It is to Tolstoy whom Mahatma Gandhi gave credit for his own first understanding of nonviolent resistance to oppression, and there is an unbroken lineage from Tolstoy to Gandhi to Martin Luther King.
About this quote
- What does it mean?
- Gandhi credited Tolstoy for understanding nonviolent resistance, establishing a lineage to Martin Luther King.
- In plain terms
- Tolstoy influenced Gandhi, who influenced Martin Luther King, creating a line of nonviolent activism.
- What can you take from it?
- Ideas about nonviolence can create a lasting historical impact.
Where it applies
Putting it to work
Questions to consider
- Who influenced the activists you follow?
- How do ideas spread?
Another view
Historical lineages often simplify complex historical interactions.
More from Leo Tolstoy
Even beyond their deaths, the two novelists stand in contrariety. Tolstoy, the foremost heir to the traditions of the epic; Dostoevsky, one of the major dramat…
Permalink to quote #145 He was a revolutionary in his thinking and later in life he was an activist and reformer; he was best known as Russia's greatest moral authority, and his teach…
Permalink to quote #147 My first reading of Tolstoy affected me as a revelation from heaven, as the trumpet of the judgment. What he made me feel was not the desire to imitate, but th…
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