Gandhi Nonviolent Quotes & Sayings

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

The true democrat is he who with purely nonviolent means defends his liberty and, therefore, his country's and ultimately that of the whole of mankind. — Mahatma Gandhi

Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent. — Mahatma Gandhi

I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers. — Mahatma Gandhi

My study of Gandhi convinced me that true pacifism is not nonresistance to evil, but nonviolent resistance to evil. Between the two positions, there is a world of difference. Gandhi resisted evil with as much vigor and power as the violent resister, but True pacifism is not unrealistic submission to evil power. It is rather a courageous confrontation of evil by the power of love ... — Martin Luther King Jr.

The nonviolent man automatically becomes a servant of God. — Mahatma Gandhi

The end of nonviolent 'war' is always an agreement, never dictation, much less humiliation of the opponent. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is the acid test of nonviolence that in a nonviolent conflict there is no rancor left behind, and in the end the enemies are converted into friends. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is better to resist oppression by violent means than to submit, but it is best of all to resist by nonviolent means. — Mahatma Gandhi

In the 1960s Martin Luther King Jr. devised a creative strategy of engagement that has since been adapted to many causes. He fused together the power of love as described in the Sermon on the Mount and Mahatma Gandhi's method of nonviolent resistance. "Prior to reading Gandhi," he said, "I had about concluded that the ethics of Jesus were only effective in individual relationships." Gandhi showed him that a movement on behalf of a moral cause could be expressed in a loving way. "I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. — Philip Yancey

[He] alone is truly nonviolent who remains nonviolent even though he has the ability to strike. — Mahatma Gandhi

The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country. — Mahatma Gandhi

A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

If we are nonviolent through and through, our nonviolence would have been self-evident. — Mahatma Gandhi

Disobedience to be civil has to be open and nonviolent. — Mahatma Gandhi

For the nonviolent person, the whole world is one family. He will fear none, nor will others fear him. — Mahatma Gandhi

In a nonviolent army, the general and the officers are elected, or are as if elected, when their authority is moral and rests solely on the willing obedience of the rank and file. — Mahatma Gandhi

To benefit by others' killing and to delude oneself into the belief that one is being very religions and nonviolent is sheer self-deception. — Mahatma Gandhi

King became the movement's voice and launched a new phase of mass protest.
He was a disciple of the teachings of Gandhi and Thoreau, as well as of Jesus. He
emphasized nonviolent civil disobedience. The civil rights struggle was not against
whites, but against injustice; its most important weapons were not anger and hate
but love and forgiveness, King declared.
65
On — Anthony R. Fellow

A nonviolent occupation is that occupation which is fundamentally free from violence and which involves no exploitation or envy of others. — Mahatma Gandhi

A nonviolent warrior knows no leaving the battle. He rushes into the mouth of himsa, never even once harbouring an evil thought. — Mahatma Gandhi

[I]t must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he is afraid or merely because he lacks the instruments of violence, he is not truly nonviolent. This is why Gandhi often said that if cowardice is the only alternative to violence, it is better to fight. — Martin Luther King Jr.

A nonviolent person's life is always at the disposal of him who would take it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Boycott of foreign cloth through picketing may easily be violent; through the use of khadi it is most natural and absolutely nonviolent. — Mahatma Gandhi

The Congress fights not with violent but with nonviolent means, however imperfect, however crude the nonviolence may be. — Mahatma Gandhi

A nonviolent life is an act of self-examination and self-purification, whether by an individual, group or nation. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolent non-co-operation is the only alternative to anarchy and worse. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is nonviolent non-co-operation which evokes the highest spirit of self-sacrifice that will wean one from the error of one's ways. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolent non-co-operation with evil means co-operation with all that is good. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolent non-co-operation, I am convinced, is a sacred duty at times. — Mahatma Gandhi

An awakened people who rely upon their nonviolent strength are independent in the face of any conceivable combination of the armed powers. — Mahatma Gandhi

A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions persists. — Mahatma Gandhi

We may never be strong enough to be entirely nonviolent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep nonviolence as our goal and make strong progress towards it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

A nonviolent struggle necessarily involves construction on a small scale. It cannot therefore lead to tamas or darkness or inertia. — Mahatma Gandhi

Those who are truthful, nonviolent and brave do not cease to be so because of the stupidity of their leader. — Mahatma Gandhi

Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy, commonly referred to in English as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist, writer, essayist, philosopher, Christian anarchist, pacifist, educational reformer, moral thinker, and an influential member of the Tolstoy family. As a fiction writer Tolstoy is widely regarded as one of the greatest of all novelists, particularly noted for his masterpieces War and Peace and Anna Karenina; in their scope, breadth and realistic depiction of Russian life, the two books stand at the peak of realistic fiction. As a moral philosopher he was notable for his ideas on nonviolent resistance through his work The Kingdom of God is Within You, which in turn influenced such twentieth-century figures as Mohandas K. Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr. Source: Wikipedia — Leo Tolstoy

I have known many meat eaters to be far more nonviolent than vegetarians. — Mahatma Gandhi

No man could be actively nonviolent and not rise against social injustice, no matter where it occurred. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolent action means mobilization of world opinion in our favour. — Mahatma Gandhi

A true and nonviolent combination of labour would act like a magnet attracting to it all the needed capital. — Mahatma Gandhi

Civil disobedience has almost always been about expression. Generally, it's nonviolent, as defined by Henry David Thoreau, Gandhi, and King. — Marvin Ammori

If all were nonviolent, there would be no anarchy and there would be no question of anybody being armed for meeting aggression from without. — Mahatma Gandhi

If they are truly nonviolent, they must also realize that civil disobedience is an impossibility till the preliminary work of construction is done. — Mahatma Gandhi

If we remain nonviolent, hatred will die as everything does from disuse. — Mahatma Gandhi

Economic equality is the master-key to nonviolent independence. — Mahatma Gandhi

The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Be the change you wish to see in the world," said Gandhi. If you want a nonviolent world, you cannot use violence to achieve it. He also said, "In the end the British will walk out because 100,000 British cannot control 350 million Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate. — Russell Brand

Nonviolent nationalism is a necessary condition of corporate or civilized life. — Mahatma Gandhi

Those who have their hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a nonviolent order for the world. — Mahatma Gandhi

For a nonviolent struggle, there is no age limit. The blind, the maimed and the bed-ridden may serve, and not only men but women also. — Mahatma Gandhi

The bravery of the nonviolent is vastly superior to that of the violent. — Mahatma Gandhi

God is the shield of the nonviolent. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

The plan to carve up British India was never approved of or accepted by Gandhi ... who realised too late that his closest comrades and disciples were more interested in power than principle, and that his own vision had long been clouded by the illusion that the struggle he led for India's freedom was a nonviolent one. — Stanley Wolpert

Nonviolent defence presupposes recklessness about one's life and property. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolence and nonaggression are generally regarded as interchangeable concepts - King and Gandhi frequently used them that way - but nonviolence, as employed by Gandhi in India and by King in the American South, might reasonably be viewed as a highly disciplined form of aggression. If one defines aggression in the primary dictionary sense of "attack," nonviolent resistance proved to be the most powerful attack imaginable on the powers King and Gandhi were trying to overturn. The writings of both men are filled with references to love as a powerful force against oppression, and while the two leaders were not using the term" force" in the military sense, they certainly regarded nonviolence as a tactical weapon as well as an expression of high moral principle." Susan Jacoby (p. 196) — Helen Prejean

History has no record of a nation having adopted nonviolent resistance. — Mahatma Gandhi

Nonviolent action without the co-operation of the heart and the head cannot produce the intended result. — Mahatma Gandhi

A nonviolent action accompanied by nonviolence in thought and word should never produce enduring violent reaction upon the opponent. — Mahatma Gandhi