Mahatma Gandhi - War Quotes

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When two nations are fighting, the duty of a votary of ahimsa is to stop the war.

Mahatma Gandhi
I cannot give active support in the war effort without denying a life-time of practice.

Mahatma Gandhi
It is claimed for satyagraha that it is a complete substitute for violence or war.

Mahatma Gandhi
The present war is the saturation point in violence. It spells, to my mind, also its doom.

Mahatma Gandhi
I have not lost the hope that the masses will refuse to bow to the Moloch of war but they will rely upon their own capacity for suffering to save their country's honour.

Mahatma Gandhi
A warrior lives on his wars, whether offensive or defensive. And he suffers a collapse if he finds that his warring capacity is unwanted.

Mahatma Gandhi
You cannot stop big wars if you carry on little wars yourselves.

Mahatma Gandhi
Whoever is victor, there should be, after the war, a commonwealth of all nations.

Mahatma Gandhi
Democracy necessarily means a conflict of will and ideas, involving sometimes a war of the knife between different ideas.

Mahatma Gandhi
People engaged in a war do not lose temper over matters which affect the fortunes of war.

Mahatma Gandhi
History is a record of perpetual wars, but we are now trying to make new history.

Mahatma Gandhi
War with all its glorification of brute force is essentially a degrading thing.

Mahatma Gandhi
When there is war, the poet lays down the lyre, the lawyer his law reports, the schoolboy his books.

Mahatma Gandhi
So far as I can see, the atomic bomb has deadened the finest feeling that has sustained for ages. There used to be so-called laws of war, which made it tolerable. Now we know the truth. War knows no law except that of might. The atomic bomb brought an empty victory but it resulted for the time being in destroying the soul of Japan. What has happened to the soul of the destroying nation is yet too early to see...

Mahatma Gandhi
India's freedom must revolutionize the world's outlook upon Peace and War.

Mahatma Gandhi
Exploitation and domination of one nation over another can have no place in a world striving to put an end to all war.

Mahatma Gandhi
In the secret of my heart I am in perpetual quarrel with God that He should allow such things [as the war] to go on. My non-violence seems almost impotent. But the answer comes at the end of the daily quarrel that neither God nor non-violence is impotent. Impotence is in men. I must try on without losing faith even though I may break in the attempt.

Mahatma Gandhi
This war has descended upon mankind as a curse and a warning. It is a curse inasmuch as it is brutalizing man on a scale hitherto unknown. All distinctions between combatants and noncombatants have been abolished. No one and nothing is to be spared. Lying has been reduced to an art. Britain was to defend small nationalities. One by one they have vanished, at least for the time being. It is also a warning. It is a warning that, if nobody reads the writing on the wall, man will be reduced to the state of the beast, whom he is shaming by his manners. I read the writing when the hostilities broke out. But I had not the courage to say the word. God has given me the courage to say it before it is too late.

Mahatma Gandhi
If there ever could be a justifiable war in the name of and for humanity, a war against Germany, to prevent the wanton persecution of a whole race, would be completely justified. But I do not believe in any war. A discussion of the pros and cons of such a war is therefore outside my horizon or province.

Mahatma Gandhi
What is a war criminal? Was not war itself a crime against God and humanity, and, therefore, were not all those who sanctioned, engineered, and conducted wars, war criminals? War criminals are not confined to the Axis Powers alone. Roosevelt and Churchill are no less war criminals than Hitler and Mussolini. England, America and Russia have all of them got their hands dyed more or less red - not merely Germany and Japan.

Mahatma Gandhi
I appeal for cessation of hostilities, not because you are too exhausted to fight, but because war is bad in essence. You want to kill Nazism. You will never kill it by its indifferent adoption.

Mahatma Gandhi
It is open to a war resister to judge between the combatants and wish success to the one who has justice on his side. By so judging he is more likely to bring peace between the two than by remaining a mere spectator.

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

Mahatma Gandhi
War is an unmitigated evil. But it certainly does one good thing. It drives away fear and brings bravery to the surface.

Mahatma Gandhi
The cry for peace will be a cry in the wilderness, so long as the spirit of nonviolence does not dominate millions of men and women.
An armed conflict between nations horrifies us. But the economic war is no better than an armed conflict. This is like a surgical operation. An economic war is prolonged torture. And its ravages are no less terrible than those depicted in the literature on war properly so called. We think nothing of the other because we are used to its deadly effects. …
The movement against war is sound. I pray for its success. But I cannot help the gnawing fear that the movement will fail if it does not touch the root of all evil — man's greed.

Mahatma Gandhi