To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that one that must be loved is not a friend. There is not merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend.
Mahatma GandhiRead
As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves.
Interpretation
What this quote means
True greatness comes from personal transformation rather than attempting to change the world.
Mahatma Gandhi emphasizes that the essence of being human is not about the capability to alter the external world or its structures, but rather about the power of self-transformation and self-improvement. In a time marked by technological advancements and rapid changes, he challenges us to focus on our internal development and moral evolution instead of being seduced by the idea that we can or should reshape the world at large.
Themes
GreatnessTransformationSelf-ImprovementChangeHumanity
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about personal growth, one could quote Gandhi to inspire individuals to focus on self-improvement.
More from Mahatma Gandhi
All quotes βLove never claims, it ever gives. Love ever suffers, never resents never revenges itself.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.
Mahatma GandhiRead
The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.
Mahatma GandhiRead
The devotion of such titans of spirit as Lenin to an Ideal must bear fruit. The nobility of his selflessness will be an example through centuries to come, and his Ideal will reach perfection.
Mahatma GandhiRead
Similar quotes
How is it that we have created an economic system that tells us it is cheaper to destroy the earth and exhaust its people than to nurture them both? Is it rational to have an pricing system which discounts the future and sells off the past? How did we create an economic system that confused capital liquidation with income?
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Nothing is to be preferred before justice.
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It is part of the formidableness of a genuine mass movement that the self-sacrifice it promotes includes also a sacrifice of some of the moral sense, which cramps and restrains our nature.
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Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.
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The English language started out as a distortion in my life, but nothing remains the same, and so the distortion is now just normal. That is one of the things that will happen to all distortions: They become normal and turn into something else.
Jamaica KincaidRead
But we had with us, to keep and to care for, more than five hundred bruised bodies of men- men made in the image of God, marred by the hand of man and must we say in the name of God? And where is the reckoning for such things? And who is answerable? One might almost shrink from the sound of his own voice, which had launched into the palpitating air words of order- do we call it? - fraught with such ruin. Was it God's command we heard or His forgiveness we must forever implore?
Joshua ChamberlainRead