Mahatma Gandhi Quotes

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the field of violence. But I maintain that far more undreamt of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.

You can't change the system through violence.

Read about some squirrelly guy who claims that he just don't believe in fighting, and I wonder how long the rest of us can count on being free.

Our aim is not to do things by violence to opponents.

Nonviolence is an imperative in order to bring about ultimate community.

The force generated by nonviolence is infinitely greater than the force of all the arms created by man's ingenuity.

Civil disobedience is the only nonviolent escape from the soul-destroying heat of violence.

Indeed the very word, nonviolence, a negative word, means that it is an effort to abandon the violence that is inevitable in life.

Sometimes when we're incensed by the rancid tide of injustice, the impulse is to attack. We must avoid this. We have learned that violence as a means is always unsuccessful.

In a world built on violence, one must be a revolutionary before one can be a pacifist.

[A.J. Muste] never engaged in violence but he believed, as [Mahatma] Gandhi did - and he knew Gandhi slightly - he believed that a pacifist had to be active in the community.

I believe that Gandhi’s views were the most enlightened of all the political men in our time. We should strive to do things in his spirit: not to use violence in fighting for our cause, but by non-participation in anything you believe is evil.

One is called to live nonviolently, even if the change one works for seems impossible. It may or may not be possible to turn the US around through nonviolent revolution. But one thing favors such an attempt: the total inability of violence to change anything for the better

It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it's nonviolence or nonexistence. That is where we are today.

Nonviolence is the only way. Even if you achieve your goal by violent means there are always side effects, and these can be worse than the problem. Violence is against human nature.

The choice is not between violence and nonviolence but between nonviolence and nonexistence.

Nonviolence is a universal principle and its operation is not limited by a hostile environment.

The nation cannot be kept on the nonviolent path by violence.

Nonviolence is a universal law acting under all circumstances.

I wasn't born to be a fighter. The causes I have fought for have invariably been causes that should have been gained by a delicate suggestion. Since they never were, I made myself into a fighter.

It is my conviction that there is no way to peace - peace is the way.

For me, nonviolence was not a moral principle but a strategy; there is no moral goodness in using an ineffective weapon.

The way I'm going now is to focus on peace, to create peace. As Sister Corita said, "I don't go to anti-war rallies. I go to peace rallies."

Nonviolence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution; its vast possibilities are yet unexplored.

It's utterly hypocritical for Israelis to wonder aloud why Palestinians don't pursue a non-violent strategy. One obvious reason is that, whenever they have, Israel brutally represses it.