused him most concern.] The hardness of heart of the educated [Gandhi replied]. . . . . If you [students] spend your next vacation in some far-off village in the interior you . . . will find the people cheerless and fear-stricken. You will find houses in ruins. You will look in vain for any sanitary or hygenic conditions. You will find the cattle in a miserable way, and yet you will see idleness stalking there. The people will tell you of the spinning wheels having been in their homes long ago . . . . They have no hope left in them. They live, fo r they cannot die at will. They will spin only if you spin. Even if a hundred out of a population of three hundred in a village spin, you assure them of an additional income of 1,800 rupees ($360) a year. You can lay the founation of solid reform on this income in every village. . . . Start with the faith that if you fix yourself up in one single village and succeed, the rest will follow. . . . Students have to react upon the dumb millions. They have to learn to think not in terms of a province or a town or a class or a caste, but in terms of a continent and of the millions who include untouchables, drunkards, hooligans and even prostitutes, for whose existence in our midst everyone of us is responsible."
"When it is difficult for millions to make even the two ends meet, when millions are dying of starvation, it is monstrous to think of giving our relatives a costly education. Expansion of the mind will come from hard experience, not necessarily in the college or in the schoolroom. . . . The golden rule to apply in all such cases is resolutely to refuse to have what millions cannot. THis ability to refuse will not descend upon us all of a sudden. The first thing is to cultivate the mental attitude that we will not have possessions or facilities denied to millions, and the next immediate thing is to rearrange our lives as fast as possible in accordance with our mentality."
I am not conscious of a single experience throughout my three months' stay in ENgland and Europe that amed em feel that after all East is East and West is West. On the contrary, I have been convinced more than ever that human nature is much the same, no matter under what clime it flourishes, and that if you approached peopel with trust and affection you would have ten-fold trust and thousand-fold affection returned to you.
". . . .I cannot imagine anything nobler or more national than that for, say, none hour in the day we sould all do the labor the poor must do, and thus identify ourselves with them and through them, with all mankind. "
"[It] is impossible for us to establish a living vital connection with the masses unless we will work for them, through them and in their midst, not as their parons but as their servants."
"He who trusts has never yet lost in the world. A suspicious man is lost to himself and the eworld. . . . Suspicion is of the brood of violence. Non-violence cannot but trust....
I well remember how the thoughts I had up to the time of my discharge from the jail on every occasion were modified immediately after discharge, and after getting first-hand information myself. Somehow or other the jail atmosphere does not allow you to have all the bearings in your mind.
There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves. AL birth takes place in a moment.
We notice that the mind is a restless bird; the more it gets the more it wants, and still remains unsatisfied. The more we indulge our passions the more unbridled they become. Our ancestors, therefore, set a limit to our indulgences. They saw that happiness was largely a mental condition. A man is not necessarily happy because he is rich, or unhappy because he is poor. . . . Millions will always remain poor.
