Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

Non-co-operation means nothing less than training in self-sacrifice.

Non-cooperation is directed not against men but against measures. It is not directed against the Governors, but against the system they administer. The roots of non-cooperation lies not in hatred but in justice if not in love.

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.

Civil disobedience is a preparation for mute suffering.

Whatever strength the masses have is due entirely to ahimsa, however imperfect or defective its practice might have been.

Non-co-operation is a movement intended to invite Englishmen to co-operate with us on honourable terms or retire from our land.

For mass struggles, nonviolence is essential.

A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia.

Active nonviolence is necessary for those who will offer civil disobedience but the will and proper training are enough for the people to co-operate with those who are chosen for civil disobedience.

Nonviolence is the most potent technique for oppressed people. Unearned suffering is redemptive.

Nonviolent resistance makes it possible for the Negro to remain in the South and struggle for his rights. The Negro's problem will not be solved by running away.

Nonviolent action, the Negro saw, was the way to supplement, not replace, the progress of change. It was the way to divest himself of passivity without arraying himself in vindictive force.

If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done.

Civil disobedience does not admit of any violence or countenancing of violence directly or indirectly.

No struggle can ever succeed without women participating side by side with men.

The oppressed will make surer and faster progress if they eschew violence and depend, as they do mainly depend in their organizing and strike activities, on their solidarity, courage, capacity for suffering and sacrifice, and on non-cooperation where injustice becomes extreme

Christ furnished the spirit and motivation while Gandhi furnished the method.

Each of us should choose which course of action we must take; education, conventional political action, or even peaceful civil disobedience to bring about necessary changes, but let it not be said that we did nothing.

The power of unarmed nonviolence is any day far superior to that of armed force.

The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification.

It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war.

When a man or woman, young, or old, takes a place on the picket line for even a day or two, he will never be the same again.

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.

Non-cooperation is beyond the reach of the bayonet. It has found an abiding place in the Indian heart. Workers like me will go when the hour has struck, but non-cooperation will remain.

The way of acquiescence leads to moral and spiritual suicide. The way of violence leads to bitterness in the survivors and brutality in the destroyers. But, the way of nonviolence leads to redemption and the creation of the beloved community.