Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Have a bias toward action - let's see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.
I don't care if I remain prime minister. I'm only interested in doing a good job as long as I'm capable and for as long as I don't get tired.
Yes, he [Mahatma Gandhi] was a great man. However...between me and Gandhi there was never the understanding there was between me and my father.
You don't help a country by supporting a military regime that denies any sign of democracy, and what defeated Pakistan was its military regime.
This is why we feel that democracy's important: because democracy allows you to have small explosions and therefore avoid the bigger explosions.
The question before the advanced nations is not whether they can afford to help the developing nations, but whether they can afford not to do so.
Happiness is a state of mind, you know. I don't think you are permanently happy. One is happy about certain things and not so happy about others.
If by religion we mean a belief in humanity rather than the gods, an effort to make man better and a little happier, then yes, I'm very religious.
There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.
With boys I climbed trees, ran races, and wrestled. I had no complexes of envy or inferiority toward boys. At the same time, however, I liked dolls.
Mahatma Gandhi was always talking of religion...He was convinced that was right...The fact is, we young people didn't agree with him on many things.
If you only knew, for instance, how much I enjoy being a grandmother! Do you know I'm twice a grandmother? Rajiv and Sonia have had a boy and a girl.
The environmental problems of developing countries are not the side effects of excessive industrialisation but reflect the inadequacy of development.
You said, 'How is it possible for democracy to work with an illiterate people who are dying of hunger?' But with that people we made a democracy work.
I assure you we'll go on making our decisions without worrying whether it pleases or displeases the Soviet Union, China, America, France, or anyone else.
Still, in international matters, the treaty changes nothing. That is, it doesn't prevent us from being friends with other countries, which indeed we are.
[Visiting Richard Nixon] useful only to me. The experience taught me that when people do something against you, that something always turns out in your favor.
They're the problems of poverty, of the rights of the individual, of the changes brought about by technology. They're the ones that count, more than religion!
If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.
You said, 'Planning is something for communist countries; democracy and planning don't go together!' But, with all the errors we committed, our plans succeeded.
I don't at all care who's on the right or left or in the center. Even though we use them, even though I use them myself, these expressions have lost all meaning.
How is it possible for people in the modern world to go on killing each other for religion? The problems we should be concerned with nowadays are quite different!
To bear many children is considered not only a religious blessing but also an investment. The greater their number, some Indians reason, the more alms they can beg.
To become our enemies - what an absurdity. A crazy absurdity when you stop to think that we, Muslims and Hindus, had conducted the struggle for independence together.
Little by little I changed my mind, and when I was about eighteen, I began to consider the possibility of getting married. Not to have a husband, but to have children.
As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it - otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.
We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.
I would like to ask a question. Would this sort of war or savage bombing which has taken place in Vietnam have been tolerated for so long, had the people been European?
I see nothing wrong in sterilizing a man who has already brought eight or ten children into the world. Especially if it helps those eight or ten children to live better.
... where does strength come from? It is not muscle strength any more. It is not also mere intellectual strength. What is strength? Strength is the support of the people.
Nowadays you can no longer let yourself be indoctrinated - the world is changing so fast! Even what you wanted twenty years ago is no longer relevant today; it's outdated.
We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.
If you only knew what it did to me to have lived in that house where the police were bursting in to take everyone away! I certainly didn't have a happy and serene childhood.
Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and to make it strong and dynamic.
Politics...You see, it depends on what kind of politics. What we did during my father's generation was a duty. And it was beautiful because its goal was the conquest of freedom.
What good does it do to remain tied to an ideology if you don't achieve anything by it? I have an ideology myself - you can't work in a vacuum; you have to have faith in something.
Have you ever climbed a mountain? You see, once you arrive at the top of a mountain, you think you've reached the highest point. But it's only an impression that doesn't last long.
My father was prime minister, and to take care of his home, to be his hostess, automatically meant to have my hands in politics - to meet people, to know their games, their secrets.
The sterilization of men is one method of birth control. The surest, most radical method. To you it seems dreadful. To me it seems that, properly applied, it's by no means dreadful.
The doctors shrugged their shoulders and grumbled that perhaps if I were to put on weight that would protect me a little - being so thin, I would never succeed in remaining pregnant.
Without peace there can be no prosperity for any people, rich or poor. And yet, there can be no peace without erasing the harshness of the growing contrast between the rich and the poor.
I myself, in my heart, say that people should have all the children they want. But it's a mistaken idea, like many of our ideas that go back thousands of years, and it must be rooted out.
We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?
The word 'when' is so important for a people, for an individual! If an individual thinks he won't do it, he'll never do it. Even if he's highly intelligent, even if he has countless talents.
My grandfather once told me that there were two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition.
Education is a liberating force, and in our age it is also a democratizing force, cutting across the barriers of caste and class, smoothing out inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances.
I had recently had the impression they were changing - not so much by becoming less pro-Pakistan as by becoming less anti-India. I was wrong. My visit to [Richard] Nixon did anything but avert the war.
Just when you think you've achieved something, you realize you've achieved nothing. And still you have to go forward just the same - toward a dream so distant that your road has neither beginning nor end.
You've never been very generous, you Westerners, toward us Indians. You should have seen that things were changing, albeit slowly. You should have seen that something was happening. Not much, but something.
We must protect families, we must protect children, who have inalienable rights and should be loved, should be taken care of physically and mentally, and should not be brought into the world only to suffer.