“You can't hurt me without my permission.”
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Attribution note
Widely credited to Gandhi on Goodreads/AZ Quotes but with no primary citation (Young India/Harijan/CWMG/Autobiography); the phrasing mirrors Eleanor Roosevelt's better-known consent line, so authorship is unestablished.
Likely origin: No reliable primary source; circulates only on quote aggregators. Echoes Eleanor Roosevelt's 'No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.'
About this quote
Insults and slights only wound if you grant them authority over how you see yourself. The sting isn't automatic — there's a gap between what someone throws at you and the meaning you decide to give it, and in that gap you can refuse the injury.
When to use it
- A worker shrugs off a rival's snide remark about her accent instead of replaying it for days.
- A teen learns to let online trolls slide past rather than measuring himself by strangers' jabs.
- Someone hears a backhanded compliment at a family dinner and chooses not to let it spoil the evening.