Freedom is not worth having if it does not connote freedom to err and even to sin.

After the Gandhi–Irwin settlement, Gandhi explains why Congress has agreed to negotiations while still demanding full freedom. He asks British statesmen to allow Indians the same freedom they themselves value, including the possibility of governing badly. He refuses the assumption that India is a dependent child requiring permanent supervision.

Freedom includes the right to make mistakes; benevolent supervision that removes that right is not freedom.

It is often used simply as encouragement to make personal mistakes. Here it is an argument against colonial paternalism and for India’s right to self-government, not an assertion that every mistake or sin is harmless.

Freedom, Power, Society, Politics

• Whoso would be a man, must be a nonconformist. Ralph Waldo Emerson
• Civil disobedience becomes a sacred duty when the State becomes lawless or corrupt. (paraphrase)
• My nationalism, fierce though it is, is not exclusive, is not devised to harm any nation or individual.
• Refusing to lie about what one knows, and resisting oppression. Albert Camus
• Strength does not come from physical capacity. It comes from an indomitable will.

• mkgandhi.org/momgandhi/chap64.php
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi

Mahatma Gandhi, Articles in Indian Opinion, Young India and Harijan (1931), Statement to the Press, Delhi, 5 March 1931; Young India, 12 March 1931, p. 31; Collected Works, vol. XLV, item 325, p. 253. Checked at Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/freedom-is-not-worth-having-without-freedom-to-err/ (30 October 2026).

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