12 Mahatma Gandhi Quotes on Resistance

Mahatma Gandhi quotes on resistance

7. I came in contact with every known Indian anarchist in London. Their bravery impressed me, but I felt that their zeal was misguided. I felt that violence was no remedy for India's ills, and that her civilisation required the use of a different and higher weapon for self-protection.

27. I appeal for cessation of hostilities ... because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. Your soldiers are doing the same work of destruction as the Germans. The only difference is that perhaps yours are not as thorough as the Germans ... I venture to present you with a nobler and a braver way, worthy of the bravest soldiers. I want you to fight Nazism without arms or ... with non-violent arms. I would like you to lay down the arms you have as being useless for saving you or humanity. You will invite Herr Hitler and Signor Mussolini to take what they want of the countries you call your possessions. Let them take possession of your beautiful island, with your many beautiful buildings. You will give all these but neither your souls, nor your minds. If these gentlemen choose to occupy your homes, you will vacate them. If they do not give you free passage out, you will allow yourself, man, woman and child, to be slaughtered, but you will refuse to owe allegiance to them ... I am telling His Excellency the Viceroy that my services are at the disposal of His Majesty's Government, should they consider them of any practical use in advancing the object of my appeal.

110. A satyagrahi is born to be deceived.

142. First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.

161. I can combine the greatest love with the greatest opposition to wrong.

169. I regard myself as a soldier, though a soldier of peace.

176. If we were to drive out the English with the weapons with which they enslaved us, our slavery would still be with us even when they have gone.

181. In the code of the Satyagrahi, there is no such thing as surrender to brute force.

199. Non-violent resistance implies the very opposite of weakness. Defiance combined with non-retaliatory acceptance of repression from one's opponents is active, not passive. It requires strength, and there is nothing automatic or intuitive about the resoluteness required for using non-violent methods in political struggle and the quest for Truth.

205. Passive resistance is an all-sided sword; it can be used anyhow; it blesses him who uses it and him against whom it is used.

249. With this salt I am shaking the foundations of the empire.

253. The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher's knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.