quotes by Ethicist Quotes

“I believe all war to be wholly wrong.”

“No charter of freedom will be worth looking at which does not ensure the same measure of freedom for the minorities as for the majority.”

“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.”

“I have no secret methods. I know no diplomacy save that of truth. I have no weapon but non-violence.”

“I would beseech you not only to be pure beyond suspicion but I would ask you to combine with stainless purity, great wisdom and great ability.”

“A woman's intuition has often proved truer than a man's arrogant assumption of knowledge.”

“I have known only one way of carrying on missionary work, viz., by personal example and discussion with searchers for knowledge.”

“Pure motives can never justify impure or violent action.”

“What is it but my ahimsa that draws thousands of women to me in fearless confidence?”

“Cow-slaughter and man-slaughter are in my opinion two sides of the same coin.”

“Those who have their hands dyed deep in blood cannot build a nonviolent order for the world.”

“A satyagrahi is nothing if not instinctively law-abiding.”

“That which looks for mercy from an opponent is not non-violence.”

“Lovers of Swaraj cannot rest till a solution is found which would allay Mussalman apprehensions and yet not endanger Swaraj.”

“Non-violence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Non-violence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Perfect non-violence is the highest bravery. Non-violent conduct is never demoralising; cowardice always is.”

“Your character must be above suspicion and you must be truthful and self-controlled.”

“No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation.”

“There will have to be rigid and iron discipline before we achieve anything great and enduring, and that discipline will not come by mere academic argument and appeal to reason and logic. Discipline is learnt in the school of adversity.”

“If you do what you enjoy doing you'll never have to work hard.”

“Silence becomes cowardice when occasion demands speaking out the whole truth and acting accordingly.”

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

“It is wonderful, if we chose the right diet, what an extraordinarily small quantity would suffice.”

“A poet is one who can call forth the good latent in the human beast.”

“The earth has everything for all human needs, but nothing for his greed.”

“If you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly.”

“Whatever can be useful to those starving millions is beautiful to my mind.”

“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”

“A man can give up a right, but he may not give up a duty without being guilty of a grave dereliction.”

“I am conscious of my own limitations. That consciousness is my only strength.”

“The very word Islam means peace, which is nonviolence.”

“The restoration of free speech, free association and free press is almost the whole Swaraj.”

“No sophistry, no jugglery in figures can explain away the evidence that the skeletons in many villages present to the naked eye.”

“The pilgrimage to Swaraj is a painful climb.”

“The most practical, the most dignified way of going on in the world is to take people at their word, when you have no positive reason to the contrary.”

“I will suffer the agony if that is to be my lot.”

“Service which is rendered without joy helps neither the servant nor the served.”

“Joy lies in the fight, in the attempt, in the suffering involved, not in the victory itself”

“I object to violence because when it appears to do good, the good is only temporary; the evil it does is permanent.”

“Mother cow expects from us nothing but grass and grain.”

“I believe in the capacity of India to offer nonviolent battle to the English rulers.”

“I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.”

“Anger is the enemy of non-violence and pride is a monster that swallows it up.”

“What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty or democracy?”

“Was it that you wanted to pull my leg by transporting me to the frozen Himalayan heights of 'mahatmaship' and claiming for yourself absolution from having to follow my precepts?”

“A duty religiously performed carries with it several other important consequences.”

“We may never be strong enough to be entirely non-violent in thought, word and deed. But we must keep non-violence as our goal and make steady progress towards it.”

“The reaction that a ruthless dictator sets up in us either that of awe or pity according respectively as we react to him violently on nonviolently.”

“The call of the spinning wheel is the noblest of all. Because it is the call of love. And love is Swaraj.”

“I know no diplomacy save that of truth.”

“To give one's heart is to give all.”