India, 1869–1948
Mahatma Gandhi
Indian lawyer and ascetic who led the nonviolent independence movement. His satyagraha — truth-force — shaped twentieth-century moral politics.
Mahatma Gandhi in 36 lines
Every Mahatma Gandhi passage in thinkr's library, with the theme each one speaks to.
“Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.”
“Be the change that you wish to see in the world.”
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
“Kaffirs are as a rule uncivilised—the convicts even more so. They are troublesome, very dirty and live almost like animals.”
“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.”
“We who seek justice will have to do justice to others.”
“The only real, dignified, human doctrine is the greatest good of all, and this can only be achieved by uttermost self-sacrifice.”
“We but mirror the world. All the tendencies present in the outer world are to be found in the world of our body. If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”
“Victory attained by violence is tantamount to a defeat, for it is momentary.”
“In matters of conscience, the law of majority has no place.”
“When there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence… I would rather have India resort to arms in order to defend her honour than to remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour.”
“Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others… to do the work of defense for him.”
“Complete civil disobedience is a state of peaceful revolution, a refusal to obey every single state-made law.”
“I have learnt through bitter experience the one supreme lesson to conserve my anger, and as heat conserved is transmuted into energy, even so our anger controlled can be transmuted into a power which can move the world.”
“There are many causes that I am prepared to die for but no causes that I am prepared to kill for.”
“If India adopted the doctrine of love as an active part of her religion and introduced it in her politics. Swaraj would descend upon India from heaven. But I am painfully aware that that event is far off as yet.”
“It has always been easier to destroy than to create.”
“I claim that in losing the spinning wheel we lost our left lung. We are, therefore, suffering from galloping consumption. The restoration of the wheel arrests the progress of the fell disease.”
“There is no such thing as slow freedom. Freedom is like a birth. Till we are fully free we are slaves.”
“There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of conscience. It supersedes all other courts.”
“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.”
“A man is but the product of his thoughts. What he thinks, he becomes.”
“Any action that is dictated by fear or by coercion of any kind ceases to be moral.”
“No action which is not voluntary can be called moral.”
“Satan's successes are the greatest when he appears with the name of God on his lips.”
“The only tyrant I accept in this world is the still small voice within me. And even though I have to face the prospect of being a minority of one, I humbly believe I have the courage to be in such a hopeless minority.”
“Under democracy individual liberty of opinion and action is jealously guarded.”
“If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence.”
“Nonviolence is the first article of my faith. It is also the last article of my creed.”
“Non-cooperation with evil is as much a duty as is cooperation with good.”
“Always believe in your dreams, because if you don't, you'll still have hope.”
“Man becomes great exactly in the degree in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men. The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.”
“Politics without principle, wealth without work, pleasure without conscience, knowledge without character, commerce without morality, science without humanity, and worship without sacrifice — are the seven social sins.”
“Disobedience is a right that belongs to every human being, and it becomes a sacred duty when it springs from civility.”
“Our sages have taught us to learn one thing; `As in the Self, so in the Universe.' It is not possible to scan the universe as it is to scan the self. Know the self and you know the universe.”
Where Mahatma Gandhi lands on a hard choice
Quotation is the easy part. The harder test is what a position does when it meets a situation where every option costs something.
Someone apologizes, but you do not fully trust them.
You are refusing to let injury become your permanent address. The risk is using forgiveness to skip discernment.
The evidence is discouraging, but hope keeps returning.
You are allowing possibility to matter before proof arrives. The danger is confusing hope with exemption from reality.
Public life feels ugly, exhausting, and still important.
You are treating speech as a duty when stakes are real. The danger is becoming addicted to opposition.
Someone you love will not do the thing that would help them.
You are refusing to watch quietly while someone is damaged. The risk is a rescue that removes the only pressure that ever works.
You are the only person who seems to see the problem.
You are accepting the cost of being the repeated voice. The risk is becoming easy to dismiss precisely by repeating.
A rule you must follow is unjust, and breaking it costs almost nothing.
You are making the injustice into a question others must answer. The danger is spending real capital on a very small hill.
Something you did years ago has resurfaced and people want an answer.
You are letting the injured party set the terms of the accounting. The risk is a confession shaped by pressure rather than conscience.
Reading Mahatma Gandhi today
Mahatma Gandhi wrote in 1869–1948, from India — a world with different assumptions about authority, death and what a life is for. That distance is useful rather than a problem: it is what lets the ideas cut against assumptions you did not know you were making.
In thinkr, Mahatma Gandhi is one of 44 thinkers you can put a real question to, and the answers come back in that thinker's own voice and commitments rather than as a neutral summary. The 36 passages above are what the app draws on.
Working at roughly the same time
- Albert Camus — France/Algeria, 1913–1960
- Arthur Schopenhauer — Germany, 1788–1860
- Bertrand Russell — UK, 1872–1970
- Carl Jung — Switzerland, 1875–1961
- Friedrich Nietzsche — Germany, 1844–1900
- Hannah Arendt — Germany & United States, 1906–1975
Argues the same cases
Buddha, Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius, Confucius, Aristotle, Søren Kierkegaard take positions on the same dilemmas as Mahatma Gandhi, which is usually where the disagreements become concrete.