Good government is the most dangerous government, because it deprives people of the need to look after themselves. |
I am prepared to die, but there is no cause for which I am prepared to kill. |
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. |
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. |
Once one assumes an attitude of intolerance, there is no knowing where it will take one. Intolerance, someone has said, is violence to the intellect and hatred is violence to the heart. |
What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless,
whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism
or the holy name of liberty and democracy? |
Courtesy towards opponents and eagerness to understand their view-point is the ABC of non-violence. |
If we are to reach real peace in this world,
and if we are to carry on a real war against war,
we shall have to begin with the children. |
Truth resides in every human heart, and one has to search for it there, and to be guided by truth as one sees it.
But no one has a right to coerce others to act according to his own view of truth. |
Honest differences are a healthy sign of progress. |
From my experience of hundreds of children, I know that they have perhaps a finer sense of honour than you or I have. The greatest lessons in life, if we would but stoop and humble ourselves, we would learn not from grown-up learned men, but from the so-called ignorant children. |
Live life simply so that others may simply live. |
