Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

In order for non-violence to work, your opponent must have a conscience. The United States has none.

Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time: the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

With God as witness, I want to proclaim this truth, that the way of violence cannot bring Swaraj, it can only lead to disaster.

...people think non-violence is really weak and non-militant. These are misconceptions that people have because they don't understand what non-violence means. Non-violence takes more guts, if I can put it bluntly, than violence. Most violent acts are accomplished by getting the opponent off guard, and it doesn't take that much character, I think, if one wants to do it.

The trouble is that nonviolence is so often defined as refusal to fight, and that is the American definition of cowardice. In fact, marching unarmed against the guns and dogs of the police requires more courage than does aggression. The perverted idea of manhood coming from the barrel of a gun is what keeps people from understanding nonviolence.

Fighting with anybody is very dangerous because you become like your enemy.

Nothing can justify war.

I think violence can never be justified.

Violence can only be effectively met by nonviolence. This is an old established truth.

Mankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence.

Pacifism in the face of war is not only irresponsible - it is immoral. Refusing to meet force with force in the name of peace will beget not peace, but further death and destruction, the very violence the pacifists seek to avoid.

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

Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non­resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self­suffering.

When nonviolence begins halfway through the war with the aggressor calling time out, it exposes itself as a ruse.

We have learned that change cannot come through war. War is not a feasible tool to use in fighting against the oppression we face. War has caused more problems. We cannot embrace that path.

There is a corollary to the conception of being too proud to fight. It is that the humble have to do most of the fighting.

The real test of nonviolence lies in its being brought in contact with those who have contempt for it.

Nonviolence is the only way. Even if you achieve your goal by violent means there are always side effects, and these can be worse than the problem. Violence is against human nature.

Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.

If you win non-violently, then you have a double victory, you have not only won your fight, but you remain free.

The only crime, the only crime is to take a life. There is nothing else.' 'And that's why you don't fight,'I say. She turns to me sharply. 'To preserve life is to fight everything that man stands for.

Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute.

Pale Ebenezer thought it wrong to fight. But roaring Bill, who killed him, thought it right.

Our struggle consists in showing that our nonviolence is neither a cloak to hide our violence or hatred, nor a preparation for violence in the near or distant future.

If we pick a fight, then we're just as bad as them. Combat should be used just to help people who can't defend themselves, period." "Well, if I don't fight back and they pound on me, then I'm one of the people I should be defending.