Ethicist Quotes

“Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government, but that it is also a substitute for violence or armed rebellion.”

“President means chief servant”

“You must be the change you wish to see in the world.”

“My nonviolence does recognize different species of violence, defensive and offensive.”

“A democratic organization has to dare to do the right at all costs.”

“Be the change that you want to see”

“I will not have the power of nonviolence to be underestimated in order to cover my limitations or weaknesses.”

“There is no road to freedom, freedom is the road.”

“Whenever you have truth it must be given with love, or the message and the messenger will be rejected.”

“Before we can aspire to guide the destinies of India, we shall have to adopt the habit of fearlessness.”

“If you think the world is all wrong, remember that it contains people like you.”

“I have shut my mind against nothing and I am a friend of Great Britain. I always have been. I have no axe to grind.”

“I have even seen the writings suggesting that I am playing a deep game, that I am using the present turmoil to foist my fads on India, and am making religious experiments at India's expense. I can only answer that Satyagraha is made of sterner stuff. There is nothing reserved and nothing secret in it.”

“Newspapers have become more important to the average man than the scriptures.”

“The Truth is far more powerful than any weapon of mass destruction.”

“A satyagrahi turns the searchlight inward relentlessly to weed out all the defects that may be lying hidden there still.”

“Not violence, nor untruth but non-violence and Truth are the laws of our being.”

“All your scholarship, all your study of Shakespeare and Wordsworth would be in vain, if at the same time you do not build your character, and attain mastery over your thoughts and actions.”

“Yajna is duty to be performed, or service to be rendered, all twenty-four hours of the day.”

“There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves. All birth takes place in a moment.”

“There is no hope for the aching world except through the narrow and straight path of nonviolence.”

“A votary of ahimsa cannot subscribe to the utilitarian formula (of the greatest good of the greatest number). He will strive for the greatest good of all and die in the attempt to realize that ideal.”

“Silence is a great help to a seeker after truth like myself.”

“A slave has not the freedom even to do the right thing.”

“I have mentally become a woman in order to steal into her heart.”