“I do not believe as the friend seems to do that an individual may gain spiritually and those who surround him suffer. I believe in advaita, I believe in the essential unity of man and for that matter of all that lives. Therefore I believe that if one man gains spiritually, the whole world gains with him and if one man falls, the whole world falls to that extent.”
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Source: Young India (4 December 1924); listed in the 1920s section of Gandhi's English Wikiquote page.
About this quote
Growth that harms the people around you isn't really growth. When the boundaries between selves are seen as thin, every private gain or lapse leaks outward — no one rises entirely alone, and no one falls without pulling something loose in the people nearby.
When to use it
- A manager who quietly starts owning her mistakes raises the whole team's willingness to admit theirs.
- One sibling getting sober shifts the emotional weather of an entire household.
- A single volunteer showing up reliably makes a struggling community project feel worth joining.