Champion of non-violence.
His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama of Tibet (Born 1935):
Tibetan spiritual leader His Holiness the Dalai Lama has topped the list of most admired people among Mexican internet users, according to a poll conducted by YouGov, an internet-based market research firm. His Holiness the Dalai Lama was followed by Billionaire Bill Gates, US President Barack Obama, physicist Stephen Hawking and actor Johnny Depp in the top five.
“The place of Gandhi’s cremation was a calm and beautiful spot. I felt very grateful to be there, the guest of a people who, like me, had endured foreign domination, grateful also to be in the country that had adopted ahimsa, the Mahatma’s doctrine of nonviolence. As I stood praying, I experienced simultaneously, great sadness at not being able to meet Gandhi in person and great joy at the magnificent example of his life. To me, he was and is the consummate politician, a man who put his belief in altruism above any personal considerations. I was convinced too, that his devotion to the cause of nonviolence was the only way to conduct politics.”
Nelson Mandela: First President of Post- Apartheid South Africa: “Gandhi remains today the complete critique of advanced industrial society. Others have criticized its totalitarianism, but not its productive apparatus. He is not against science and technology, but he places priority on the right to work and opposes mechanization to the extent that it usurps this right. Large-scale machinery, he holds, concentrates wealth in the hands of one man who tyrannizes the rest. He favors the small machine, he seeks to keep the individual in control of his tools, to maintain an interdependent love relation between the two, as a cricketer with his bat or Krishna with his flutes. Above all he seeks to liberate the individual from his alienation to the machine and restore morality to the productive process.”
Martin Luther King Jr (1929 – 1968):
Minister and civil rights activist: “Gandhi was inevitable. If humanity is to progress Gandhi is inescapable. He lived, thought and acted, inspired by the vision of humanity evolving towards a world of peace and harmony. We may ignore him at our own risk.”
Aung San Suu Kyi (1945):
Founder of Burma’s National League for Democracy: “The life and works of Gandhiji, as I was taught to refer to him even as a child, are both thought provoking and inspiring for those who wish to reach a righteous goal by righteous means. I would like to focus on two short comments by Gandhiji on compulsion and discipline. In the April 17, 1930, issue of Young India he wrote: ‘We may not use compulsion even in the matter of doing a good thing. Any compulsion will ruin the cause.’ Gandhiji further wrote in the December 20, 1931, issue of the same publication, ‘We cannot learn discipline by compulsion’. These simple statements reach to the very heart of our attempts to build a strong and united Burma based on the consent and goodwill of the people”
Cesar Chavez (1927 – 1993):
Founder of United Farm Workers in the US: “Gandhi is an example. He showed us not by talking, not by what he wrote as much as by his actions, his own willingness to live by truth and by respect for mankind and accepting the sacrifices. You see, nonviolence exacts a very high price from one who practices it. But once you are able to meet that demand then you can do most things, provided you have the time. Gandhi showed how a whole nation could be liberated without an army. This is the first time in the history of the world when a huge nation occupied for over a century, achieved independence by nonviolence. It was a long struggle, and it takes time.
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