"A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world"
About this Quote
The phrase "ransom of the world" is doing heavy lifting. A ransom implies captivity and a transaction. Gandhi smuggles in the idea that humanity is held hostage by its own violence, and that liberation requires a payment no empire can extract by force. The payment is chosen. That choice is the hinge of his own politics of satyagraha: suffering, publicly accepted, becomes evidence that the oppressor’s power is finally hollow - it can hurt bodies, not compel assent.
"It was a perfect act" lands with audacious finality. Perfection here is less about metaphysical purity than about an ideal model of action: means and ends fused. In the context of Gandhi’s campaigns against British rule - and his anxiety about revolutionary violence - the line reads as instruction disguised as reverence. He’s not only praising Christ; he’s recruiting a narrative of redemptive self-sacrifice to discipline a movement, shame an empire, and expand the imagination of what resistance can look like.
Quote Details
| Topic | Forgiveness |
|---|---|
| Source | Later attribution: Uncle John's Bathroom Reader Colossal Collection of Quota... (Bathroom Readers' Institute, 2012) modern compilationISBN: 9781607106043 · ID: 9ihZDwAAQBAJ
Evidence:
... A man who was completely innocent offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others , including his enemies , and became the ransom of the world . It was a perfect act . " " Christ was a punk rocker . " —Billy Idol -Mahatma Gandhi ... |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Gandhi, Mahatma. (2026, February 16). A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-man-who-was-completely-innocent-offered-himself-13683/
Chicago Style
Gandhi, Mahatma. "A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world." FixQuotes. February 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-man-who-was-completely-innocent-offered-himself-13683/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world." FixQuotes, 16 Feb. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/a-man-who-was-completely-innocent-offered-himself-13683/. Accessed 16 Feb. 2026.











