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Government Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

45 Government quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

All Government quotes Mahatma Gandhi’s page

We must learn to be self‑reliant, says Gandhi, refusing to depend on a government that refuses to mend. He envisions a state that merely carries out the people’s will, not one that forces its own agenda. Non‑cooperation and resistance are presented as tools to stay independent of oppressive power.

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For me popular violence is as much an obstruction in our path as the Government violence.

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Our nonviolence vis-а-vis the British Government has been the nonviolence of the weak.

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A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed.

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My politics is my religion, my religion is my politics.

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Every person in a well-ordered state is fully conscious of both his responsibilities and his rights.

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Schools and colleges are really a factory for turning out clerks for the Government.

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People in a democracy should be satisfied with drawing the Government's attention to a mistake, if any.

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Withholding of payment of taxes is one of the quickest methods of overthrowing a government.

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Even the most despotic government cannot stand except for the consent of the governed… Immediately the subject ceases to fear the despotic…

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Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country.

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A popular government wields a moral force, which is infinitely superior to the physical force that the foreign government could summon to…

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I am not anti-English, I am not anti-British, I am not anti-any Government, but I am anti-untruth, anti-humbug and anti-injustice.

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The primary object of non-co-operation is nowhere stated to be paralysis of the Government. The primary object is self-purification.

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I can retain neither respect nor affection for government which has been moving from wrong to wrong in order to defend its…

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Where death without resistance or death after resistance is the only way, neither party should think of resorting to law-courts or help…

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It is the function of God Rama to destroy evil, wherever it occurs and it is equally the function of God Rama…

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Men should do their actual living and working in communities small enough to permit of genuine self-government and the assumption of personal…

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Among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the Act depriving a whole nation of arms…

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Cowardice is impotence worse than violence. The coward desires revenge but being afraid to die, he looks to others, maybe to the…

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“But so long as I lived under a system of Government based on force and voluntarily partook of the many facilities and…

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Government control gives rise to fraud, suppression of Truth, intensification of the black market and artificial scarcity. Above all, it unmans the…

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Events that have happened during the past month have confirmed me in the opinion that the Imperial Government have acted in the…

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Our nonviolence in respect of the Government is a result of our incapacity for effective violence.

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The only true resistance to this Government... [is] to cease to co-operate with it.

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Good government is no substitute for self-government.

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It may be long before the law of love will be recognised in international affairs. The machineries of government stand between and…

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Do not concentrate on showing the misdeeds of the government, for we have to convert and befriend those who run it.

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Government of the people by the people and for the people cannot be conducted at the bidding of one man, however great…

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Civil disobedience is not only the natural right of a people, especially when they have no effective voice in their own Government,…

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A nonviolent system of government is clearly an impossibility so long as the wide gulf between the rich and the hungry millions…

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The nation's non-co-operation is an invitation to the Government to co-operate with it on its own terms, as is every nation's right…

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The British Government in India constitutes a struggle between modern civilization, which is the Kingdom of Satan, and the ancient civilization, which…

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I do not consider Hitler to be as bad as he is depicted. He is showing an ability which is amazing and…

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Buddha emphasized and re-declared the eternal and unalterable existence of the moral government of this universe. He unhesitatingly said that the law…

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No government on earth can make men, who have realized freedom in their hearts, salute against their will.

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I have not hesitated to call the system of Government under which we are labouring 'satanic' and I withdraw naught out of…

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What crimes, for which we condemn the Government as satanic, have not we been guilty of towards our own untouchable brethren?

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Under my plan, the state will be there to carry out the will of the people, not to dictate to them or…

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A Swaraj government means a government established by the free joint will of Hindus, Mussalmans and others.

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Non-co-operation enables us to show that in everything that matters we can be independent of the Government.

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More by Mahatma Gandhi

I do not want to live at the cost of the life even of a snake. I should let him bite me to death…

Devotion required by the Gita is no soft-hearted effusiveness.

No nation being under another nation can accept gifts, and kick at the responsibility attached to those gifts, imposed by the conquering nation.

So long as we fear the outside world, we must cease to think of Swaraj.

I do not want a kingdom, or heaven; what I want is to remove the trouble of the oppressed, the poor, and the needy.

Religions are not for separating men from one another, they are meant to bind them.

I hold flesh-food to be unsuited to our species. We err in copying the lower animal world if we are superior to it.

“It was only in South Africa that I got over this shyness, though I never completely overcame it. It was impossible for me to…

“Where there is life.”

If it was wrong to seek God in a stone, how was it right to seek Him in a book called the Gita, the…

The spirit of democracy cannot be established in the midst of terrorism, whether governmental or popular.

Champions are made from something they have deep inside of them-a desire, a dream, a vison.

My motto is "Unite now, today if you can; fight if you must. But in every case avoid British intervention."

I have no disciples, being myself an aspirant after discipleship and in search of a guru.

Man becomes not the lord and master of all creation but he is its servant.