“The purpose of life is undoubtedly to know oneself. We cannot do it unless we learn to identify ourselves with all that lives. The sum-total of that life is God.”
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Probable attribution
This saying is widely associated with Mahatma Gandhi, but the attribution is not supported by a reliable primary source.
Likely origin: Attributed to Gandhi (some sources cite Young India); consistent with his writing on self-realization, but the exact dated primary source was not confirmed here.
About this quote
Self-knowledge here isn't reached by turning inward alone. You come to understand yourself by recognizing the same life in others — feeling their hunger, fear, and hope as versions of your own. The path inward runs, oddly, through widening your sense of who counts as kin.
When to use it
- Volunteering at a shelter teaches a banker more about his own fears than years of journaling did.
- A caregiver comes to understand her own impatience by sitting quietly with a dying stranger's calm.
- Learning a neighbor's language, a man finds parts of himself he'd never managed to put into words.