Daily Inspiration Quote by Mahatma Gandhi

Put policy above personality, even when the personality is a saint. Gandhi’s line reads like a preemptive strike against the cult of the Great Man, a temptation he knew intimately as a mass leader who was constantly being turned into an icon. By insisting that “measures” outrank “men,” he shifts legitimacy from charisma to commitments: the yardstick of a progressive society is not who leads, but what gets built and protected.

The phrasing does quiet, strategic work. “Always” is the hard edge; it refuses the usual emergency exception where a movement excuses abuses because the leader is “necessary.” Calling people “imperfect instruments” is both humbling and pragmatic. Instruments can be useful, even brilliant, but they are also replaceable, fallible, and prone to distortion. The real object of loyalty is the “fulfilment” of measures - rights, reforms, systems of accountability - not the ego of the person temporarily entrusted with them.

Context matters: Gandhi was organizing against an empire while also trying to inoculate an independence movement against the authoritarian habits that often follow liberation. His politics of nonviolence and self-discipline weren’t just moral theater; they were governance training. Read this way, the quote is less a pious reminder than a blueprint for democratic immunity: if you let leaders become the measure, you will eventually accept anything in their name.