“This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.”
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Source: To Every Briton (1940).
About this quote
When a method you trust seems to fail, the honest first move is to examine your own execution before condemning the method itself. Long practice earns that humility: decades of trying teach you the flaw is usually in the practitioner, not the principle.
When to use it
- A coach reviewing how they taught a play before deciding the play itself is worthless.
- A parent reconsidering how a rule was explained when a child ignores it, rather than scrapping the rule.
- A dieter who, after a bad week, studies their own habits instead of declaring the whole plan broken.