Quotes from book
Gandhi's Truth

Gandhi's Truth: On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence is a 1969 book about Mahatma Gandhi by the German-born American developmental psychologist Erik H. Erikson. It won the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction


Erik H. Erikson photo

“All world-images are apt to become corrupt when left to ecclesiastic bureaucracies. But this does not make the formation of world-images expendable.”

Gandhi's Truth : On the Origins of Militant Nonviolence (1969), Prologue : Echoes of an Event, p. 39
Context: All world-images are apt to become corrupt when left to ecclesiastic bureaucracies. But this does not make the formation of world-images expendable. And I can only repeat that we deny the remnants of old-world images at our own risk, because we do not overcome them by declaring them — with all the righteousness of skepticism — something of a secret sin. They are not less powerful for being denied.

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