"I have, therefore, not hesitated to say that it is better to be violent, if there is violence in our breasts, than to put on the cloak of non-violence to cover impotence. Violence is any day preferable to impotence. There is hope for a violent man to become non-violent. There is no such hope for the impotent."
Mahatma Gandhi / Non-Violence in Peace and War p. 254 (1948); also in Gandhi on Non-violence: Selected Texts from Mohandas K. Gandhi's Non-Violence in Peace and War (1965) edited by Thomas Merton; this has also appeared in paraphrased form as "if there is v
"[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...It makes them spoon-fed."
Mahatma Gandhi / Delhi Diary (3 November 1947 entry), Navajivan Publishing House, Ahmedabad, (March 1948) pp. 68-70
"I do not believe in the doctrine of the greatest number. It means in its nakedness that in order to achieve the supposed good of 51 per cent the interests of 49 per cent may be, or rather, should be sacrificed. It is a heartless doctrine and has done harm to humanity."
Mahatma Gandhi / The Dairy of Mahadev Desai, (June 4, 1932) p. 149
"By its very nature, non-violence cannot ‘seize’ power, nor can that be its goal. But non-violence can do more; it can effectively control and guide power without capturing the machinery of government. That is its beauty."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (Feb. 7, 1931) p. 162
"No society can possibly be built upon a denial of individual freedom.It is contrary to the very nature of man. Just as a man will not grow horns or a tail, so will he not exist as man if he has no mind of his own. In reality even those who do not believe in the liberty of the individual believe in their own."
Mahatma Gandhi / Conquest of Violence: The Gandhian Philosophy of Conflict by Joan V. Bondurant (1965) University of California Press, Berkeley: CA, p. 174. Harijan (1 February 1942) p. 27
"If I am to die by the bullet of a madman, I must do so smiling. There must be no anger within me. God must be in my heart and on my lips. And you promise me one thing. Should such a thing happen, you are not to shed one tear."
Mahatma Gandhi / To , January 28, 1948, two days before his assassination, as quoted in , Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1954), vol. 8, p. 436.
"I am uncompromising in the matter of woman's rights. In my opinion she should labour under no legal disability not suffered by man, I should treat the daughters and sons on a footing of perfect equality."
Mahatma Gandhi / Mohandas Gandhi, 17th October 1929. Quoted in Gandhi: The Essential Writings. Judith M. Brown, Oxford University Press, 1998 (pp. 228-9). Also quoted in Kumari Jayawardena, Feminism and Nationalism in the Third World in the 19th and Early 2
"Vegetarians should have that moral basis—that a man was not born a carnivorous animal, but born to live on the fruits and herbs that the earth grows."
Mahatma Gandhi / Speech at Meeting of London Vegetarian Society (20 November 1931), in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999 electronic edition), Volume 54, p. 189.
"Holding the view I do, it is superfluous for me now to answer your argument that “this war has split the world into two camps.” Between Scylla and Charybdis, if I sail in either direction, I suffer shipwreck. Therefore I have to be in the midst of the storm. I suggested a way out. Naturally, it has been rejected, because the powers that be do not want to relax their grip on India."
Mahatma Gandhi / 30 July 1944, in Collected Works, vol. 77, p. 434. Quoted in Mahatma: Life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1951) by , vol. 6, p. 331.
"I say without fear of my figures being successfully challenged that India today is more illiterate than it was before a fifty or hundred years ago, and so is Burma, because the British administrators when they came to India, instead of taking hold of things as they were, began to root them out. They scratched the soil and began to look at the root and left the root like that and the beautiful tree perished."
Mahatma Gandhi / Mahatma Gandhi, Speech at Chatham House, London, on October 20, 1931. Quoted in Essential Writings of Dharampal by Dharampal, and quoted in S.R. Goel, Hindu Society under siege
"The only tyrant I accept in this world is the 'still small voice' within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority."
Mahatma Gandhi / Speech at the Kingsley Hall, London, 4 October 1931, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 48, p. 340.
"For me the different religions are beautiful flowers from the same garden, or they are branches of the same majestic tree. Therefore they are equally true, though being received and interpreted through human instruments equally imperfect."
Mahatma Gandhi / Harijan, 30-1-1937, p. 407; In: My God (1962), Chapter 13. Pathways of God, Printed and Published by: Jitendra T. Desai, Navajivan Mudranalaya, Ahemadabad-380014 India
"It is impossible for me to reconcile myself to the idea of conversion after the style that goes on in India and elsewhere today. It is an error which is perhaps the greatest impediment to the world's progress toward peace ... Why should a Christian want to convert a Hindu to Christianity? Why should he not be satisfied if the Hindu is a good or godly man?"
Mahatma Gandhi / Harijan (30 January 1937) Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi
"Muslims must realize and admit the wrongs perpetrated under the Islamic rule."
Mahatma Gandhi / 25 December 1947, in reaction to a Urdu poem protesting against the planned rebuilding of the Somnath temple and calling for "a new Ghaznavi to avenge the renovation of the Somnath temple", quoted by Rajmohan Gandhi: Revenge and Reconciliat
"Seven social sins: politics without principles, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice."
Mahatma Gandhi / A list closing an article in Young India (22 October 1925); Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi Vol. 33 (PDF) p. 135
"Hindus should never be angry against the Muslims even if the latter might make up their minds to undo even their existence."
Mahatma Gandhi / Mahatma Gandhi post-prayer speech at Birla Mandir, New Delhi, on April 6, 1947. quoted in Arvind Lavakare, Of Sabarmati secularism & non-violence, 16 April 2002, Rediff.
"Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and in-human to impose the Jews on the Arabs."
"I suggest that, if India is to evolve along nonviolent lines, it will have to decentralize many things. Centralization cannot be sustained and defended without adequate force . . .Centralization as a system is inconsistent with non-violent structure of society."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India (18 January 1942) p. 5
"I believe that independent India can only discharge her duty towards a groaning world by adopting a simple but ennobled life by developing her thousands of cottages and living at peace with the world. High thinking is inconsistent with complicated material life based on high speed imposed on us by Mammon worship. All the graces of life are possible only when we learn the art of living nobly."
Mahatma Gandhi / Harijan, (9 January 1946), p. 285
"What the divine author of the Mahabharata said of his great creation is equally true of Hinduism. Whatever of substance is contained in any other religion is always to be found in Hinduism, and what is not contained in it is insubstantial or unnecessary."
"It is my firm conviction that if the State suppressed capitalism by violence, it will be caught in the coils of violence itself, and fail to develop non-violence at any time. The state represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The Individual has a soul, but as the state is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from violence to which it owes its very existence."
Mahatma Gandhi / Modern Review (October, 1935) p. 412. Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose (9/10 November 1934)
"I came to the conclusion long ago ... that all religions were true and also that all had some error in them, and whilst I hold by my own, I should hold others as dear as Hinduism. So we can only pray, if we are Hindus, not that a Christian should become a Hindu ... But our innermost prayer should be a Hindu should be a better Hindu, a Muslim a better Muslim, a Christian a better Christian."
"Hindus should not harbour anger in their hearts against Muslims even if the latter wanted to destroy them. Even if the Muslims want to kill us all, we should face death bravely. If they established their rule after killing Hindus, we would be ushering in a new world by sacrificing our lives."
Mahatma Gandhi / SPEECH AT PRAYER MEETING NEW DELHI, April 6, 1947. VOL. 94: 17 FEBRUARY, 1947 - 29 APRIL, 1947 247 243. p. 248
"One of the objects of a newspaper is to understand popular feeling and to give expression to it; another is to arouse among the people certain desirable sentiments; and the third is fearlessly to expose popular defects."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India, 2 July 1925, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 27, p. 326.
"If by abundance you mean everyone having plenty to eat and drink and to clothe himself with, enough to keep his mind trained and educated, I should be satisfied. But I should not like to pack more stuffs in my belly than I can digest and more things than I can ever usefully use. But neither do I want poverty, penury, misery, dirt and dust in India."
"If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province."
"A society organized and run on the basis of complete nonviolence would be the purest anarchy... That State is perfect and non-violent where the people are governed the least."
"I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage—an inexorable demand—that we should cease to kill our fellow-creatures for satisfaction of our bodily wants."
Mahatma Gandhi / Speech at Meeting in Lausanne (8 December 1931), in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (New Delhi: Publications Division Government of India, 1999 electronic edition), Volume 54, p. 272.
"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 / Harijan, 5 July 1947, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 87, p. 390.
"The human body is meant solely for service, never for indulgence. The secret of happy life lies in renunciation. Renunciation is life. Indulgence spells death."
Mahatma Gandhi / Harijan, (24 February 1946), p. 19
"Now when we talk of brotherhood of men, we stop there and feel that all other life is there for man to exploit for his own purposes. But Hinduism excludes all exploitation."
"But religion is not like a house or a cloak which can be changed at will. It is more an integral part of one's self than of one's body. Religion is the tie that binds one to one's Creator, and while the body perishes as it has to, religion persists even after that."
Mahatma Gandhi / Gandhi (1935) in response to a call by Dr. Ambedkar for mass conversions among the depressed classes. Quoted from Sri Aurobindo, ., Nahar, S., Aurobindo, ., & Institut de recherches évolutives (Paris). India's rebirth: A selection from Sri
"I do not want to see the allies defeated. But I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability that is amazing and seems to be gaining his victories without much bloodshed. Englishmen are showing the strength that Empire builders must have. I expect them to rise much higher than they seem to be doing."
Mahatma Gandhi / Letter to Rajkumari Amrit Kaur, regarding the military situation between England and Germany (May 1940), quoted in Collected Works (1958), p. 70.
"Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."
Mahatma Gandhi / Young India, 5 March 1925, in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 31, p. 105.