In 1958 Vinoba was the first recipient of the international Ramon Magsaysay Award for Community Leadership. He was awarded the Bharat Ratna posthumously in 1983.
Quotes
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"All revolutions are spiritual at the source. All my activities have the sole purpose of achieving a union of hearts."
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"Peace is something mental and spiritual. If there be peace in our (personal) life, it will affect the whole world"
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"Jai Jagat! — Victory to the world!"
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"It is a curious phenomena that God has made the hearts of the poor rich, and those of the rich poor."
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"What we should aim at is the creation of people power, which is opposed to the power of violence and is different from the coercive power of state."
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"A country should be defended not by arms, but by ethical behavior."
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"We cannot fight new wars with old weapons."
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"There is no need for me to protest against the government’s faults, it is against its good deeds that my protests are needed."
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"Do not allow yourself to imagine that revolutionary thinking can be propagated by governmental power."
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"I beg you not to adopt any "go slow" methods of nonviolence. In nonviolence you must go full steam ahead, if you want the good to come speedily you must go about it with vigor. A merely soft, spineless ineffective kind of nonviolence will actually encourage the growth of the status quo and all the forces of a violent system which we deplore."
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We must establish the independent power of the people - this is to say, we must demonstrate a power opposed to the power of violence and other than the power to punish. The people are our God.
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All revolutions are spiritual at the source. All my activities have the sole purpose of achieving a union of hearts.
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"My object," says Vinoba Bhave, "is to transform the whole of society. Fire merely burns; it does not worry whether anyone puts a pot on it, fills it with water and puts rice in it to make a meal. Fire burns and does its duty. It is for others to do theirs.”
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"The people are going to solve their problems, not I. I am simply creating an atmosphere. The beginning is always small, but when the atmosphere spreads, somebody will ask—and somebody will give.”