“Un lucru a săpat rădăcini adânci în sufletul meu: credinţa că morala stă la baza tuturor lucrurilor şi că adevărul este substanţa întregii moralităţi. Astfel că adevărul a devenit singurul meu scop. El a devenit din ce în ce mai important pentru mine, iar sensurile pe care i le-am dat au devenit din ce în ce mai largi.”
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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: Romanian translation of M. K. Gandhi, An Autobiography, Introduction (1925): 'One thing took deep root in me - the conviction that morality is the basis of things, and that truth is the substance of all morality.'
About this quote
Put morality underneath everything else and a question follows: what is morality itself built on? The answer here is truth. Strip the honesty out of a good deed and it collapses, which makes truthfulness less one virtue among many than the ground the others actually stand on.
When to use it
- A businessman turns down a profitable deal built on a lie, judging that dishonest gain rots whatever it touches.
- A student owns up to cheating rather than keep a grade that rests entirely on a falsehood.
- A friend tells an uncomfortable truth, because kindness built on pretense wouldn't really be kindness at all.