Nonviolence is an unchangeable creed. It has to be pursued even in face of violence raging around you.
I retain the opinion that council entry is inconsistent with non-co-operation as I conceive it.
One effect of sustained conflict is to narrow our vision of what is possible. Time and time again, conflicts are resolved through shifts that were unimaginable at the start.
It will profit you nothing to remember old wrongs and nurse old enmities.
We cannot have real independence unless the people banish the touch-me-not spirit from their hearts.
I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.
Jinnah is a constant source of inspiration for all those who are fighting against racial and group discrimination.
Be the compromise you want to see in the world.
For me to dominate the Congress in spite of these fundamental differences is almost a species of violence which I must refrain from.
Nonviolence and cowardice go ill together.
Human dignity demands courage to defend oneself.
I have been known as a crank, faddist, madman. Evidently the reputation is well deserved. For wherever I go, I draw to myself cranks, faddists, and madmen.
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.
The seeker after truth should be humbler than the dust. The world crushes the dust under its feet, but the seeker after truth should so humble himself that even the dust could crush him. Only then, and not till then, will he have a glimpse of truth.
I was neglected by my family because I had disappointed them - I'd run away from being forced into an arranged marriage, which was a big blow to them.
I will not have the power of nonviolence to be underestimated in order to cover my limitations or weaknesses.
Hope is a powerful weapon, and (one) no one power on earth can deprive you of.
You don't know who is important to you until you actually lose them.
Does not the history of the world show that there would have been no romance in life if there had been no risks?
Satyagraha is a relentless search for truth and a determination to search truth.
The challenge for each one of you is to take up these ideals of tolerance and respect for others and put them to practical use in your schools, your communities and throughout your lives.
I found solitary confinement the most forbidding aspect of prison life. There is no end and no beginning; there is only one's mind, which can begin to play tricks. Was that a dream or did it really happen? One begins to question everything.
Our fear is not that we are inadequate, but that we are powerful beyond measure.
Nonviolence is a good policy when the conditions permit.
I am not fighting machinery as such, but the madness of thinking that machinery saves labor. Men save labor until thousands of them are without work and die of hunger on the streets. I want to secure employment and livelihood not only to part of the human race, but for all. I will not have the enrichment of a few at the expense of the community. At present the machine is helping a small minority to live on the exploitation of the masses. The motive force of this minority is not humanity or love of their kind, but greed and avarice.
What is gained by violence must be lost before superior violence.
I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death rather than kill him.
The only things that separates us from the brute, with which we have so much in common, is the capacity to distinguish between right and wrong.
Nonviolence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brute.
In some ways, it is easier to be a dissident, for then one is without responsibility.
If what passed as nonviolence does not enable people to protect the honour of women, or if it does not enable women to protect their own honour, it is not nonviolence.
Yajna is duty to be performed, or service to be rendered, all twenty-four hours of the day.
It was during those long and lonely years that my hunger for the freedom of my own people became a hunger for the freedom of all people, white and black. I knew as well as I knew anything that the oppressor must be liberated just as surely as the oppressed.
Real education consists in drawing the best out of yourself.
People become what they expect themselves to become
The very right to be human is denied every day to hundreds of millions of people as a result of poverty, the unavailability of basic necessities such as food, jobs, water and shelter, education, health care and a healthy environment.
Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
Begin with duties of a man and rights will follow as spring follows winter
In the dictionary of satyagraha, there is no enemy.
Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.
I have endeavored to show that there is no real service of humanity in the profession of medicine and that it is injurious to mankind.
The spinning wheel is as much a necessity of Indian life as air and water.
You will eat not to satisfy your palate but your hunger. A self-indulgent man lives to eat; a self-restrained man eats to live.
Jealousy does not wait for reasons.
It is what we make out of what we have, not what we are given, that separates one person from another.
Where my own mission is concerned, my thought is active, and I try to wish everyone well in spite of doubts and mistrust.
If intellect plays a large part in the field of violence, I hold that it plays a larger part in the field of nonviolence.
Before we can aspire to guide the destinies of India, we shall have to adopt the habit of fearlessness.
A friendship that exacts oneness of opinion and conduct is not worth much.
Moral restrictions tend to become lax in a foreign country, since the fear of social opinion disappears.
Satyagraha is a force that has come to stay. No force in the world can kill it.
I know that not only is Swaraj our birthright, but it is our sacred duty to win it.
If we all discharge our duties, rights will not be far to seek.
No reform is possible unless some of the educated and the rich voluntarily accept the status of the poor, travel third, refuse to enjoy the amenities denied to the poor and, instead of taking avoidable hardships, discourtesies and injustice as a matter of course, fight for their removal.
My family is very large. 42 million.
Every truth is self-acting and possesses inherent strength.
The weak can never forgive.
It is man's social nature which distinguishes him from the brute creation. If it is his privilege to be independent, it is equally his duty to be inter-dependent. Only an arrogant man will claim to be independent of everybody else and be self-contained.
It is weakness which breeds fear, and fear breeds distrust.
To forgive is not to forget. The merit lies in loving in spite of the vivid knowledge that one that must be loved is not a friend. There is not merit in loving an enemy when you forget him for a friend.
