Daily Inspiration Quote by Mahatma Gandhi

"All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take"

Mahatma Gandhi, Leader

About this Quote

Compromise is usually sold as maturity: the adult choice, the reasonable middle. Gandhi flips that comfort on its head by drawing a hard border around "fundamentals" and daring you to cross it. The line works because it sounds like plain common sense - give and take - then quietly turns into a moral trap. If a principle is truly foundational, you cannot bargain with it without changing what you are. The rhetoric is almost mathematical: compromise requires symmetry; fundamentals, by definition, allow none. So the person urging you to "meet halfway" may not be preaching peace at all, but asking for your capitulation dressed up as pragmatism.

The subtext is strategic as much as spiritual. Gandhi is defending an ethic of nonviolence and truth (satyagraha) that can look, from the outside, like pliability. This quote insists on the opposite: nonviolence is not passivity, and negotiation is not the same as moral concession. In colonial India, British authorities could offer reforms, advisory councils, incremental autonomy - deals that sounded like progress while leaving the core structure of domination intact. Gandhi names that move: a compromise that preserves the central injustice is "all give and no take."

Its power also lies in how it polices language. "Fundamentals" is the key word, slippery enough to invite abuse, yet urgent enough to rally a movement. Gandhi is warning followers not to confuse tactical flexibility with ethical drift - and warning opponents that certain demands are not bargaining chips.

Quote Details

Topic	Ethics & Morality
Source	Verified source: The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Vol. 78 (Mahatma Gandhi, 1940) Text match: 97.09% Provider: Cross-Reference Evidence: All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on fundamentals is a surrender. For it is all give and no take. (p. 86 (printed in CWMG Vol. 78; originally from Harijan, Mar. 30, 1940)). Primary-source trace: This wording appears in the Government of India’s Collected Works (CWMG), Vol. 78 (covering 23 Feb 1940–15 Jul 1940), on p. 86, and is explicitly tied to Gandhi’s periodical Harijan with the date “Mar. 30, 1940.” In the CWMG context, Gandhi is responding to an argument about compromise and clarifies that compromise is only possible once both sides agree on fundamentals. Many secondary quote sites miscite it as from the later compilation “Teachings of Mahatma Gandhi” (1947), but that book is not the first publication; it is a later excerpting/anthology. Note: your version includes the word “mere” (“Any compromise on mere fundamentals…”). In the CWMG text at this location, “mere” does not appear; the sentence reads “Any compromise on fundamentals is a surrender.”
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