Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

The one means that wins the easiest victory over reason is terror and force.

I not only weaken the opposition, I’m going to make them dead ... and if anyone is strong enough to try to hold a demonstration, I will beat all those dogs and put them in a cage.

You use force, you create fear. Fear destroys trust. Trust is the basis of harmony. The hardliner believes harmony and unity can be brought by force. That's totally unscientific, totally wrong.

The enemies of freedom do not argue; they shout and they shoot.

Power acquired by violence is only a usurpation, and lasts only as long as the force of him who commands prevails over that of those who obey.

Force is the vital principle and immediate parent of despotism.

.. jack-booted government thugs.

… the tools of despotism and corruption

Aggression is simply another name for government. Aggression, invasion, government, are interconvertible terms. The essence of government is control, or the attempt to control. He who attempts to control another is a governor, an aggressor, an invader; and the nature of such invasion is not changed, whether it is made by one man upon another man, after the manner of the ordinary criminal, or by one man upon all other men, after the manner of an absolute monarch, or by all other men upon one man, after the manner of a modern democracy.

One need only watch totalitarians at work to see that once men gain power over other men’s minds, that power is never used sparingly and wisely, but lavishly and brutally and with unspeakable results.

Force works on servile natures, not the free.

Beware of those who would use violence, too often it is violence they want and neither truth nor freedom.

Violence can always destroy power; out of the barrel of a gun grows the most effective command, resulting in the most instant and perfect obedience. What never can grow out of it is power.

The tyrant will always find a pretext for his tyranny.

There is nothing more corrupting, nothing more destructive of the noblest and finest feelings of our nature, than the exercise of unlimited power.

If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.

Whatever crushes individuality is despotism, by whatever name it may be called and whether it professes to be enforcing the will of God or the injunctions of men.

The strength and power of despotism consists wholly in the fear of resistance.

The power that is supported by force alone will have cause often to tremble.

Deny human rights, and however little you may wish to do so, you will find yourself abjectly kneeling at the feet of that old-world god, Force.

Government by blackmail is incompatible with democracy.

When it comes to tyrants, dictators and terrorists, strength and the threat of force is the only language they understand.

Nothing is more despicable than respect based on fear.

The ruling idea of the politician - stated rather bluntly - is that those who are opposed to him exist for the purpose of being made to serve his ends, if he can get power enough in his hands to force these ends upon them.

History’s most important lesson is that it has not been possible to make coercion compatible with the truth.