The US President Barack Obama holds Mahatma Gandhi in very high esteem and would have liked to sit with him for a meal. He has been impressed by the power of ethics of the Mahatma who had changed the world by his sheer ethics. Obama says that anyone who can change the thinking of the world by his sheer personality, by non violence and when monetary power does not come to play, he is someone of substance who deserves respect. Obama also went on to say that Dr. Martin Luther King was influenced by the non violent preaching of Mahatma Gandhi. If it had not been for the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, America would never have seen any civil rights movement.