Non- violence is the law of our species as violence is the law of the brut. The spirit is dormant in the brute and he knows no law but that of physical might. The dignity of man requires obedience to a higher law to the strength of the spirit.

Non-violence is an active force of the highest order. It is soul force or the power of Godhead within us. Imperfect man cannot grasp the whole of that essence he would not be able to bear it full blaze, but even an infinitesimal fraction of it, when it becomes active within us, can work wonders.

The sun in the heavens fills the whole universe with its life-giving warmth. But if one went too near it, it would consume him to ashes. Even so, it is with Godhead. We become God-like to the extent we realize non-violence; but we can never become wholly God.

Non-violence is like radium in its action. An infinitesimal quantity of it embedded in a malignant growth, acts continuously, silently and ceaselessly till it has transformed the whole mass of the diseased tissue into a healthy one. Similarly, even a little of true non-violence acts in a silent, sublet, unseen way and leavens the whole society. Unseen way and leavens the whole society.

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of the destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. Destruction is not the law of the humans. Man lives freely by his readiness to die, if need be, at the hands of his brother, never by killing him. Every murder or other injury, no matter for what cause, committed or inflicted on another is a crime against humanity.

My creed of non-violence is an extremely active force. It has no room for cowardice or even weakness. There is hope for a violent man to be some day non-violent, but there is none for a coward. I have, therefore, said more than once that if we do not know how to defend ourselves our women and our places of worship by the force of sufferings, i.e., non-violence, we must, if we are men, be at least able to defend all these by fighting.

 My non-violence does admit of people who cannot or will not be non-violent holding and making effective use of arms. Let me repeat for the thousandth time that non-violence is of the strongest, not of the weak.

No matter how weak a person is in body, if it is a shame to flee. He will stand his ground and die at his post. This would be non-violence and bravery. No matter how weak he is, he will use what strength he has in inflicting injury on his opponent, and die in the attempt. This is bravery, but not non-violence if when his duty is to face danger, he flees, it is cowardice. In the first case in the man will have love or charity in him. In the second and third cases, there would be a dislike or distrust and fear.

If the best minds of the world have not imbibed of the spirit of non-violence, they would have to meet gangsterism in the orthodox way. But that would only show that we have not gone far beyond the law of the jungle, that we have not yet learnt to appreciate the heritage that God has given us, that in spite of the teaching of Christianity which is 1900 years old and of Hinduism and Buddhism which are older, and even Islam, we have not made much headway as human beings. But whilst I would understand the use of force by those who have not the spirit of non-violence in them I would have those who know non-violence to throw their whole weight in demonstrating that even gangsterism has to be met with non-violence.

Fearlessness is the first requisite of spirituality Cowards can never be moral.

Let us fear God and we shall cease to fear man.

Self-sacrifice of the innocent man is a million times more potent than the sacrifice of million men who die in the act of killing others. The willing sacrifice of the innocent is the most powerful retort to insolent tyranny that has yet been conceived by God or man.

With Satya combined with Ahimsa, you can bring the world to your feet. Satyagraha in its essence is nothing but the introduction o truth and gentleness in the political, i.e., the national life.

A Satyagrahi bids good-bye to fear. He is, therefore, never afraid of trusting the opponent. Even if the opponent plays him false twenty times, the Satyagrahi is ready to trust him the twenty-first time, for an implicit trust in human nature is the essence of the creed.

A Satyagrahi is nothing of not instinctively law-abiding and it is his law abiding nature which exacts from him implicit obedience to the highest law that is the voice of conscience which overrides all other laws.

Satyagraha is gentle, it never wounds. It must not be the result of anger or malice. It is never fussy, never impatient, never vociferous. It is the direct opposite of compulsion. It was conceived as a complete substitute for violence.

It is force that may be used by individuals as well as by communities. It may be used as well in political as in domestic affairs. Its universal applicability is a demonstration of its permanence and invincibility. It can be used alike by men, women and children. It is totally untrue to say that it is a force to be used only by the weak so long as they are not capable of meeting violence by violence.

This force is to violence and therefore to all tyranny, all injustice, what light is to darkness. In politics, its use is based upon the immutable maxim, that government of the people is possible only so long as they consent either consciously or unconsciously to be governed.

The hardest heart and the grossest ignorance must disappear before the rising sun of suffering without anger and without malice.

In every great cause it is not the number of fighters that counts but it is the quality of which they are made that becomes the deciding factor. The greatest men of the world have always stood alone.

Take the great prophets, Zoroaster, Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed they stood alone like many others whom I can name. But they had living faith in themselves and their God, and believing as they did that God was on their side, they never felt lonely.

You may recall the occasion when pursued by a numerous enemy, Abu Bakr, who was accompanying the prophet in his flight, trembled to think of their fate and said, 'Look at the number of enemies that is overtaking us. What shall we two do against these heavy odds?' Without a moment's reflection the prophet rebuked his faithful companion by saying, 'No, Abu Bakr, we are three for God is with us! Or take the invincible faith of Vibhishan and Prahlad. I want you to have that same living faith in yourselves and God.

All life in the flesh exists by some Himsa. Hence the highest religion has been defined by a negative word Ahimsa. The world is bound in a chain of destruction. In other words Himsa is an inherent necessity for life always prays for ultimate deliverance from the bondage of flesh.

I do believe that all God's creatures have the right to live as much as we have. Instead of prescribing the killing of the so called injurious fellow creatures of ours as a duty, if men of knowledge had devoted their gift to discovering ways of dealing with them otherwise than by killing them, we would be living in a world befitting our status as men animals endowed with reason and the power of choosing between good and evil right and wrong, violence and non-violence, truth and untruth.

We are living in the midst of death trying to grope our way to Truth. Perhaps it is as well that we are beset with danger at every point in our life, for, in spite of our knowledge of the danger and of our precarious existence our indifference to the source of all life is excelled only by our amazing arrogance.

Both my intellect and heart refuse to believe that the so-called noxious life has been created for destruction by man. God is good and wise. A good and wise God cannot be so bad and so in wise as to create to no purpose. It is more conductive to reason to own our ignorance and assume that every form of life has a useful purpose which we must patiently strive to discover.

I verily believe that man's habit of killing man on the slightest pretext has darkened his reason and he gives himself liberties with other life which he would shudder to take if he really believed that God was a God of Love and Mercy.

I abhor vivisection with my whole soul. I detest the unpardonable slaughter of innocent life in the name of science and of humanity so-called, and all the scientific discoveries strained with innocent blood I count as of no consequence.

Means and ends are convertible terms in my philosophy of life.

They say, 'means are after all means' I would say, 'means are after all everything'. As the means so the end. Violent means will give violent Swaraj. That would be a menace to the world and to India herself. France obtained her freedom by violent means. She is still paying dearly for her violence.

There is no wall of separation between means and end. Indeed the Creator has given us control (and that too very limited) over means none over the end. Realization of the goal is in exact proportion to that of the means. This is a proposition that admits of no exception.