Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

We are convinced that the institution of monarchy is incompatible with the spirit and needs of modern times which demand an egalitarian relationship between one citizen and another

The attempt to live that way, the attempt to treat everybody - it fails all the time - but the attempt to treat people as equals is a good attempt. It's a very good attempt. And there have been very few governments that have come anywhere near it in the past. The Greeks began to, the Romans began to - they both failed.

A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming - a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.

We must be thoroughly democratic and patronize everybody without distinction of class.

We are looking forward to a non-racial, just and egalitarian society in which color, creed and race shall form no point of reference.

Here, no privileged orders – no factitious distinctions in society – no hereditary nobility – no royal prerogatives exist, to interpose barriers between the people, and to create distinct classifications in society. All men being considered as enjoying an equality of rights, the propriety and necessity of dispensing, without distinction, the blessings of education ….

The function of democratic living is not to lower standards but to raise those that have been too low.

There should be no differentiation amongst the people. All should be treated as equals. On this basis the Brahmin must give up his false prestige. In the interest of the society. I say that the blind beliefs should be given up

Here everyone is his own master. Civil liberty places all inhabitants on an equal footing. The humble cannot be oppressed by the mighty, nor the poor by the rich.

There must be equality of all men before God and in a democratic society. Now that's one of the great achievements.

All the citizens of a state cannot be equally powerful, but they may be equally free

The form of government and the condition of society must always correspond. Social equality is therefore a postulate of pure democracy.

The vulgar charge that the tendency of democracies is to leveling, meaning to drag all down to the level of the lowest, is singularly untrue; its real tendency being to elevate the depressed to a condition not unworthy of their manhood.

I tasted the bread and wine of equality.

A society that aims for equality before liberty will end up with neither equality nor liberty. And a society that aims first for liberty will not end up with equality, but it will end up with a closer approach to equality than any other kind of system that has ever been developed.

The principle of equality does not destroy the imagination, but lowers its flight to the level of the earth.

The democrats think that as they are equal they ought to be equal in all things.

My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest... no country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak... Western democracy, as it functions today, is diluted fascism... true democracy cannot be worked by twenty men sitting at the center. It has to be worked from below, by the people of every village.

Without equality, I say, there cannot be liberty.

It has ever been my hobby-horse to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment, and preserve our equality as long as we can. A better system of education for the common people might preserve them long from such artificial inequalities as are prejudicial to society, by confounding the natural distinctions of right and wrong, virtue and vice.

What will drive people if they don't have money or reward? The reward is the end of war, the end of poverty, most crime, and the end of begging for medical care. Everyone will be cared for and educated. There will be no taxation, and no advantage group. No technical elitism, or any other kind of elitism. If that isn't incentive enough, then I don't know what is.

Not in vain has Lincoln lived, for he has helped to make this republic an example of justice, with no caste but the caste of humanity.

The equality of rights of all citizens is the basic tenet of modern democratic societies.

In a true democracy of India, the unit is the village.

A state of equality is perhaps less elevated, but it is more just; and its justice constitutes its greatness and beauty.