Nicholson Baker Quotes

About Mahatma Gandhi: Great in taking decisions, great in executing them, Mahatma Gandhi was incomparably great in the last stand which he made on behalf of his country. He is undoubtedly one of the greatest men the world has ever seen. The world hath need of him, and if he is mocked and jeered at by "the people of importance," "the people with a stake in this country," - the Scribes and Pharisees of the days of Christ - he will be gratefully remembered, now and always, by a nation which he led from victory to victory.

Mahatma Gandhi went from Africa to India, and once India won its freedom, it helped African countries to get their independence.

Yes, he [Mahatma Gandhi] was a great man. However...between me and Gandhi there was never the understanding there was between me and my father.

Gandhi: Ninny of the 20th Century.

The Indian struggle is not anti-British, it is anti-exploitation, anti-foreign rule, not anti-foreigners.

By the time Gandhi met Muhammad Ali in Delhi in April 1915it was, Gandhi said, 'love at first sight.'

On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground.

I and others may be revolutionaries but we are disciples of Mahatma Gandhi, directly or indirectly, nothing more nothing less.

Gandhi, who went to Wendy's and asked, "Where's the belief?" Never got a dinner!

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

If India won her freedom through truth and non-violence, India would not only point the way to all the exploited Asiatic nations, she would become a torch-bearer for the Negro races.

If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.

People ask me what book politicians should read. They should read the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

Our nonviolence vis-а-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak.

Mahatma Gandhi will always be remembered as long as free men and those who love freedom and justice live.

I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.

Sooner or later you will have to crush Gandhi and the Indian Congress and all they stand for.

God forbid that these beautiful countries become, as did St. Domingue, a theatre of blood and of crime under the pretext of establishing liberty, let them rather remain if necessary one century more under the barbarous and imbecile oppression of Spain.

Talk not to me of peace. Ireland is not at peace, it is smothered war. England has sown her laws as dragon's teeth, and they have sprung up as armed men.

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.

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

Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence.

I and some colleagues came to the conclusion that as violence in this country was inevitable, it would be wrong and unrealistic for African leaders to continue preaching peace and non-violence at a time when the government met our peaceful demands with force. It was only when all else had failed, when all channels of peaceful protest had been barred to us, that the decision was made to embark on violent forms of political struggle.

I don't favor violence. If we could bring about recognition and respect of our people by peaceful means, well and good. Everybody would like to reach his objectives peacefully. But I'm also a realist. The only people in this country who are asked to be nonviolent are black people.

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.