Social Activist Quotes

The strength to kill is not essential for self-defense; one ought to have the strength to die. When a man is fully ready to die, he will not even desire to offer violence. Indeed, I may put it down as a self-evident proposition that the desire to kill is in inverse proportion to the desire to die. And history is replete with instances of men who by dying with courage and compassion on their lips converted the hearts of their violent opponents.

The art that is in the machine-made article, appeals only to the eye; the art in Khadi appeals first to the heart and then to the eye.

After one has been in prison, it is the small things that one appreciates: being able to take a walk whenever one wants, going into a shop and buying a newspaper, speaking or choosing to remain silent. The simple act of being able to control one's person.

India is one vast prison with high walls of suppression clothing her mind and her body.

I love my people and I don't hate nobody and it keeps me out of trouble.

Old age is just a record of one's whole life.

For every minute that I spin, there is in me the consciousness that I am adding to the nation's wealth.

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

No religion taught man to kill fellowmen because he held different opinions or was of another religion.

The greatest menace to the world today is the growing, exploiting, irresponsible imperialism.

We need to exert ourselves that much more, and break out of the vicious cycle of dependence imposed on us by the financially powerful: those in command of immense market power and those who dare to fashion the world in their own image.

Persistent questioning and healthy inquisitiveness are the first requisite for acquiring learning of any kind.

Be the change that you want to see

Where globalization means, as it so often does, that the rich and powerful now have new means to further enrich and empower themselves at the cost of the poorer and weaker, we have a responsibility to protest in the name of universal freedom.

Yajna having come to us with our birth, we are debtors all our lives, and thus for ever bound to serve the universe.

People in a democracy should be satisfied with drawing the Government's attention to a mistake, if any.

The British power is the overlord without whom Indian princes cannot breathe.

The Law of Love, call it attraction, affinity, cohesion if you like, governs the world.

Let us learn from the English rulers the simple fact that the oppressors are blind to the enormity of their own misdeeds.

Whatever I do is out of love.

The chains of a slave are broken the moment he considers himself a free man.

I do believe that, where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence. I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.

One must become as humble as the dust before he can discover truth.

Let us remind ourselves that it is ordinary people - men and women, boys and girls - that make the world a special place

I admire young people who are concerned with the affairs of their community and nation perhaps because I also became involved in struggle whist I was still at school.

Ahimsa magnifies one's own defects, and minimizes those of the opponent. It regards the mole in one's own eye as a beam and the beam in the opponent's eye as a mole.

Violent means will give violent freedom. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself.

I have discovered in life that there are ways of getting almost anywhere you want to go, if you really want to go.

Even a believer in nonviolence has to say between two combatants which is less bad or whose cause is just.

It is necessary to heal the wounds of the past If you are going to build your country and to have unity. I am working with people who fought me very bitterly before the elections. It was my responsibility as the man who is leading the majority party, my responsibility to heal the wounds of the past and to work with people who were my opponents.

White people cannot destroy me like they have other big ministers of Elijah Mohammed in the past by telling us oh, you speak good, you should be the leader.

Freedom is like birth. Till we are fully free, we are slaves.

Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the people and deprives them of initiative, it undoes the teaching of self-help.

Sport can create hope, where once there was only despair

Honest disagreement is often a good sign of progress.

People respond in accordance to how you relate to them. If you approach them on the basis of violence, that's how they'll react. But if you say, 'We want peace, we want stability,' we can then do a lot of things that will contribute towards the progress of our society.

It is easier to bridge the oceans that lie between continents than it is to bridge the gap between individuals or the peoples.

I said I was 'The Greatest,' I never said I was the smartest!

Simplicity is the essence of universality.

Good travels at a snail's pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.

I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.

I would like to say boxing cannot compared with war. We have gloves on, we have cushions, we have referees, we have judges, we have ambulances there, the intention not to kill, we don't have steel there, we don't have bullets, we don't kill momma, kill daddy, kill baby, our intention is a sport, and we're not there to kill, so boxing cannot be compared in no way with machineguns and bombs and everything that used.

My work will be finished if I succeed in carrying conviction to the human family that every man or woman, however weak in body, is the guardian of his or her self-respect and liberty.

We know it well that none of us acting alone can achieve success.

Swaraj is not meant for cowards, but for those who would mount smilingly to the gallows and refuse even to allow their eyes to be bandaged.

Not those who shout 'satyagraha', 'satyagraha' will do satyagraha, but those who will work for it.

I'm The Greatest, but only in relation to fighting.

That parrot's non-co-operation with the cage, with its master, will live for ever because it looks upon renunciation, non-co-operation, as a joy.

Where you stand depends on where you sit.

A pacifism which can see the cruelties only of occasional military warfare and is blind to the continuous cruelties of our social system is worthless.

To see farther, you must climb higher.

I want fifteen referees at this fight…because there ain’t no one man who can keep up with the pace I’m gonna set except me

Disobedience that is wholly civil should never provoke retaliation.

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

The woman is the fiber of the nation. She is the producer of life. A nation is only as good as its women.

Leo Tolstoy's life has been devoted to replacing the method of violence for removing tyranny or securing reform by the method of non­resistance to evil. He would meet hatred expressed in violence by love expressed in self­suffering.

Ahimsa calls for the strength and courage to suffer without retaliation, to receive blows without returning any.

Whatever position I occupied, it was the result of colleagues - of my comrades in the movement - who had decided in their wisdom to use me for the purpose of focusing the attention of the country and the international community on me.

In the midst of darkness, light persists.

Diversity there certainly is in the world, but it means neither inequality nor untouchability.