Satyagraha Quotes

Why hasn’t Gandhi died yet?

It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us.

Gandhi, brought out of his semirural setting and given a Western-style education, initially attempted to become more English than the English.

It is nauseating to see Mr.[Mohandas K.] Gandhi, a seditious Middle Temple lawyer, now posing as a fakir of a type well known in the East, striding half naked up the steps of the Viceregal Palace, while he is still organizing and conducting a defiant campaign of civil disobedience, to parley on equal terms with the King Emperor.

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.

If my idol Mahatma Gandhi could fight to eradicate corruption at the age of 78, why can't I try at 60?

My main aim in 'Gandhi' was to project him as the vanguard of non-violence. Nowhere in the world has a movement of non-cooperation sans violence received so much support from masses as Gandhi's movement in India did. He was, to a great extent, responsible for freeing his nation from the British Raj.

I never met Mahatma Gandhi, but, I think everyone felt they knew him even if they hadn't met him.

Gandhi wanted to meet with Churchill, his most bitter foe, when he visited London in 1931- but it didn't happen. Churchill wanted to go to India personally as prime minister in 1942 to negotiate a final settlement on India with Gandhi and the other nationalist leaders - but the fall of Singapore prevented it from happening.

Gandhi was important for another reason as well: his country was suffering under the British Empire, and yet he was leading a very singular kind of resistance to it. At the time he was speaking about the violence in Europe, his followers were in jail as prisoners of the British government.

Satyagraha can rid society of all evils, political, economic and moral.

Violence is a concession to human weakness, satyagraha is an obligation.

Satyagraha is search for Truth, and God is Truth.

Ahimsa is my God, and Truth is my God.

Truth is my God. Non-violence is the means of realizing Him.

The spinning wheel is a symbol of nonviolence for me.

There is a scene in Richard Attenborough's biopic where Gandhi argues with his wife because she refuses to clean their latrine. She says it is the work of untouchables; he tells her there is no such thing. Gandhi's tactics of encouraging brotherly love across caste boundaries and urging Indians to clean their own latrines had failed miserably.

Satyagraha is a law for universal application. Beginning with the family, its use can be extended to every other circle.

Satyagraha thrives on repression till at last the repressor is tired of it and the object of satyagraha is gained.

The tragedy of India is that the Mahatma, who has numerous streets named after him and has had his statues put up everywhere, who's there in our school books and on our currency, who is used by everyone to hardsell his political ideology, is not emulated in India.

Even as satyagraha is a weapon unique of its kind and not one of the ordinary weapons used by people, so is Khadi, a unique article of commerce which will not, cannot, succeed on terms common to other articles.

It's because Gandhi believed in villages and because the British ruled from the cities; therefore, Nehru thought of New Delhi as an un-Indian city.

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

Gandhi, who went to Wendy's and asked, "Where's the belief?" Never got a dinner!

The power of nonviolent resistance can only come from honest working of the constructive programme.