Gandhi Violence Quotes & Sayings

Complete non-violence is complete absence of ill-will against all that lives. It therefore embraces even sub-human life, not excluding noxious insects and beasts. They have not been created to feed our destructive propensities. If we only knew the mind of the Creator, we should find their proper place in His creation. — Mahatma Gandhi

I invite even the school of violence to give this peaceful non-co-operation a trial. — Mahatma Gandhi

Non-co-operators will make a serious mistake if they seek to convert people to their creed by violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

The fragrance of nonviolence was never sweeter than it was today amidst the stink of violence of the most cowardly type that was being displayed in the cities of India. — Mahatma Gandhi

Dr. King used Gandhi's commitment to non-violence and to passive resistance. — Al Sharpton

There is a fear of peace that I don't understand. Witness the old epithet "peaceniks," the association of peace with weakness. We mistake kindness for weakness in individuals, too. Gandhi found the essence of Christianity to be gentleness, the exaltation of means over ends. Using violence, against us or them, to achieve peace is like beating children to get them to be good. It only works in the short term. Believe in peace, think peace, live peace. Be a building-block of peace. Make it the center of your strength. — Jennifer James

So many people around the world have used nonviolence as a way to resolve a conflict that they faced in their lives. And they continue to use it everywhere all over the world there. And I think, in a way, nonviolence is our nature. Violence is not really our nature. If violence was our nature, we wouldn't need military academies and martial arts institutes to teach us how to kill and destroy people. We ought to have been born with those instincts. But the fact that we have to learn the art of killing means that it's a learned experience. And we can always unlearn it. — Arun Manilal Gandhi

Complete independence through truth and non-violence means the independence of every unit, be it the humblest of the nation, without distinction of race, colour or creed. — Mahatma Gandhi

A dissolute character is more dissolute in thought than in deed. And the same is true of violence. Our violence in word and deed is but a feeble echo of the surging violence of thought in us. — Mahatma Gandhi

I have no words to express my sadness, grief, and frustration. I never thought Bengali people could do such a heinous and atrocious thing. My heart goes out to those innocent victims and their families. — Debasish Mridha

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

What is gained by violence must be lost before superior violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Courtesy towards opponents and eagerness to understand their view-point is the ABC of non-violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

In our struggle against racial segregation in Montgomery, Alabama, I came to see at a very early stage that a synthesis of Gandhi's method of nonviolence and the Christian ethic of love is the best weapon available to Negroes for this struggle for freedom and human dignity. It may well be that the Gandhian approach will bring about a solution to the race problem in America. His spirit is a continual reminder to oppressed people that it is possible to resist evil and yet not resort to violence. — Martin Luther King Jr.

When faced with a choice between violence and cowardice, always choose violence — Mahatma Gandhi

Seven blunders of the world that lead to violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Not everyone is violent in a violence infected country or society. In those countries and societies many parents unknowingly teach their children hatred and violence. — Debasish Mridha

The pursuit of truth does not permit violence on one's opponent. — Mahatma Gandhi

If we were to drive out the English with the weapons with which they enslaved us, our slavery would still be with us even when they have gone. — Mahatma Gandhi

Live simply so others may simply live — Mahatma Gandhi

If God holds me to be a pure instrument for the spread of nonviolence in place of the awful violence now ruling the earth, He will give me the strength and show me the way. — Mahatma Gandhi

When we over consume the Earth's resources, we create an economic imbalance in societies and in the world. Affluent people and affluent societies can afford to buy everything in large quantities. They have an abundance of wealth and think they have the license to waste. They use a great deal and leave others with very little. It is this imbalance between rich and poor that gives rise to crime, violence, prejudice, and other negative attitudes.

When some people cannot get what they need through honest hard work, and see others wasting what is so precious, they feel justified in taking it by force. The Earth can only produce enough for everyone's need, but not for everyone's greed. Our greed and wasteful habits perpetuate poverty, which is violence against humanity. — Arun Gandhi

If we want Swaraj to be built on non-violence, we will have to give the villages their proper place. — Mahatma Gandhi

Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation. — Mahatma Gandhi

Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up. — Mahatma Gandhi

India's freedom will not be won by violence but only by the purest suffering without retaliation. — Mahatma Gandhi

He who trusts has never yet lost in the world. A suspicious man is lost to himself and the eworld ... Suspicion is of the brood of violence. Non-violence cannot but trust ... — Mahatma Gandhi

Poqerty is the worst form of violence — Mahatma Gandhi

I know that in embarking on non-violence I shall be running what might be termed a mad risk. But the victories of truth have never been won without risks. — Mahatma Gandhi

Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the government of the day, to do the work of defense for him. A coward is less than a man. He does not deserve to be a member of a society of men and women. — Mahatma Gandhi

Speak Peace is a book that comes at an appropriate time when anger and violence dominates human attitudes. Marshall Rosenberg gives us the means to create peace through our speech and communication. A brilliant book. — Arun Manilal Gandhi

Let us kill each other with love and kindness - not with hatred and guns. — Debasish Mridha

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. — Mahatma Gandhi

That religion and that nation will be blotted out of the face of the earth which pins its faith on injustice, untruth or violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Then, too, the dissemination of the truth in a society based on coercion was always hindered in one and the same manner, namely, those in power, feeling that the recognition of this truth would undermine their position, consciously or sometimes unconsciously perverted it by explanations and additions quite foreign to it, and also opposed it by open violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Any act of injury done from self-interest, whether amounting to killing or not, is doubtless himsa. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

I have no secret methods. I know no diplomacy save that of truth. I have no weapon but non-violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

In my humble opinion, non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good. But in the past, non-cooperation has been deliberately expressed in violence to the evildoer. I am endeavoring to show my countrymen that violent non-cooperation only multiplies evil and that evil can only be sustained by violence. Withdrawal of support of evil requires complete abstention from violence. Non-violence implies voluntary submission to the penalty for non-cooperation with evil. — Mahatma Gandhi

None, while in flesh, can be entirely free from himsa, because one never completely renounces the will to live. — Mahatma Gandhi

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat for it is momentary.
(Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13, 3 May 1919) — Mahatma Gandhi

The horror of Gandhi's murder lies not in the political motives behind it or in its consequences for Indian policy or for the future of non-violence; the horror lies simply in the fact that any man could look into the face of this extraordinary person and deliberately pull a trigger. — Mary McCarthy

Satyagraha has been designed as an effective substitute for violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violence should never be used as a shield for cowardice. It is a weapon for the brave. — Mahatma Gandhi

Let no one charge me with ever having abused or encouraged weakness or surrendered on matters of principle. But I have said, as I say again, that every trifle must not be dignified into a principle. — Mahatma Gandhi

Just as there are signs by which you can recognize violence with the naked eye, so is the spinning wheel to me a decisive sign of nonviolence. — Mahatma Gandhi

I first learned the concepts of non-violence in my marriage. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is through truth & non-violence that I can have some glimpse of God. Truth & non-violence are my God. They are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. — Mahatma Gandhi

Everywhere we turn, we see violence and hate and prejudice and anger and all of these negative emotions that are destroying humanity. And we have to wake up and take note of this and try to change our course, so that we can create a world of peace and harmony where future generations can live happily together. — Arun Manilal Gandhi

Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life. — Mahatma Gandhi

The ideally non-violent state will be an ordered anarchy. — Mahatma Gandhi

I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Woman, I hold, is the personification of self-sacrifice, but unfortunately today she does not realize what a tremendous advantage she has over man. As Tolstoy used to say, they are laboring under the hypnotic influence of man. If they would realize the strength of non-violence they would not consent to be called the weaker sex. — Mahatma Gandhi

The truth is that cowardice itself is violence of a subtle type and therefore dangerous and far more difficult to eradicate than the habit of physical 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

If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

I would risk violence a thousand times rather than risk the emasculation of the whole race. — Mahatma Gandhi

The present war is the saturation point in violence. It spells, to my mind, also its doom. — Mahatma Gandhi

It is the law of love that rules mankind. Had violence, i.e. hate, rules us we would have become extinct long ago. And yet, the tragedy of it is that the so-called civilised men and nations conduct themselves as if the basis of society was violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

The first principal of non-violent action is that of non-cooperation with everything humiliating. — Mahatma Gandhi

Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being. — Mahatma Gandhi

Ethics based on this faultily quoted verse have changed nothing in post-Gandhi India, save the color of its administration. From a hungry man's point of view, though, it's all the same who makes him hungry. I submit that he may even prefer a white man to be responsible for his sorry state if only because this way social evil may appear to come from elsewhere and may perhaps be less efficient than the suffering at the hand of his own kind. With an alien in charge, there is still room for hope, for fantasy.
Similarly in post-Tolstoy Russia, ethics based on this misquoted verse undermined a great deal of the nation's resolve in confronting the police state. What has followed is known all too well: six decades of turning the other cheek transformed the face of the nation into one big bruise, so that the state today, weary of its violence, simply spits at that face. As well as at the face of the world. — Joseph Brodsky

A successful bloody revolution can only mean further misery for the masses. — Mahatma Gandhi

That which looks for mercy from an opponent is not non-violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain. — Mahatma Gandhi

Most Americans think of Rosa Parks as a demur, pleasant-enough seamstress who backed into history by being too tired to get out of her seat on a bus one day, in reality she had been trained in nonviolence spirit and tactics at a famous institution, Highlander Folk School. It seems to be a difficult concept for most of us that peace is a skill that can be learned. We know war can be learned, but we seem to think that one becomes a peacemaker by a mere change of heart. (23) — Mahatma Gandhi

Let the Jews who claim to be the chosen race prove their title by choosing the way of non-violence for vindicating their position on earth. Every country is their home, including Palestine, not by aggression but by loving service — Mahatma Gandhi

I have an implicit faith ... that mankind can only be saved through non-violence, which is the central teaching of the Bible, as I have understood the Bible. — Mahatma Gandhi

When there is no desire for fruit, there is no temptation for untruth or himsa (violence). Take any instance of untruth or violence, and it will be found that at its back was the desire to attain the cherished end. But it may be freely admitted that the Gita was not written to establish ahimsa. It was an accepted and primary duty even before the Gita age. The Gita had to deliver the message of renunciation of fruit. This is clearly brought out as early as the second chapter. 26. But if the Gita believed in ahimsa or it was included in desirelessness, why did the author take a warlike illustration? When the Gita was written, although people believed in ahimsa, wars were not only not taboo, but nobody observed the contradiction between them and ahimsa. — Mahatma Gandhi

We have to make truth and non-violence not matters for mere individual practice but for practice by groups and communities and nations. That at any rate is my dream. I shall live and die in trying to realize it. My faith helps me to discover new truths every day. — Mahatma Gandhi

Though I cannot claim to be a Christian in the sectarian sense, the example of Jesus suffering is a factor in the composition of my undying faith in non-violence which rules all my actions, worldly and temporal. — Mahatma Gandhi

Intolerance is a species of violence and therefore against our creed. — Mahatma Gandhi

The man who coerces another not to eat fish commits more violence than he who eats it. — Mahatma Gandhi

I feel Mahatma Gandhi's non-violence was for the intelligent, educated British.It was not for those who don't understand this language. — Raj Thackeray

Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government. — Nicholson Baker

One who uses coercion is guilty of deliberate violence. Coercion is inhuman. — Mahatma Gandhi

When all violence subsides in the human heart, the state which remains is love. It is not something we have to acquire; it is always present, and needs only to be uncovered. This is our real nature, not merely to love one person here, another there, but to be love itself. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

I never supported violence. Before the formation of TMC, I was a member of the Congress Party. Gandhi's Congress. Non-violence is a philosophy that runs deep. — Mamata Banerjee

In our times, significantly, the three outstanding voices against violence have been silenced by murder - Mahatma Gandhi in India, Archbishop Romero in El Salvador, and Dr. Martin Luther King, here at home. — Millicent Fenwick

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. — Cesar Chavez

Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute. The spirit lies dormant in the brute, and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher laws - to the strength of the spirit. — Mahatma Gandhi

Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents. — Mahatma Gandhi

The difficulty one experiences in meeting himsa arises from weakness of mind. — Mahatma Gandhi

Once one assumes an attitude of intolerance, there is no knowing where it will take one. Intolerance, someone has said, is violence to the intellect and hatred is violence to the heart. — Mahatma Gandhi

In recent decades we have emphasized the value of teaching people 'tolerance.' Tolerance is not only inadequate, it is a negative concept which only alienates society further. Learning to tolerate absolves people of the responsibility of learning to understand different people, accept and appreciate their differences, and progress towards respecting them for who and what they are. It is only when we build acceptance between people that we will rid ourselves of the scourge of prejudice and liberate ourselves from violence. — Arun Gandhi

Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor ... — Mahatma Gandhi

As the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. — Mahatma Gandhi

The socialistic conception of the West was born in an environment reeking with violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

What senseless violence does is to prolong the lease of life of the British or foreign rule. — Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi was a man of peace and non-violence and lived by the Hindu principle of ahimsa, action based on refusal to do harm. As his war-strewn presidency shows, George Bush knows nothing about ahimsa and non-violence. Bush should reconsider this cynical, disrespectful display of symbolism. — Kevin Martin

For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from. — Mahatma Gandhi

By using violence to subjugate one another we are using violence against our own souls. — Mahatma Gandhi

Not only is this teacher educating her children in violence, she also has to continuously escalate her own violence to keep control. Her method of teaching breeds disrespect and prejudice. Her students have been dehumanized. — Arun Gandhi

The bomb-throwers have discredited the cause of freedom, in whose name they threw the bombs. — Mahatma Gandhi

Violence is the fear to other's ideals. — Mahatma Gandhi

As soon as men live entirely in accord with the law of love natural to their hearts and now revealed to them, which excludes all resistance by violence, and therefore hold aloof from all participation in violence - as soon as this happens, not only will hundreds be unable to enslave millions, but not even millions will be able to enslave a single individual. Do not resist the evil-doer and take no part in doing so, either in the violent deeds of the administration, in the law courts, the collection of taxes, or above all in soldiering, and no one in the world will be able to enslave you. — Mahatma Gandhi

If we know how much passive violence we perpetrate against one another, we will understand why there is so much physical violence plaguing societies and the world. — Mahatma Gandhi

I condemn, for all climes and for all times, secret murders and unfair methods even for a fair cause. — Mahatma Gandhi