Bertrand Russell Quotes

Total nonviolent non-cooperation has no place in popular Raj, whatever its level may be.

Passive resistance is the resistance which does not resist.

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

The Indian government has managed to turn the concept of nonviolence on its head. Nonviolent resistance and nonviolent governance. Unlike, say, China or Turkey or Indonesia, India doesn't mow down its people. It doesn't kill people who are refusing to move. It just waits it out. It continues to do what it has to do and ignores the consequences.

Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government.

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

I am a seasoned soldier of nonviolence, and I have evidence enough to sustain my faith.

The function of violence is to obtain reform by external means, the function of passive resistance, that is, soul-force, is to obtain it by growth from within, which, in its turn, is obtained by self-suffering, self-purification.

The only true resistance to this Government... [is] to cease to co-operate with it.

The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me.

Perfect nonviolence is difficult. It admits to no weakness.

Nonviolent non-co-operators can only succeed when they have succeeded in attaining control over the hooligans of India.

If we had to kneel in order to live in peace, [ U.S. government] will have to kill us before.

My nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger and leaving the dear ones unprotected.

A satyagrahi is nothing if not instinctively law-abiding.

An uprising would punish only the country, and that is out of the question. But there is yet another approach, the most effectiveform of resistance: contemptuous compliance.

Nonviolence, applied to very large masses of mankind, is a new experiment in the history of the world.

The movement of nonviolent non-co-operation has nothing in common with the historical struggles for freedom in the West.

True ahimsa lay in running into the mouth of himsa.

The lessons of nonviolence are universal. Not just for America.

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

Unless nonviolence of the strong is really developed among us, there should be no thought of civil disobedience for Swaraj, whether within the states or in British India.

A.J. [Muste] was a - as he likes to say, a radical pacifist.

Non-co-operation and civil disobedience are but different branches of the same tree called satyagraha.

Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has to be pursued even in face of violence raging around you.