Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

A nonviolent person's life is always at the disposal of him who would take it.

We're not really pacifists, we're nonviolent soldiers.

I cannot make myself believe that God wanted me to hate. I'm tired of violence, I've seen too much of it. I've seen such hate on the faces of too many sheriffs in the South. And I'm not going to let my oppressor dictate to me what method I must use. Our oppressors have used violence. Our oppressors have used hatred. Our oppressors have used rifles and guns. I'm not going to stoop down to their level. I want to rise to a higher level. We have a power that can't be found in Molotov cocktails.

Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you.

Nonviolence in the sense of mere non-killing does not appear to me, therefore, to be of any improvement on the technique of violence.

Nonviolence is the rock on which the whole structure of non-co-operation is built.

I knew A.J. Muste very well. I tried for a while to be like he was, and that is a total pacifist. But then Margot [my wife] hit me hard in the stomach one day to prove to me that I wasn't as perfect a pacifist as I thought I was.

Indeed, a civil resister offers resistance only when peace becomes impossible.

Every government on earth is the personification of violence and force, and yet the doctine of non-resistance is as old as human thought - even more than this, the instinct is as old as life upon the earth.

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times.

The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme.

It will be hard to find a parallel in history in which unarmed people have represented the urge for freedom, turning their armlessness into the central means for deliverance.

Nonviolent defence presupposes recklessness about one's life and property.

My interest in India's freedom will cease if she adopts violent means, for their fruit will not be freedom but slavery in disguise.

Nonviolence to be worth anything has to work in the face of hostile forces.

Just as one must learn the art of killing in the training for violence, so one must learn the art of dying in the training for nonviolence.

The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it.

No power on earth can resist the lovers of liberty who are ready not to kill opponents, but be killed by them.

Nonviolence has come among men and it will live. It is the harbinger of the peace of the world.

I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith.

Violence is the weapon of the weak.

The method of satyagraha requires that the satyagrahi should never lose hope, so long as there is the slightest ground left for it.

However much I may sympathise with and admire worthy motives, I am an uncompromising opponent of violent methods even to serve the noblest of causes.

I can think about what [Mahatma] Gandhi said or [Martin Luther] King said about violence begetting violence, and still be true to my job by asking myself the question whenever we're confronted with a situation where some may be arguing for military action: Will this actually result in America being safer, or the most lives being saved?

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.