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Politics Quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

56 Politics quotes by Mahatma Gandhi

All Politics quotes Mahatma Gandhi’s page

Mahatma Gandhi argues that people should become self‑reliant and reject government aid. He says he will risk prison to show his cause, and that both popular and government violence block progress. He promotes non‑cooperation as a way to stay independent, and calls non‑violence a new weapon for evolution.

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

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Politics bereft of religion is absolute dirt, ever to be shunned.

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The best politics is right action.

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Good government is no substitute for self-government.

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Nations are born out of travail and suffering

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No Indian who aspires to follow the way of true religion can afford to remain aloof from politics.

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

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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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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 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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Nonviolence in politics is a new weapon in the process of evolution; its vast possibilities are yet unexplored.

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

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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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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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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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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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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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This campaign of non-cooperation has no reference to diplomacy, secret or open. The only diplomacy it admits of is the statement and…

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I could not be leading a religious life unless I identified myself with the whole of mankind, and that I could not…

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The Roots of Violence: Wealth without work, Pleasure without conscience, Knowledge without character, Commerce without morality, Science without humanity, Worship without sacrifice,…

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If I seem to take part in politics, it is only because politics encircles us today like the coil of a snake…

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It's the action, not the fruit of the action, that's important. You have to do the right thing. It may not be…

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I care so deeply about this matter that I'm willing to take on the legal penalties, to sit in this prison cell,…

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What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who…

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My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest shall have the same opportunities as the strongest... no country in the…

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Non-co-operation in the political field is an extension of the doctrine as it is practised in the domestic field.

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The life of millions is my politics, from which I dare not free myself without denying my life-work and God.

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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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Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either.

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

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The avowed policy of non-co-operation has been not to make political use of the disputes between labour and capital.

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Those who say religion has nothing to do with politics do not know what religion is.

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

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

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Men say I am a saint losing himself in politics. The fact is that I am a politician trying my hardest to…

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No Swaraj government with any pretension to being a popular government can possibly be organised and maintained on a war-footing.

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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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Political power means the capacity to regulate national life through national representatives.

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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.