Gandhi's Philosophy Quotes

Nonviolence is fine as long as it works.

The fullest application of ahimsa does make life impossible.

Non-violence ... is the only thing that the atom bomb cannot destroy. I did not move a muscle when I first heard that the atom bomb had wiped out Hiroshima. On the contrary, I said to myself, Unless now the world adopts non-violence, it will spell certain suicide for mankind.

The principle of self defense, even involving weapons and bloodshed, has never been condemned, even by Gandhi.

Bapu Gandhi said, ‘All religions are true.’ I just want to love God.

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.

The most distinctive and largest contribution of Hinduism to India's culture is the doctrine of ahimsa.

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.

It is against the spirit of ahimsa to overawe even one person into submission.

One was a book I read by Mahatma Gandhi. In it was a passage where he said that religion, the pursuing of the inner journey, should not be separated from the pursuing of the outer and social journey, because we are not isolated beings.

I came to the conclusion that unless I found myself and became the change I wanted to see in the world - as Gandhi said - I couldn't contribute much, nor would there be anything fulfilling or meaningful in my life. So I went on a spiritual search.

Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it.

Gandhi once declared that it was his wife who unwittingly taught him the effectiveness of nonviolence. Who better than women should know that battles can be won without resort to physical strength? Who better than we should know all the power that resides in noncooperation?

Ahimsa was preached to man when he was in full vigor of life and able to look his adversaries straight in the face.

Ahimsa is the strongest force known.

The principle of nonviolent resistance seeks to reconcile the truths of two opposites-Acquiescence and violence -while avoiding the extremes and immoralities of both.

Ahimsa is no mere theory with me, but it is a fact of life based on extensive experience.

Ahimsa must be placed before everything else while it is professed. Then alone it becomes irresistible.

Ahimsa and Truth are my two lungs. I cannot live without them.

Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed.

It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights.

Nonviolence is an intensely active force when properly understood and used.

Ahimsa and Truth are so intertwined that it is practically impossible to disentangle and separate them.

Satyagraha, of which civil resistance is but a part, is to me the universal law of life.

History supplied numerous instances to prove that brute force is as nothing before soul-force.