A Quote by Mahatma Gandhi
When faced with a choice between violence and cowardice, always choose violence
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Non-violence and cowardice are contradictory terms. Non-violence is the greatest virtue, cowardice the greatest vice. Non-violence springs from love, cowardice from hate. Non-violence always suffers, cowardice would always inflict suffering. Perfect non-violence is the highest bravery. Non-violent conduct is never demoralising; cowardice always is.
Where there is only a choice between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence.
Where choice is set between cowardice and violence, I would advise violence ... I prefer to use arms in defense of honor rather than remain the vile witness of dishonor.
I do believe that, where 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 that she should, in a cowardly manner, become or remain a helpless witness to her own dishonour. But I believe that nonviolence is infinitely superior to violence, forgiveness is more manly than punishment.
Nonviolence does not admit of running away from danger... . Between violence and cowardly flight I can only prefer violence to cowardice.
We no longer have a choice between violence and non-violence. The choice of today stands between nonviolence or non-existence.
All violence is injustice. Responding to violence with violence is injustice, not only to the other person but also to oneself. Responding to violence with violence resolves nothing; it only escalates violence, anger and hatred. It is only with compassion that we can embrace and disintegrate violence. This is true in relationships between individuals as well as in relationships between nations.
I must remind you that starving a child is violence. Suppressing a culture is violence. Neglecting school children is violence. Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Discrimination against a working man is violence. Ghetto housing is violence. Ignoring medical need is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.
I do believe that where there is a choice between cowardice and non-violence I would advise violence. Thus when my eldest son asked me what he should have done, had he been present when I was almost fatally assaulted in 1908, whether he should have run away and seen me killed or whether he should have used his physical force which he could and wanted to use, and defended me, I told him that it was his duty to defend me even by using violence.
We must realize that violence is not confined to physical violence. Fear is violence, caste discrimination is violence, exploitation of others, however subtle, is violence, segregation is violence, thinking ill of others and condemning others are violence. In order to reduce individual acts of physical violence, we must work to eliminate violence at all levels, mental, verbal, personal, and social, including violence to animals, plants, and all other forms of life.
Let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his method must inexorably choose falsehood as his principle.
I'm so sick of seeing guns in movies, and all this violence; and if there was going to be violence in Pines, I wanted it to actually be narrative violence. I wasn't interested in fetishizing violence in any way of making it feel cool or slow-motion violence. I wanted it to be just violence that affected the story.
Democracy is an imperfect way of steering between the violence of anarchy and the violence of tyranny, with the least violence you can get away with.
The truth is that cowardice itself is violence of a subtle type and therefore dangerous and far more difficult to eradicate than the habit of physical violence.
Non-violence is a very powerful weapon. Most people don't understand the power of non-violence and tend to be amazed by the whole idea. Those who have been involved in bringing about change and see the difference between violence and non-violence are firmly committed to a lifetime of non-violence, not because it is easy or because it is cowardly, but because it is an effective and very powerful way.
The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy... In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars.
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