"The word Satya (Truth), is derived from Sat, which means being. And nothing is or exists in reality except Truth."

"Truth (Satya) implies love, and firmness (Agraha) engenders and therefore serve as a synonym for force. I thus began to call the Indian movement "Satyagraha", that is to say, the Force which is born of Truth and Love or non-violence, and gave up the use of the phrase "passive resistance". M. K. Gandhi, Satyagraha in South Africa

In his book 'Non-violent Resistance', Gandhi defines Satyagraha as follows: "Its root meaning is holding on to truth, hence truth-force. I have also called it Love-force or Soul-force." Gandhi advocated "self-suffering" as a means of protest against wrong. If your opponents' actions were wrong, Gandhi felt that they could be made to amend their wrong practices through acts of love and non-violence. This was Gandhi's principle of Satyagraha. Gandhi talked of a Satyagraha tree, a branch of which was Civil Disobedience or Civil Resistance. The Satyagrahi generally obeyed laws of the alien, British government. If laws are unfair, he writes, the Satyagrahi "breaks them and quietly suffers the penalty for their breach." Gandhi was careful to distinguish non-violence, an active form of protest, from passive resistance. He knew that passive resistance "is regarded as a weapon of the weak."

Dennis Dalton traces the development of Gandhi's concept of Satyagraha back to the Jain teaching of Ahinsa (never to inflict harm upon living beings), which Gandhi had observed in practice as a child in India.