Satyagraha Quotes

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Nothing is so aggravating as calmness.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Nonviolence is a weapon of the strong.”
― Mahatma Gandhi, The Words of Gandhi

“They may torture my body, break my bones, even kill me. Then they will have my dead body, but not my obedience.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“I cannot teach you violence, as I do not myself believe in it. I can only teach you not to bow your heads before any one even at the cost of your life.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“Non-violence, which is the quality of the heart, cannot come by an appeal to the brain.”
― Mahatma Gandhi

“That was when Petra spoke up. "This is India, and you know the word. It's satyagraha, and it doesn't mean peaceful or passive resistance at all."
"Not everyone here speaks Hindi," said a Tamil planner.
"But everyone here should know Gandhi," said Petra.
Sayagi agreed with her. "Satyagraha is something else. The willingness to endure great personal suffering in order to do what's right."
"What's the difference, really?"
"Sometimes," said Petra, "what's right is not peaceful or passive. What matters is that you do not hide from the consequences. You bear what must be borne."
"That sounds more like courage than anything else," said the Tamil.
"Courage to do right," said Sayagi. "Courage even when you can't win."
"What happened to 'discretion is the better part of valor'?"
"A quotation from a cowardly character in Shakespeare," someone else pointed out.
"Not contradictory, anyway," said Sayagi. "Completely different circumstances. If there's a chance of victory later through withdrawal now, you keep your forces intact. But personally, as an individual, if you know that the price of doing right is terrible loss or suffering or even death, satyagraha means that you are all the more determined to do right, for fear that fear might make you unrighteous."
"Oh, paradoxes within paradoxes."
But Petra turned it from superficial philosophy to something else entirely. "I am trying," she said, "to achieve satyagraha.”
― Orson Scott Card, Shadow of the Hegemon

“A Satyagrahi obeys the laws of society intelligently and of his own free will, because he considers it to be his sacred duty to do so. It is only when a person has thus obeyed the laws of society scrupulously that he is in a position to judge as to which particular rules are good and just and which unjust and iniquitous. Only then does the right accrue to him of the civil disobedience of certain laws in well defined circumstances.”
― Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, The Story of My Experiments with Truth: An Autobiography

“Men, I say, but better to call them human spiders that go crawling in between and under the tables with rags in their hands, ...crushed humans, Readers choice of relevant quotes about MK Gandhi and Satyagraha.”
― Kathy Richardson

“You gave us a lawyer; we gave you back a Mahatma.”
― Ramachandra Guha, Gandhi Before India