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Who really said it

The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong

Written by Mahatma Gandhi 1869–1948 · leader of India's independence movement
Verified In copyright

Gandhi’s response was published in his weekly journal ‘Young India’ on 2 April 1931, drawn from his press remarks after the execution of the revolutionary Bhagat Singh. The wording is confirmed by his ‘Collected Works’ and by quotation references citing that date.

Last verified 7 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong” Mahatma Gandhi, statement on the execution of Bhagat Singh, Young India, 2 April 1931.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by Navajivan Trust (Gandhi copyrights) / Government of India). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

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In context

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Provenance

The source

Source
Young India
Date
2 April 1931
Occasion
Statement on the execution of Bhagat Singh
Collected in
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi

What is true of individuals is true of nations. One cannot forgive too much. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong. ↑ the popular version keeps only the last two sentences

The famous two sentences are the close of a longer reflection Gandhi gave the press after Bhagat Singh’s hanging — he was answering whether it was naive for a nation to forgive the empire that ruled it.

The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi (complete archive)

How we verified this

  • The line closes a statement Gandhi published in ‘Young India’ on 2 April 1931; quotation archives such as LibQuotes cite that exact date.
  • He wrote it after failing to win clemency for the revolutionary Bhagat Singh, hanged on 23 March 1931 — the episode is documented at mkgandhi.org.
  • It is often re-sourced to the 1958 UNESCO anthology ‘All Men Are Brothers’, which reprints Gandhi’s words but is not their origin.
  • Gandhi’s complete writings are preserved in The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi.
In copyright

Gandhi’s writings are in the public domain in India (his death in 1948 plus sixty years), and the Government of India publishes his ‘Collected Works’ freely; official reproductions are released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) licence.

Context

Why it mattered

Gandhi wrote these words in the rawest political moment of 1931. He had just signed the Gandhi–Irwin Pact with the British and had pressed — unsuccessfully — for the death sentences on Bhagat Singh and his comrades to be commuted. When the three were hanged on 23 March, many Indians blamed Gandhi for not making their reprieve a condition of the pact. Pressed by the press on whether forgiving such a government was mere weakness, he answered that the opposite was true.

‘What is true of individuals is true of nations,’ he said. ‘One cannot forgive too much. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.’ For Gandhi, forgiveness was not surrender but the hardest exercise of strength — a claim that recast nonviolence as power rather than passivity.

The weak can never forgive; forgiveness is the attribute of the strong.

The ‘All Men Are Brothers’ mix-up

The line is frequently reprinted from ‘All Men Are Brothers’, the UNESCO-sponsored 1958 anthology of Gandhi’s writings, and quote sites such as Goodreads name that book as the source. The anthology only reproduces the passage; its origin is the 1931 ‘Young India’ statement, decades earlier.

Stripped of its setting, the quote now circulates as a stand-alone maxim about personal forgiveness. In its original context it was a comment on how a newly assertive nation should regard the empire that had just executed its revolutionaries.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Character Resilience

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

LibQuotes: Gandhi on forgivenesslibquotes.com

Records the quote with its ‘Young India’, 2 April 1931 citation.
Goodreads quote pagegoodreads.com

Shows the popular attribution and the common ‘All Men Are Brothers’ re-sourcing.
What Gandhi did to save Bhagat Singhmkgandhi.org

Background on the execution that prompted Gandhi’s remark.
The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhigandhiserve.net

The complete, searchable archive of Gandhi’s writings, including ‘Young India’.

About the author

Mahatma Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi

1869–1948 · leader of Indian independence

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, called Mahatma (‘great-souled’), led India’s nonviolent movement for independence and became the global exponent of satyagraha — truth-force, or nonviolent resistance. A London-trained lawyer who first honed his methods fighting discrimination in South Africa, he placed forgiveness and self-suffering at the centre of his political ethics. He was assassinated in January 1948.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Gandhi, Mohandas K. Statement on the execution of Bhagat Singh. ‘Young India,’ 2 April 1931. Reprinted in ‘The Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi’ (New Delhi: Publications Division, Government of India).

MLA (9th ed.)

Gandhi, Mohandas K. “Statement on the Execution of Bhagat Singh.” Young India, 2 Apr. 1931.

APA (7th ed.)

Gandhi, M. K. (1931, April 2). Statement on the execution of Bhagat Singh. Young India.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of the strong’?” Last verified 7 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/the-weak-can-never-forgive-forgiveness-is-the-attribute-of

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