The quotations of

Mahatma Gandhi

Indian independence activist

1869–1948

46 quotes, most often on War & Peace, Life & Death and Truth & Lies.

Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.
Satyagraha Leaflet No. 13 (3 May 1919)
- War & Peace
A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission can alter the course of history.
Harijan (19 November 1938) p. 343
- History
- Motivation & Goals
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.
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.
- Animals
- Food
An error does not become truth by reason of multiplied propagation, nor does truth become error because nobody sees it. Truth stands, even if there be no public support. It is self sustained.
Young India 1924-1926 (1927), p. 1285
- Truth & Lies
I hold the opinion firmly that Civil Disobedience is the purest type of constitutional agitation. Of course, it becomes degrading and despicable if its civil, i.e. non-violent character is a mere camouflage.
Young India (15 December 1921)
- Politics
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.
Hind Swaraj (1909), Sect. 1
- Journalism
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.
Young India (Feb. 7, 1931) p. 162
- Power
- War & Peace
It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom. It is healthy to be reminded that the strongest might weaken and the wisest might err.
Harijan (17 February 1940)
- Wisdom
To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman.
Young India (10 April 1930)
- Justice
- Women
Truth alone will endure, all the rest will be swept away before the tide of time.
Basic Education (1951) p. 89
- Time
- Truth & Lies
We are less than atoms, I say, because the atom obeys the law of its being, whereas we in the insolence of our ignorance deny the law of nature. But I have no argument to address to those who have no faith.
Young India (24 September 1931)
- Faith
The Allah of Islam is the same as the God of Christians and the Ishwara of Hindus.
Harijan, 14-5-1938, pp. 110-11; and The Hindustan Times, 5-5-1938, in Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol. 67, p. 64
- God
- Religion
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.
Modern Review (October, 1935) p. 412. Interview with Nirmal Kumar Bose (9/10 November 1934)
- Government
An unjust law is itself a species of violence.
Non-Violence in Peace & War (1962) Vol. 2, edited by Mahadev Haribhai Desai, p. 144
- Justice
- Laws
A non-violent soldier of freedom will covet nothing for himself, he fights only for the freedom of his country.
From the Quit India speech in Bombay, on the eve of the Quit India movement (8 August 1942)
- Freedom
- Patriotism

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