Story of My Experiments with Truth

Mohandas K. Gandhi is one of the most inspiring figures of our time. In his classic autobiography he recounts the story of his life and how he developed his concept of active nonviolent resistance, which propelled the Indian struggle for independence and countless other nonviolent struggles of the twentieth century. In a new foreword, noted peace expert and teacher Sissela Bok urges us to adopt Gandhi's "attitude of experimenting, of testing what will and will not bear close scrutiny, what can and cannot be adapted to new circumstances," in order to bring about change in our own lives and communities. All royalties earned on this book are paid to the Navajivan Trust, founded by Gandhi, for use in carrying on his work.

What Hacker News says

all_factzSep 2026

I really loved The Story of my Experiments with Truth. It even inspired me to visit India. There were moments listening to it when I just sat down kind of in awe — Gandhi really was an exceptional person. And there are also excruciatingly boring parts where he is detailing the minutiae of his diet.

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BrajeshwarDec 2021

Since the last few years, I have made it a habit to write about the books[1] I read without trying to add my smart-a* comment but more as a way to come back later in life and read the articles. For this year, here are some of the books I liked (quite a few of them are re-reads);

- The Story of My Experiments with Truth, the autobiography of Mohandas K. Gandhi (English Version)

- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford

- Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder by Nassim Nicholas Taleb

- Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson

- The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution by Walter Isaacson

- Ego is the Enemy, Stillness Is the Key, and The Obstacle Is the Way; all 3 books by Ryan Holiday

- Reviving Ophelia: Saving the Selves of Adolescent Girls by Mary Pipher[2]

1. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/books-of-2021/

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reviving_Ophelia

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donniezazenDec 2012

The Story of My Experiments with Truth by Mahatama Gandhi. The book is about a humble journey of a simple man who became a great soul and in that process freed a nation from British colonial oppression.

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aspirantJun 2008

Like KK, I recommend Gandhi's book. Hell, I recommend the title.

The Story of My Experiments with Truth

Gandhi didn't outsource the pursuit of truth. He thought it was too important. It was a job that would be poorly done if left to the authorities religious, political, or scientific. Just like good hackers know software is too important to leave to someone else.

Gandhi also made it obvious that I could apply a rigid filter to books. Read authors who, 1. Reason soundly with the reader, and 2. Have led significantly, uncommonly, fruitful lives. The sample size of humanity seems to have gotten large enough to where you can find someone who meets both criteria so I'm done settling for less.

I like the brand of epistemology that says, variously, that the more true things you believe, the better you can harmonize with, hack, pwn, reality. So I perk up now when I find someone peacefully liberating a country or figuring out how to do a startup while 'being good,' and hope that they've written about it.

So if you'd like to read a book by a social, physical, and metaphysical scientist, who (judging from what he accomplished) collected a lot of knowledge and hacked the system good, read this book.

But don't take my word for it.

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rvshchwlSep 2026

The Story of my Experiments with Truth - Mahatma Gandhi.

I recently read another book (Autobiography of a Yogi) that included an excerpt from this book, and it piqued my curiosity into Gandhi’s struggles in India. So far I’ve found it different than other biographies I’ve read because the author is self-critical and reflective which helps in understanding him as a person and his actions.

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alentredJan 2025

I think that "people who did hard things" fall on a spectrum between these two extremities:

- someone who got lucky

- someone who invested an unfathomable amount of time to their craftsmanship or to their beliefs

Of course it is not black and white, and even luck mostly requires hard work in the first place, which I admire (and if you find your luck - hold to it!, nothing wrong with that), but you get the gist. I guess that in other words what I am saying is: beware of the survivorship bias on the left side of this spectrum.

Finally, the book: "The story of my experiments with Truth", Ghandi. Definitely belongs to the "work hard" extremity and a very interesting read; but I don't want to create an impression that I find it special in any way because of my above comment, it is just one of the latest I have read, consider the two comments unrelated.

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