Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

As the means, so the end.

For each of our actions there are only consequences.

A good cause can become bad if we fight for it with means that are indiscriminatingly murderous.

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

The cause of liberty becomes a mockery if the price to be paid is the wholesale destruction of those who are to enjoy liberty. Ghandi, quoted in Merton, p. 68

Violence is not the only means of persuasion.

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.

The end justifies the means. But what if there never is an end? All we have is means.

In non-violence the cause has to be just and clear as well as the means.

Actions lie louder than words.

Of war men ask the outcome, not the cause.

Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents.

Do not believe that possibly you can escape the reward of your action.

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

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.

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.

Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence.

What does it mean when a person is such a pacifist that they get shot? I can never understand that.

To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek.

Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence.

To have peace in the world, men & nations must embrace the nonviolent assertion that ends and means must cohere.

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.

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.

Through Gandhi and my own life experience, I have learned about nonviolence. I believe that human life is a very special gift from God, and that no one has a right to take that away in any cause, however just. I am convinced that nonviolence is more powerful than violence.