Quotes on Ahimsa

Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

Ahimsa is the highest duty. Even if we cannot practice it in full, we must try to understand its spirit and refrain as far as is humanly possible from violence.

H. G. Wells was not the only one to mention Churchill and Hitler in the same breath: "Churchill and Hitler are striving to change the nature of their respective countrymen by forcing and hammering violent methods on them. Man may be suppressed in this manner but he cannot be changed. Ahimsa [non-violence in the Hindu tradition], on the other hand, can change human nature and sooner than men like Churchill and Hitler."

The strength to kill is not essential for self-defence; one ought to have the strength to die.

The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love, and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive-it has nothing to do with time. It happens on its own when a human being questions, wonders, inquires, listens, and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure, and pain. When self-concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open.

The way to truth lies through ahimsa (nonviolence).

So long as all is ordered for attack, and that alone, leaders will instinctively increase the number of enemies that they may give their followers something to do.

All things are our relatives; what we do to everything, we do to ourselves. All is really One.

The intellectual and moral satisfaction that I failed to gain from the utilitarianism of Bentham and Mill, the revolutionary methods of Marx and Lenin, the social contract theory of Hobbes, the "back to nature" optimism of Rousseau, and the superman philosophy of Nietzsche, I found in the nonviolent resistance philosophy of Gandhi. I came to feel that this was the only morally and practically sound method open to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom.

Strictly speaking, no activity and no industry is possible without a certain amount of violence, no matter how little. Even the very process of living is impossible without a certain amount of violence. What we have to do is to minimize it to the greatest extent possible.

To his enemies the householder must be a hero. Them he must resist. That is the duty of the householder. He must not sit down in a corner and weep, and talk nonsense about non-resistance. If he does not show himself a hero to his enemies he has not done his duty.

There is no virtue higher than non-injury.

These practices - non-killing, truthfulness, non-stealing, chastity, and non-receiving - are to be practised by every man, woman, and child; by every soul, irrespective of nation, country, or position.

There is no happiness higher than what a man obtains by this attitude of non-offensiveness, to all creation.

The test of Ahimsa is absence of jealousy.

Non-injuring has to be attained by him who would be free. No one is more powerful than he who has attained perfect non-injuring. No one could fight, no one could quarrel, in his presence. Yes, his very presence, and nothing else, means peace, means love wherever he may be. Nobody could be angry or fight in his presence. Even the animals, ferocious animals, would be peaceful before him.

Never producing pain by thought, word, and deed, in any living being, is what is called Ahimsâ, non-injury.

Besides the respect of the lives of human beings, all the animals and plants should be on the list too. That is the real humanitarianism.

Ahimsa is the attribute of the soul, and therefore, to be practiced by everybody in all affairs of life. If it cannot be practiced in all departments, it has no practical value.

I do feel that spiritual progress does demand at some stage that we should cease to kill our fellow creatures for the satisfaction of our bodily wants.