Gandhi (1982)
Ben Kingsley: Mahatma Gandhi
Photos
Quotes
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Gandhi : An eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind.
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Nahari : I'm going to Hell! I killed a child! I smashed his head against a wall.
Gandhi : Why?
Nahari : Because they killed my son! The Muslims killed my son!
[indicates boy's height]
Gandhi : I know a way out of Hell. Find a child, a child whose mother and father have been killed and raise him as your own.
[indicates same height]
Gandhi : Only be sure that he is a Muslim and that you raise him as one.
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Gandhi : They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me, then they will have my dead body. NOT MY OBEDIENCE!
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Gandhi : Whenever I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they may seem invincible, but in the end, they always fail. Think of it: always.
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Gandhi : Poverty is the worst form of violence.
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Gandhi : I am a Muslim and a Hindu and a Christian and a Jew and so are all of you.
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Gandhi : I want to change their minds. Not kill them for weaknesses we all possess.
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Soldier : Mr. Gandhi, sir. I have been instructed to inquire the subject of your speech tonight.
Gandhi : The value of goat's milk in daily diet. But you can be sure that I will also speak against war.
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Gandhi : There are no goodbyes for us, Charlie. Wherever you are, you will always be in my heart.
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Conductor : [stopping Gandhi on the train in South Africa] What are you doing in here, coolie?
Gandhi : I reserved this car. I have a ticket.
Conductor : How did you get hold of it?
Gandhi : I sent for it by post. I am an attorney.
European Passenger : An attorney! There are no colored attorneys in South Africa - move your black ass into third class where it belongs!
Porter : I'll take your luggage, sir...
Gandhi : No, wait.
[he takes out his card and shows it]
Gandhi : You see? 'Mohandas K. Gandhi, Attorney at Law.' I am on my way to Pretoria to conduct a case...
European Passenger : Didn't you hear me? There are no colored attorneys in South Africa!
Gandhi : Sir, I was called to the bar in London, and enrolled in the High Court of Chancery. I am therefore an attorney. And since I am, in your eyes, 'colored,' I think we can deduce that there is at least one colored attorney in South Africa.
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[last lines]
Gandhi's voice : When I despair, I remember that the way of truth and love has always won. There may be tyrants and murderers, and for a time, they can seem invincible, but in the end, they always fall. Think of it: always.
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Vince Walker : You're an ambitious man, Mr. Gandhi.
Gandhi : I hope not.
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Hindu : Bapu! Bapu! Bapu, please don't do it!
Gandhi : What do you want me not to do? Not to meet with Mr. Jinnah? I am a Muslim, and a Hindu, and a Christian, and a Jew, and so are all of you. When you wave those flags and shout, you send fear into the hearts of your brothers. That is not the India I want! Stop it! For God's sake stop it!
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Gandhi : We think it is time that you recognized that you are masters in someone else's home. Despite the best intentions of the best of you, you must, in the nature of things, humiliate us to control us. General Dyer is but an extreme example of the principle... it is time you left.
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Gandhi : Where there's injustice, I always believed in fighting. The question is, do you fight to change things or to punish? For myself, I've found we're all such sinners, we should leave punishment to God. And if we really want to change things, there are better things than derailing trains or slashing someone with a sword.
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Kasturba Gandhi : Sora was sent to tell me I must rake and cover the latrine.
Gandhi : Everyone takes his turn.
Kasturba Gandhi : It is the work of untouchables!
Gandhi : In this place, no work is beneath us.
Kasturba Gandhi : I am your wife!
Gandhi : [coldly] All the more reason.
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Kinnoch : With respect, Mr. Gandhi, without British administration, this country would be reduced to chaos.
Gandhi : Mr. Kinnoch, I beg you to accept that there is no people on Earth who would not prefer their own bad government to the good government of an alien power.
Brigadier : My dear sir! India *is* British. We're hardly an alien power!
[silence]
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Gandhi : I want to welcome you all. Every one of you. We have no secrets. Let us begin by being clear... about General Smuts' new law. All Indians must now be fingerprinted... like criminals. Men and women. No marriage other than a Christian marriage is considered valid. Under this act our wives and mothers are whores. And every man here is a bastard.
Kahn : He has become quite good at this.
Gandhi : And a policeman passing an Indian dwelling, I will not call them homes, may enter and demand the card of any Indian woman whose dwelling it is.
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Margaret Bourke-White : Do you really believe you could use non-violence against someone like Hitler?
Gandhi : [thinks] Not without defeats, and great pain. But are there no defeats in war? No pain? What you cannot do is accept injustice. From Hitler, or anyone. You must make the injustice visible, and be prepared to die like a soldier to do so.
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Gandhi : If you are a minority of one, the truth is the truth.
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Gandhi : The function of a civil resistance is to provoke response and we will continue to provoke until they respond or change the law. They are not in control; we are.
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Gandhi : I, for one, have never advocated passive anything. We must never sumbit to such laws. And I think our resistance must be *active* and provocative!
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Gandhi : I have friends who keep telling me how much it costs them to keep me in poverty.
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Margaret Bourke-White : So you really are going to Pakistan then? You are a stubborn man.
Gandhi : I'm simply going to prove to Hindus here and Muslims there that the only devils in the world are those running around in our own hearts. And that is where all our battles ought to be fought.
Margaret Bourke-White : So what kind of warrior have you been in that warfare?
Gandhi : Not a very good one. That's why I have so much tolerance for the other scoundrels of the world.
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Gandhi : You intend to walk all the way?
Vince Walker : It's the only way I can get the story. Besides, my name *is* Walker.
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Gandhi : No Indian must be treated as the English treat us. We must remove untouchability from our hearts and from our lives.
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Gandhi : We must defy the British... Not with violence that will inflame their will but with a firmness that will open their eyes. English factories make the cloth that makes our poverty. All those who wish to make the English see bring me the cloth from Manchester and Leeds that you wear today and we will light a fire that will be seen in Delhi, and in London!
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Gandhi : I've traveled so far. And all I've done is come back... home.
Vince Walker : Now, wait a minute. You know what you're going to do, don't you?
Gandhi : It would have been very uncivil of me to let you make such a long trip for nothing!
[walks off]
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Gandhi : [his final words] Oh God. Oh God. Oh God.
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Gandhi : You're a temptress.
Margaret Bourke-White : Just an admirer!
Gandhi : Nothing is more dangerous, especially for an old man.
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Gandhi : I praise such courage. I need such courage because, in this cause, I too am prepared to die. But, my friend, there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. Whatever they do to us, we will attack no one, kill no one. But we will not give our fingerprints, not one of us. They will imprison us. And they will fine us. They will seize our possessions. But they cannot take away our self-respect if we do not give it to them.
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Gandhi : [to a group of South African bigots] You'll find there's room for all of us here.
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Charlie Andrews : And when I read what you were doing I wanted to help. Does that surprise you?
Mahatma Gandhi : At first I was amazed, but when you're fighting in a just cause people seem to pop up, like you, right out of the pavement.
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Gandhi : [as Charlie starts to climb onto the roof of a moving train] What are you doing?
Charlie Andrews : [grimly] Going nearer to God.
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Gandhi : I am flattered by Mr. Patel. I would be even more flattered if what he said were true.
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Gandhi : What's the matter with me?
Kasturba Gandhi : You are human. Only human.
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Gandhi : I am asking you to fight. To fight against their anger, not to provoke it. We will not strike a blow, but we will receive them. And through our pain, we will make them see their injustice, and it will hurt, as all fighting hurts. But we cannot lose. We cannot. They may torture my body, may break my bones, even kill me. Then they will then have my dead body, not my obedience.
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Gandhi : Since I returned from South Africa, I have traveled over much of India. And I know that I could travel for many more years and still only see a small part of her. And yet already I know that what we say here, means nothing to the masses of our country. Here we make speeches for each other, and those English liberal magazines that may grant us a few lines. But the people of India are untouched. Their politics are confined to bread and salt. Illiterate they may be, but they're not blind. They see no reason to give their loyalty to rich and powerful men who simply want to take over the role of the British in the name of freedom. This Congress tells the world it represents India. My brothers, India is seven hundred thousand villages, not a few hundred lawyers in Delhi and Bombay. Until we stand in the fields with the millions that toil each day under the hot sun, we will not represent India, nor will we ever be able to challenge the British as one nation.
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Gandhi : [explaining why everyone at his ashram does menial chores] It's one way to learn that each man's labor is as important as another's. In fact, while you're doing it, cleaning the toilet seems far more important than the law.
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Gandhi : We do not seek conflict. We know the strength of the forces arrayed against us, know that because of them we can only use peaceful means, but we are determined that justice will be done.
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Gandhi : We are members of the Empire. And we come from an ancient civilization. Why should we not walk on the pavements like other men?
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Gandhi : I try to live like an Indian, as you see. It's stupid of course, because in our country it is the British who decide how an Indian lives, what he may buy, what he may sell. And from their luxury, in the midst of our terrible poverty, they instruct us on what is justice, what is sedition. So it's only natural that our best young minds assume an air of Eastern dignity, while greedily assimilating every Western weakness as quickly as they can acquire it.
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Gandhi : Without a paper... a journal of some kind... you cannot unite a community.
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Gandhi : [telling his wife to do a menial chore] And you will do it with joy or not do it at all.
Kasturba Gandhi : Not at all, then.
Gandhi : [angrily pushing her out the door] All right, then, go! You don't belong here! Go! Leave the ashram! Get out altogether! We don't want you!
Kasturba Gandhi : Have you no shame? I'm your wife! Where do you expect me to go?
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General Smuts : [after releasing Gandhi from prison in South Africa] Daniels, would you lend Mr. Gandhi a shilling for a taxi?
Daniels : I beg your pardon, sir?
General Smuts : How far will you be going, Gandhi?
Gandhi : Well, now that this is settled, I had thought seriously of going back to India. But a shilling will do splendidly for the moment.
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Gandhi : Doesn't the New Testament say, 'If your enemy strikes you on the right cheek, offer him the left'?
Charlie Andrews : Well, I think perhaps the phrase was used metaphorically. I don't think that, uh...
Gandhi : I'm not so sure. I have thought about it a great deal, and I suspect he meant you must show courage... be willing to take a blow... several blows... to show you will not strike back, nor will you be turned aside. And when you do that, it calls on something in human nature, something that makes his hatred for you decrease and his respect increase. I think Christ grasped that, and I have seen it work.
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Gandhi : If I want to be one with them, I have to live like them.
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Vince Walker : Is it all over if they arrest you now?
Gandhi : Not if they arrest me, or a thousand, or ten thousand.
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Gandhi : [after urging Indians to burn their imported clothes] And if, like me, you are left with only one piece of homespun, wear it with dignity.
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Gandhi : It's not only generals who know how to plan campaigns.
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Gandhi : Man needs salt as he needs air and water. This salt comes from the Indian Ocean. Let every Indian claim it as his right.
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Advocate General : [quoting an article by Gandhi] 'Non-cooperation has one aim: the overthrow of the Government. Sedition must become our creed. We must give no quarter, nor can we expect any.' Do you deny writing it?
Gandhi : Not at all. And I will save the Court's time, My Lord, by stating under oath that to this day I believe non-cooperation with evil is a duty, and that British rule of India is evil.
Advocate General : The Prosecution rests, My Lord.
Judge Broomfield : I presume you are conducting your own defense, Mr. Gandhi.
Gandhi : I have no defense, My Lord. I am guilty as charged. And if you truly believe in the system of law you administer in my country, you must inflict on me the severest penalty possible.
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Gandhi : If we obtain our freedom by murder and bloodshed, I want no part of it.
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Gandhi : [to the British] Like other countries, ours will have its problems. But they will be ours, not yours.
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Gandhi : If I am sent to jail, perhaps that is the best protest our country can make at this time. And if it helps India, I have never refused His Majesty's hospitality.
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Gandhi : [to a British supporter of Gandhi] I think, Charlie, that you can help us most by taking that assignment you've been offered in Fiji. I have to be sure... they have to be sure... that what we do can be done by Indians... alone.
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Gandhi : We have come a long way together with the British. When they leave, we want to see them off as friends.
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Gandhi : But I know happiness does not come with things... even twentieth century things. It can come from work, and pride in what you do.
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Gandhi : My dear Jinnah, you and I are brothers born of the same Mother India. If you have fears, I want to put them at rest. Begging the understanding of my friends, I am asking Panditji to stand down. I want you to be the first Prime Minister of India, to name your entire cabinet, to make the head of every government department a Muslim.
Nehru : Bapu, for me, and the rest, if that is what you want, we will accept it. But out there, already there is rioting, because Hindus fear you are going to give too much away.
Sardar Patel : If you did this, no one would control it. No one.
Mohamed Ali Jinnah : It is your choice. Do you want an independent India and an independent Pakistan? Or do you want civil war?
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Gandhi : A constructive program is the only nonviolent solution to India's agony.
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Gandhi : It will not necessarily be progress for India if she simply imports the unhappiness of the West.
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Gandhi : Muslim and Hindu are the right and left eye of India. No one will be master, no one slave.
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Gandhi : Sardar, you have gained weight. You must join me in the fast.
Sardar Patel : If I fast, I die. If you fast, people go to all sorts of trouble to keep you alive.
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Gandhi : If I had shunned death, or feared it, I would not be here now.
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Nehru : [as Gandhi starts to walk out of a meeting] Bapu, please, where are you going?
Gandhi : I don't want to hear more.
Sardar Patel : We need your help!
Gandhi : There is nothing I can give.
