Contact
Privacy
Book: Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths: Civil Disobedience, Nonviolence, and Satyagraha in the Real World
Quotes of Book: Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:
TOP TAGS :christian-faithsuddenlyd-dmechanismemployee-engagementjudgmentalneurobiologyobserver

  1. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    If exponents of armed struggle were less concerned with proving their manliness and more concerned with the welfare of the people they claim to stand up for, they might discover that nonviolent forms of struggle, everything considered, work better.
    book-quote

  2. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Other negative side-effects of violence come into view once the struggle comes to an end. For instance, violence generally leaves the two sides as long-standing enemies. Maybe the most amazing thing about Gandhi's nonviolent revolution is, not that the British left, but that they left as friends, and that Britain and India became partners in the British Commonwealth. Gandhi noted also that violent revolutions almost always end in repressive dictatorships. Once the rebel troops gain control, they naturally keep acting as they're used to-in other words, they start running the country like a military camp.
    book-quote

  3. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Other negative side-effects of violence come into view once the struggle comes to an end. For instance, violence generally leaves the two sides as long-standing enemies. Maybe the most amazing thing about Gandhi's nonviolent revolution is, not that the British left, but that they left as friends, and that Britain and India became partners in the British Commonwealth.
    book-quote

  4. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    For example, say that a Third World country undergoes a spontaneous, country-wide, mass noncooperation campaign against its dictator, lasting weeks or even months. Tens of thousands march in the streets, newspapers and radio stations defy the censors, whole cities are shut down for days at a time as people go on strike. Noted citizens call for the dictator's resignation, no one follows his orders, he has completely lost control. Finally, four or five military officers, carrying out the obvious will of the people, march nearly unopposed into the presidential palace, arrest the dictator, and escort him out of office. Chances are that our news media and history books will thereafter attribute the dictator's downfall, purely and simply, to "a military coup.
    book-quote

  5. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Each of us too sees the world through our own "filter"-a filter made up of our assumptions, our motivations, and the categories we use to sort out and organize our experience. This filter determines how we see the world. When we come across something that doesn't match our assumptions, motivations, and categories, our filter blocks it out. It's not that we choose to reject it. Consciously, we don't even perceive it. Or else we perceive it in a partial, distorted form. It seems that nonviolence has a particularly hard time passing through many people's filters.
    book-quote

  6. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Gandhi called his overall method of nonviolent action Satyagraha. This translates roughly as "Truth-force.
    book-quote

  7. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Satyagraha-Gandhi's nonviolent action-was not a way for one group to seize what it wanted from another. It was not a weapon of class struggle, or of any other kind of division. Satyagraha was instead an instrument of unity. It was a way to remove injustice and restore social harmony, to the benefit of both sides.
    book-quote

  8. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Gandhi noted also that violent revolutions almost always end in repressive dictatorships. Once the rebel troops gain control, they naturally keep acting as they're used to-in other words, they start running the country like a military camp.
    book-quote

  9. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    People try nonviolence for a week, and when it 'doesn't work,' they go back to violence, which hasn't worked for centuries.
    book-quote

  10. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    you look closely at so-called popular liberation movements, you'll find that they're seldom started by the peasants or workers they're supposed to benefit. These armed struggles may gradually build wider support-but in almost every case, they're launched by students or other intellectuals in the name of the people.
    book-quote

  11. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Each of us too sees the world through our own "filter"-a filter made up of our assumptions, our motivations, and the categories we use to sort out and organize our experience. This filter determines how we see the world. When we come across something that doesn't match our assumptions, motivations, and categories, our filter blocks it out. It's not that we choose to reject it. Consciously, we don't even perceive it. Or else we perceive it in a partial, distorted form. It
    book-quote

  12. Mark Shepard _ Mahatma Gandhi and His Myths:

    Let me give a general description of what seems really to have happened when Gandhi and his followers committed civil disobedience: Gandhi and followers break a law-politely. Public leader has them arrested, tried, put in prison. Gandhi and followers cheerfully accept it all. Members of the public are impressed by the protest, public sympathy is aroused for the protesters and their cause. Members of the public put pressure on public leader to negotiate with Gandhi. As cycles of civil disobedience recur, public pressure grows stronger. Finally, public leader gives in to pressure from his constituency, negotiates with Gandhi.
    book-quote
Categories