Violence By Gandhi Quotes & Sayings

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

People continued - regardless of all that leads man forward - to try to unite the incompatibles: the virtue of love, and what is opposed to love, namely, the restraining of evil by violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

Woman is the companion of man, gifted with equal mental capacity ... If by strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably man's superior ... If non-violence is the law of our being, the future is with women. — Mahatma Gandhi

In the application of Satyagraha, I discovered, in the earliest stages, that pursuit of Truth did not admit of violence being inflicted on one's opponent, but that he must be weaned from error by patience and sympathy. For, what appears to be truth to the one may appear to be error to the other. And patience means self-suffering. So the doctrine came to mean vindication of Truth, not by infliction of suffering on the opponent but one's own self. — Mahatma Gandhi

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

The moral to be legitimately drawn from the supreme tragedy of the bomb is that it will not be destroyed by counter bombs even as violence cannot be by counter-violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

Non-violence does not signify that man must not fight against the enemy, and by enemy is meant the evil which men do, not the human beings themselves. — Mahatma Gandhi

If it is by force that we wish to achieve Swaraj, let us drop nonviolence and offer such violence as we may. — Mahatma Gandhi

H. G. Wells was not the only one to mention Churchill and Hitler in the same breath: "Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler." — Mahatma Gandhi

I do believe that where there is a choice between cowardice and non-violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

The science of war leads one to dictatorship, pure and simple. The science of non-violence alone can lead one to pure democracy. Power based on love is thousand times more effective and permanent than power derived from fear of punishment. It is a blasphemy to say non-violence can be practiced only by individuals and never by nations which are composed of individuals. The nearest approach to purest anarchy would be a democracy based on non-violence. A society organized and run on the basis of complete non-violence would be the purest anarchy. — Mahatma Gandhi

To prevent the workers from going to their work by standing in front of them is pure violence and must be given up. — Mahatma Gandhi

My experience teaches me that truth can never be propagated by doing violence. — 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

Violence will prevail over violence, only when someone can prove to me that darkness can be dispelled by darkness — Mahatma Gandhi

Humankind has to get out of violence only through non-violence. Hatred can be overcome only by love. Counter - hatred only increases the surface as well as the depth of hatred. — Mahatma Gandhi

The third, most important, and unfortunately most widespread justification is, at bottom, the age-old religious one just a little altered: that in public life the suppression of some for the protection of the majority cannot be avoided - so that coercion is unavoidable however desirable reliance on love alone might be in human intercourse. The only difference in this justification by pseudo-science consists in the fact that, to the question why such and such people and not others have the right to decide against whom violence may and must be used, pseudo-science now gives a different reply to that given by religion - which declared that the right to decide was valid because it was pronounced by persons possessed of divine power. 'Science' says that these decisions represent the will of the people, which under a constitutional form of government is supposed to find expression in all the decisions and actions of those who are at the helm at the moment. — Mahatma Gandhi

I have recognized that the nation has the right, if it so wills, to vindicate her freedom even by actual violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

I isolate this non-co-operation from Sinn Feinism, for it is so conceived as to be incapable of being offered side by side with violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

I believe that Gandhi's views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil. — Albert Einstein

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. — 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by 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

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

It is my belief that the problem of bringing peace to the world on a supranational basis will be solved only by employing Gandhi's method on a larger scale. — Albert Einstein

Conquer the heart of the enemy with truth and love, not by violence. — Mahatma Gandhi

...if we do not know how to defend ourselves, our women and our places of worship by force of suffering, i.e., nonviolence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting." (MLK)
"...If given a choice between violent resistance and passive acceptance, King and Gandhi both accepted violence..."
"...like violence, it [non-violent resistance] was aggressive, but it was spiritually, bot physically, so."

"...At the same time the mind and the emotions are active, actively trying to persuade the opponent to change his ways and convince him that he is mistaken and to lift him to a higher level of existence. — S. Nassir Ghaemi