Asked what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi replied: “I think it would be a good idea.”

No contemporary record of the exchange has been found. Quote Investigator (2013, updated 2024) finds the earliest evidence almost twenty years after Gandhi’s death: the Seattle Times of 23 January 1967 called it the ‘quote of the week’ from the CBS News Special ‘The Italians’ (broadcast 17 January 1967, adapted from Luigi Barzini’s book), saying Gandhi ‘was reported to have answered’ so; Reader’s Digest (September 1967) printed it with the same credit. It then appears in 1968 (Utley; Jovanovich), 1969 (Ferry), 1970 (an epigraph in The Journal of Geography, credited to Barzini) and as graffiti (Christian Science Monitor, 24 August 1971). E. F. Schumacher (Good Work, 1979) said he had seen a film of Gandhi disembarking at Southampton in 1930 and being asked about ‘modern civilization’; Ralph Keyes (The Quote Verifier, 2006) notes that Gandhi did not visit England in 1930 (he came in 1931, for the Round Table Conference) and that no biography reports the remark. Wikiquote lists it under Disputed. A thematically identical joke without Gandhi’s name ran in Life on 29 March 1923: ‘”What’s your opinion of civilization?” “It’s a good idea. Somebody ought to start it.”’ This research could not see any of the dated items directly: the trail rests on Quote Investigator’s citations. Not searched here: Gandhi’s Collected Works, which are in copyright and not in the atlas’s sources; Wikiquote and Quote Investigator found nothing there.

1. 29 March 1923Before it · credited to no oneAn anonymous filler joke in the humour magazine Life with the same punchline, about civilization in general and with no Gandhi.”What’s your opinion of civilization?” “It’s a good idea. Somebody ought to start it.”Life, vol. 81, issue 2108, 29 March 1923, filler item, p. 33. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
2. 23 January 1967Earliest found · credited to Mahatma GandhiThe earliest credit to Gandhi that Quote Investigator found: a Seattle Times columnist’s ‘quote of the week’ from the CBS documentary ‘The Italians’, broadcast on 17 January 1967.Mahatma Gandhi, on being asked, “What do you think of Western civilization?,” was reported to have answered, “I think it would be a good idea”.C. J. Skreen, ‘Ad Paid Off For Swedish Beauty’, The Seattle Times, 23 January 1967, p. 6, col. 7. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
3. September 1967Spread · credited to Mahatma GandhiReader’s Digest prints it in a set of quotations, again tied to the CBS special.MOHANDAS GANDHI was once asked: “What do you think of Western civilization?” “I think it would be a good idea,” he replied.Reader’s Digest, vol. 91, September 1967, ‘Answer Men’, p. 52. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source
4. 1979Reworded · credited to Mahatma GandhiE. F. Schumacher gives it with ‘modern civilization’ and says he saw film of Gandhi disembarking at Southampton in 1930; Gandhi was not in England in 1930, and no such footage has been found.One of them asked, “Mr. Gandhi, what do you think of modern civilization?” And Mr. Gandhi said, “That would be a good idea.”E. F. Schumacher, Good Work (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 62 (Harper Torchbooks reprint, 1985). Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand. Source

Told as a quip from Gandhi’s visit to England, to a journalist who asks his opinion of Western (or ‘modern’) civilization. No date, place or newspaper has ever been given for the exchange. It is also scrawled as graffiti and repeated in speeches, usually to say that the West is not yet civilized.

A dry rebuke: civilization, as the West practises it, is something still to be achieved. It is the joke form of the argument Gandhi did make at length in Hind Swaraj (1909), that modern civilization is a disease, but the quip itself is not found in his writings.

No record of Gandhi saying it. His real criticism of modern (Western) civilization is in Hind Swaraj (1909), which is in the atlas’s list of his works.

• ShortenedMr. Gandhi, what do you think about Western civilization? — I think it would be a good idea. As an epigraph in The Journal of Geography 69:5 (May 1970), p. 301, in Michael F. Antonelli’s article ‘Nationalism in Early American Geographies: 1784-1845’, credited to Luigi Barzini, according to Quote Investigator; not seen here. Where it was seen
• A misquotationThat would be a good idea. E. F. Schumacher’s version, with ‘modern civilization’ and a landing at Southampton in 1930 that Keyes could not confirm (Good Work, 1979, p. 62, according to Quote Investigator and Wikiquote). Where it was seen
• ShortenedThey say that when Mahatma Gandhi was asked what he thought of Western civilization, he replied that he thought it might be a good idea. Francis Lee Utley, ‘A Definition of Folklore’ (1968), according to Quote Investigator; not seen here. Where it was seen

Society

• I had the radio on. Marilyn Monroe
• Times are bad. Children no longer obey their parents, and everyone is writing a book. (not found) Marcus Tullius Cicero
• Yeah, but you can’t prove it. Mae West
• I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train. Oscar Wilde
• All the good music’s already been written by people with wigs and stuff on. Frank Zappa

• quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/23/good-idea (Quote Investigator, ‘What Do You Think of Western Civilization?’, 23 April 2013, updated 2024)
• quoteinvestigator.com/2013/04/23/good-idea (same page, note 12: the 1923 Life joke, 29 March 1923; the separate article https://quoteinvestigator.com/2018/11/30/civ/ concerns a parallel 1925 Baltimore Sun line, ‘The question is not where civilization began, but when will it’)
• en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Mahatma_Gandhi (Disputed: ‘[asked what he thought of modern civilization] That would be a good idea.’)
• Ralph Keyes, The Quote Verifier (2006), p. 75, via Quote Investigator and Wikiquote

“Asked what he thought of Western civilization, Gandhi replied: “I think it would be a good idea.”” Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. No. It is not in Gandhi’s works, and who first wrote it is not known. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/what-do-you-think-of-western-civilization/ (checked 27 October 2026).

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