A Quote by Mahatma Gandhi

Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent. — © Mahatma Gandhi
Himsa does not need to be taught, Man as animal is violent, but as spirit is nonviolent.
We need to look at the totality of the things that we're labeling as violent and really examine whether we need to have some more proportionality in terms of the punishment fitting the crime that's done. The bright line that we have right now, between violent and nonviolent, does not account for shades of gray.
A nonviolent warrior knows no leaving the battle. He rushes into the mouth of himsa, never even once harbouring an evil thought.
I don't mean go out and get violent; but at the same time you should never be nonviolent unless you run into some nonviolence. I'm nonviolent with those who are nonviolent with me. But when you drop that violence on me, then you've made me go insane, and I'm not responsible for what I do.
To resort to power one need not be violent, and to speak to conscience one need not be meek. The most effective action both resorts to power and engages conscience. Nonviolent actions does not have to get others to be nice. It can in effect force them to consult their consciences. Nor does it have to petition those in power to do something about a situation. It can face the authorities with a new fact and say: Accept this new situation which we have created.
I myself would go for nonviolence if it was consistent, if everybody was going to be nonviolent all the time. I'd say, okay, let's get with it, we'll all be nonviolent. But I don't go along with any kind of nonviolence unless everybody's going to be nonviolent. If they make the Ku Klux Klan nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. If they make the White Citizens Council nonviolent, I'll be nonviolent. But as long as you've got somebody else not being nonviolent, I don't want anybody coming to me talking any nonviolent talk.
Nonviolent attainment of self-government presupposes a non-violent control over the violent elements in the country.
To kill these (rabid) dogs, in my opinion, amount to himsa, but I believe it to be inevitable if we are to escape much greater himsa.
Anytime you tell a man to turn the other cheek or to be nonviolent in the face of a violent enemy, you're making that man defenseless. You're robbing him of his God-given right to defend himself.
Man is a thinking animal, a talking animal, a toolmaking animal, a building animal, a political animal, a fantasizing animal. But, in the twilight of a civilization he is chiefly a taxpaying animal.
Be nonviolent only with those who are nonviolent to you. And when you can bring me a nonviolent racist, bring me a nonviolent segregationist, then I'll get nonviolent. But don't teach me to be nonviolent until you teach some of those crackers to be nonviolent.
The Breath becomes a stone; the stone, a plant; the plant, an animal; the animal, a man; the man, a spirit; and the spirit, a god.
Camus believed in dialogue and diplomacy, and enlisted his work as a philosopher to the need to find nonviolent solutions, whereas Sartre called for violent conflicts and justified terror.
A truly nonviolent man would never live to tell the tale of atrocities. He would have laid down his life on the spot in non-violent resistance.
The animal kingdom is destined by nature to serve, and that service is fulfilled in alleviating the temporal and physical needs of man; the animal spirit or soul is limited by time - it dies with the body.
I think, when we start dealing with heaven or hell issues, what we really need to gravitate toward is that man is an eternal spirit. And if you believe that he is an eternal spirit then all it does, it abandons the body.
The whole underside of our society has always been violence and still is. Churches, laws - everybody seems to think that man is a noble savage. But he's only an animal. A meat-eating, talking animal. Recognize it. He also has grace and love and beauty. But don't say to me we're not violent.
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