Gandhi wrote an enormous amount: his Collected Works run to some 100 volumes. Yet several of the most quoted “Gandhi” lines appear nowhere in them. Here are the famous ones, where they actually came from, and what Gandhi really wrote.
Tags: Someone else said by another person · No source never found in his words · Paraphrase his idea, not his sentence · Uncertain possible, but unproven. More on Gandhi’s life and ideas, and real Gandhi quotes with sources.
“Be the change you wish to see in the world.”
Paraphrase The most famous Gandhi quote is not his. Quote Investigator found the closest early match in 1974, in an essay by the educator Arleen Lorrance: “be the change you want to see happen”. Gandhi expressed a related but different thought in 1913, in an article for his newspaper Indian Opinion: that changing ourselves changes how the world responds to us, and that we need not wait to see what others do.
What he actually wrote
“We but mirror the world. … If we could change ourselves, the tendencies in the world would also change.”Gandhi, Indian Opinion, 9 August 1913 (Collected Works, vol. 12)
“First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.”
Someone else There is no record of Gandhi saying it; the link to his name appears only in 1982, decades after his death. The closest early version is from an American trade unionist, Nicholas Klein, addressing the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America in Baltimore in 1918:
What was actually said, and by whom
“First they ignore you. Then they ridicule you. And then they attack you and want to burn you. And then they build monuments to you.”Nicholas Klein, 15 May 1918
“An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.”
No source No instance of Gandhi using it has been documented. His biographer Louis Fischer used the expression in his own voice to explain Gandhi’s philosophy, which may be how it became attached to him, and a version appears in a 1944 book of aphorisms by Henry Powell Spring. It is a twist on Exodus 21:24, “eye for eye, tooth for tooth”. Gandhi’s own defence of nonviolence is more demanding:
What he actually wrote
“Passive resistance is a method of securing rights by personal suffering; it is the reverse of resistance by arms.”Gandhi, Hind Swaraj (1909), ch. 17
“Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever.”
No source Credited to Gandhi on countless posters, but no one has found it in his writings, and sayings of this pattern were circulating long before him.
“My life is my message.”
Uncertain Gandhi is said to have written these words in Bengali when someone in Bengal asked him for a message, and it is inscribed at Gandhi memorials. It may well be his, but no dated original has been traced, and Quote Investigator found the same phrase used of a Christian missionary decades before it was linked to Gandhi.
Genuine
“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.”Gandhi, Young India, 2 April 1931
Spoken to the press in Karachi in March 1931, after Bhagat Singh’s execution, when a reporter asked whether forgiving a government guilty of such acts was wise.
This page draws on research by Quote Investigator. More misattributions: Quotes They Never Said, Fake Marcus Aurelius Quotes, Fake Buddha Quotes, Fake Rumi Quotes, Fake Chanakya Quotes, Fake Vivekananda Quotes.
Quote Investigator: Be the change · Quote Investigator: First they ignore you · Gandhi Heritage Portal · Mahatma Gandhi
