Did Mahatma Gandhi say
The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork.
Example of the quote as a heading image of the twitter account @Cutwitts:
asked Mar 14, 2015 at 12:13
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9Seems like an odd thing for him to say, since a large percentage of people in the world don't eat with forks.– user3169Mar 15, 2015 at 0:25
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9@user3169: And many who do eat with forks use them to eat their rice & vegetables.– jamesqfMar 15, 2015 at 1:15
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5At least perhaps he knew what he was talking about– Dr. belisariusMar 15, 2015 at 3:28
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Let us just call him Gandhi. There is no need to put Mahatma before it.– The very fluffy PandaMar 16, 2015 at 9:41
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its a quote about the dangers of foreign cultural tenancies.– Famous JameisJun 16, 2020 at 17:40
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2 Answers
In her book Animal Grace (first published in 2000) Mary Lou Randour writes:
Gandhi noted the significance of eating utensils as symbols, saying that the most violent weapon on earth is the knife used at the dining table.
I can find no earlier use of the phrase "most violent weapon on earth", in any context. Note that Randour doesn't claim to be quoting Gandhi verbatim, and also does not indicate what source she might be paraphrasing from.
The exact quote, "The most violent weapon on earth is the table fork," seems to first appear in 2004, The World Peace Diet by Will Tuttle, and is attributed to Ghandi. Again no specific source is given.
Make of this what you will, but without any further evidence, the quote remains pretty suspect.
This is no way meant to be a complete answer but I think it is a good starting point. Here is a list of all(?) the books on and by M. K. Gandhi. I think it is quite a reliable website. You can easily find the PDF of most of these books online.
From the list, the two books, which are on the topic of vegetarianism (If that is the context he meant it in), are The Moral Basis of Vegetarianism and Diet and Reform (It is quite possible that I am looking at a strictly smaller subset). There is no mention of the word 'fork' in any of these two books. Maybe the quote was paraphrased? I just searched the PDF using Adobe.
It is entirely possible that the quote was verbal.
answered Mar 16, 2015 at 9:25
