B. R. Ambedkar Quotes

The lyrics stand today (1980). They're still my feeling about politics. I want to see the plan. I want to know what you're going to do after you've knocked it all down. I mean, can't we use some of it? What's the point of bombing Wall Street? If you want to change the system, change the system. It's no good shooting people.

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.

Satyagraha is a process of educating public opinion, such that it covers all the elements of the society and in the end makes itself irresistible.

Without satyagraha carried out in the proper spirit, there is no victory, no Swaraj.

Non-co-operation in the political field is an extension of the doctrine as it is practised in the domestic field.

Satyagraha is an opera which I wrote for the Netherlands Opera, so it uses an orchestra of around fifty, a chorus of forty, and there are about seven soloists. The opera ... Satyagraha means truthful, so it was a name [Mahatma] Gandhi used to describe his civil disobedience movement.

Truth and nonviolence are both the means and the end, and given the right type of men, the legislatures can be the means of achieving the concrete pursuit of truth and nonviolence.

There is a vital connection between satyagraha and charkha, and the more I find that belief challenged, the more I am confirmed in it.

In satyagraha, a courted imprisonment carries its own praise.

Political action means taking on responsibility. This cannot happen without power. Power is to serve responsibility.

My opposition to the socialist and the other consists in attacking violence as a means of effecting any lasting reform.

I think we brought to the world, the United States anyway, the whole idea of boycotting as a nonviolent tactic. I think we showed the world that nonviolence can work to make social change.

I can never feel that setting fire to houses and churches and litter boxes and destroying valuable pictures really helps to convince people that women ought to be enfranchised.

In the code of the satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.

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

It may well be that our means are fairly limited and our possibilities restricted when it comes to applying pressure on our government But is this a reason to do nothing? Despair is nor an answer Neither is resignation Resignation only leads to indifference, which is not merely a sin but a punishment.

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.

Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor is tired of it and the object of satyagraha is gained.

Not those who shout 'satyagraha', 'satyagraha' will do satyagraha, but those who will work for it.

We must fight all that we dislike in public life. We must substitute better ideas for wrong ideas.

In the very act of my non-co-operation, I am seeking their co-operation in my campaign.

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.

Unjust laws have to be fought ideologically; they cannot be fought or corrected by means of mere disobedience and futile martyrdom.

The bomb was necessary to awaken England from her dreams. We dropped the bomb on the floor of the assembly chamber to register our protest on behalf of those who had no other means left to give expression to their heart-rending agony. Our sole purpose was to make the deaf hear and give the heedless a timely warning. Others have as keenly felt as we have done and from such seeming stillness of the sea of Indian humanity, a veritable storm is about to break out.

If humanity is to progress, Gandhi is inescapable.