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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.

-Indira Gandhi

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Even If I Died

Indira Gandhi

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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.

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To Be A Mother, A Housewife, Never Cost Me Any Sacrifice - I Savored Every Minute Of Those Years.

The Western Press Has Always Insisted That India Was Pakistan's Enemy And Vice Versa, That The Hindus Were Against The Muslims And Vice Versa. They've Never Said, For Instance, That My Party Has Been Fighting This Attitude Ever Since We Have Maintained That Religious Hostilities Are Wrong And Absurd, That Minorities Cannot Be Eliminated From A Country, That People Of Different Religions Must Live Together.

My Theory Is That Men Are No More Liberated Than Women.

Difficulties Can't Be Eliminated From Life. Individuals Will Always Have Them, Countries Will Always Have Them...the Only Thing Is To Accept Them, If Possible Overcome Them, Otherwise To Come To Terms With Them. It's All Right To Fight, Yes, But Only When It's Possible.

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I Fall In Love With Anything I Do And I Always Try To Do It Well.

Falling In Love

When One Has Had A Life As Difficult As Mine, One Doesn't Worry About How Others Will React.

My Fiancé, You See, Belonged To Another Religion. He Was A Parsi. And This Was Something Nobody Could Stand - All Of India Was Against Us. They Wrote To Gandhi, To My Fther, To Me. Insults, Death Threats. Every Day The Postman Arrived With An Enormous Sack And Dumped The Letters On The Floor. We Even Stopped Reading Them; We Let A Couple Of Friends Read Them And Tell Us What Was In Them.

What Is Popular Need Not Necessarily Be Right Or Wise.

In The Western World, Women Have No Other Choice. In India, No. And I'll Explain The Reason. It's A Reason That Also Has To Do With My Own Case. In India Women Have Never Been A Hostile Competition With Men - Even In The Most Distant Past, Every Time A Woman Emerged As A Leader, Perhaps As A Queen, The People Accepted Her. As Something Normal And Not Exceptional.

You Must Learn To Be Still In The Midst Of Activity And To Be Vibrantly Alive In Repose.

The Fact That I Have An Ideology, However, Doesn't Mean I'm Indoctrinated.

Without Courage, You Cannot Practice Any Other Virtue. You Have To Have Courage - Courage Of Different Kinds: First, Intellectual Courage, To Sort Out Different Values And Make Up Your Mind About Which Is The One Which Is Right For You To Follow. You Have To Have Moral Courage To Stick Up To That - No Matter What Comes In Your Way, No Matter What The Obstacle And The Opposition Is.

All Unprejudiced Persons Objectively Surveying The Grim Events In Bangla Desh Since March 25 Have Recognized The Revolt Of 75 Million People, A People Who Were Forced To The Conclusion That Neither Their Life, Nor Their Liberty, To Say Nothing Of The Possibility Of The Pursuit Of Happiness, Was Available To Them.

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There Is Not Love Where There Is No Will.

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.

When It's Impossible, It's Better To Stoop To Compromise, Without Resisting And Without Complaining. People Who Complain Are Selfish.

Would You Consider A Man Or A Woman To Be Complicated? Is It That Difficult To Understand Both The Sexes? We Say That We Know What The Other Sex Is All About, But Is That Really True? Perhaps The Following Witty, Funny Quotes And Sayings Can Help Simplify Things Down About Men.

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.

It Depends On What You Mean By The Word Religion. Certainly I Don't Go To Temples And Pray To The Gods Or Anything Like That.

When I Was Young, I Was Very Selfish, Now Not Any More.

I Suspected [richard Nixon] Was Very Pro-pakistan. Or Rather I Knew That The Americans Had Always Been In Favor Of Pakistan - Not So Much Because They Were In Favor Of Pakistan, But Because They Were Against India.

Nothing Can Convince Me That People Are At One With Their Work Unless They're Joyous About It.

Not Only Negroes And Jews, But Also Women Are Part Of A Great Revolt Of Which One Can Only Approve.

The Struggle For Independence Here Has Been Conducted In Equal Measure By Men And By Women. And When We Got Our Independence, No One Forgot That. In The Western World, On The Other Hand, Nothing Of The Kind Has Ever Happened - Women Have Participated, Yes, But Revolutions Have Always Been Made By Men Alone.

[ Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto Is Not A Very Balanced Man. When He Talks, You Never Understand What He Means. What Does He Mean This Time? That He Wants To Be Friends With Us? We've Wanted To Be Friends With Him For Some Time; I've Always Wanted To.

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.

It Has Been My Experience That People Who Are At Cross-purposes With Nature Are Cynical About Mankind And Ill At Ease With Themselves.

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.

Martyrdom Does Not End Something, It Only A Beginning.

My Sons...i Was Crazy About My Sons And I Think I've Done A Super Job In Bringing Them Up.

For Me The Only Point That Has Remained Unchanged Through The Years Is That In India There Is Still So Much Poverty.

I Refuse To Indulge In Small Talk. And Compliments, If At All, I Save For After The Job Is Done.

As A Nation, I Believe We've Acquired Faith In Ourselves.

Being Prime Minister Isn't The Only Job In Life! As Far As I'm Concerned, I Could Live In A Village And Be Satisfied.

Dacca Is Now The Free Capital Of A Free Country.

India Wants To Avoid A War At All Costs But It Is Not A One-sided Affair, You Cannot Shake Hands With A Clenched Fist.

Ability Is Not Always Gauged By Examination.

All Of A Sudden Inscriptions Appeared On Walls. Signs Appeared. And That 'no' Exploded All Over India, In An Act Of Pride That Surprised Even Me. Then Even The Political Parties, All Of Them, Even The Deputies In Parliament, Said No: It's Better To Die Of Hunger Than Be Taken For A Nation Of Beggars.

Even Under The British There Were Hostile Groups. There Were Clashes. But, As We Found Out Later, These Were Clashes Provoked By Those Who Had No Wish To Let Us Live Together - On The Eve Of The Partition. The Policy Of Keeping Us Divided Was Always Followed By Foreigners, Even After The Partition. If Indians And Pakistanis Had Been Together...i Don't Say As Confederated Countries But As Neighboring And Friendly Countries...like Italy And France, For Example ...believe Me, Both Of Us Would Have Progressed Much Further.

A Lot Of Mythology Arose After [mahatma Gandhi] Death. But The Fact Remains That He Was An Exceptional Man, Terribly Intelligent, With Tremendous Intuition For People, And A Great Instinct For What Was Right.

Life Is A Continuous Process Of Adjustment.

I'm Trained To Difficulties; Difficulties Can't Be Eliminated From Life.

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.

I Have Certain Objectives. They're The Same Objectives My Father Had To Give People A Higher Standard Of Living, To Do Away With The Cancer Of Poverty, To Eliminate The Consequences Of Economic Backwardness.

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.

I Learned Very Soon To Get Along By Myself.

How Can Anybody Who Is The Head Of A Nation Afford Not To Be A Prag-matist?

To Become Capable, One Must Have Faith In Oneself.

My Father Cared Very Much About Courage, Physical Courage As Well. He Despised Those Who Didn't Have It. But He Never Said To Me, 'i Want You To Be Courageous.' He Just Smiled With Pride Every Time I Did Something Difficult Or Won A Race With The Boys.

However, The Treaty Exists And It Puts Us In A Different Position Toward The Soviet Union Than The One We Have Toward Other Countries. Yes, The Treaty Exists. Nor Does It Exist On Only One Side. Look How W3e're Situated Geographically And You'll See That India Is Very Important For The Soviet Union.

I Know I'll Astonish Everyone By Talking Like This, But It's God's Truth. Honors Have Never Tempted Me And I've Never Sought Them.

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.

Home Is Wherever I Go.

At A Certain Point The Family Moved To Jaipur, Where No Woman Could Avoid The Doli Or Purdah. They Kept Her In The House From Morning To Night, Either Cooking Or Doing Nothing. [my Mother] Hated Doing Nothing, She Hated To Cook. So She Became Pale And Ill, And Far From Being Concerned About Her Health, My Grandfather Said, 'who's Going To Marry Her Now?' So My Grandmother Waited For My Grandfather To Go Out, And Then She Dressed My Mother As A Man And Let Her Go Out Riding With Her Brothers.

I'm Not Interested In One Label Or The Other - I'm Only Interested In Solving Certain Problems, In Getting Where I Want To Go.

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.

No One Wanted That Marriage, No One. Even Mahatma Gandhi Wasn't Happy About It. As For My Father...it's Not True That He Opposed It, As People Say, But He Wasn't Eager For It. I Suppose Because The Fathers Of Only Daughters Would Prefer To See Them Get Married As Late As Possible.

Whenever You Take A Step Forward, You Are Bound To Disturb Something.

I Discovered [joan Of Arc] Toward The Age Of Ten Or Twelve, When I Went To France. I Don't Remember Where I Read About Her, But I Recall That She Immediately Took On A Definite Importance For Me. I Wanted To Sacrifice My Life For My Country. It Seems Like Foolishness And Yet...what Happens When We're Children Is Engraved Forever On Our Lives.

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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.

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I Always Wanted To Have Children - If It Had Been Up To Me, I Would Have Had Eleven. It Was My Husband Who Wanted Only Two.

I Was A Perfect Housewife. Being A Mother Has Always Been The Job I Liked Best. Absolutely.

In Fact The Communists Gained Strength In India When The People Thought My Party Was Moving To The Right. And They Were Correct.

The Future Doesn't Frighten Me, Even If It Threatens To Be Full Of Other Difficulties.

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I Think One Should Do What Seems Right. And If What Seems Right Involves Danger...well, One Must Risk The Danger.

I Want To Succeed. And I Want To Succeed In The Best Way Possible, Without Caring Whether People Call My Actions Leftist Or Rightist.

It's True That I Refused Foreign Aid. It's True. It Wasn't My Personal Decision, However - It Was The Whole Country That Said No.

I Had Many Dolls. And You Know How I Played With Them? By Performing Insurrections, Assemblies, Scenes Of Arrest. My Dolls Were Almost Never Babies To Be Nursed But Men And Women Who Attacked Barracks And Ended Up In Prison.

There Are Only Moments Of Happiness - From Contentment To Ecstacy.

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The India I Want, I'll Never Tire Of Repeating, Is A More Just And Less Poor India, One Entirely Free Of Foreign Influences. If I Thought The Country Was Already Marching Toward These Objectives, I'd Give Up Politics Immediately And Retire As Prime Minister.

A Nation' S Strength Ultimately Consists In What It Can Do On Its Own, And Not In What It Can Borrow From Others.

My Father Was A Statesman, I'm A Political Woman. My Father Was A Saint. I'm Not.

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.

I Think I'm Cold, Indeed Icy, Hard. Then There's Another Reason, One That Goes With My Frankness: I Don't Put On Act.

You Say This Victory Is Dangerous. I Say That Today No One Can Yet Tell If It's Dangerous, That Today I Don't See The Risks You Mention. If, However, Those Risks Should Become Reality...i'll Act In Accordance With The New Reality.

It's Not Right To Say That My Father Influenced Me More Than Others, And I Wouldn't Be Able To Say Whether My Personality Was Formed More By My Father Or My Mother Or The Mahatma [gandhi] Or The Friends Who Were With Us.

If We Offer Something To Bangladesh, It's Obvious That Bangladesh Is Offering Something To Us. And Why Shouldn't Bangladesh Be Able To Keep Its Promises? Economically It's Full Of Resources And Can Stand On Its Feet. Politically It Seems To Me Led By Trained People. The Refugees Who Took Shelter Here Are Going Home.

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.

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.

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.

I Cannot Understand How Anyone Can Be An Indian And Not Be Proud.

By Now Even The Word Socialism Has So Many Meanings And Interpretations. The Russians Call Themselves Socialists, The Swedes Call Themselves. And Let's Not Forget That In Germany There Was Also A National Socialism.

I Don't Waste Time In Flowery Small Talk, As People Do In India.

[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.

When You Govern A Country, And Especially A Country So Vast And Complex As India, You Never Arrive At Anything.

In India's Distant Past, When The Population Was Low, The Blessing Given A Woman Was, 'may You Have Many Children.' Most Of Our Epics And Literature Stress This Wish, And The Idea That A Woman Should Have Many Children Hasn't Declined.

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.

Everything I've Done, I've Done Because I Wanted To Do It. In Doing It, I've Plunged In Headlong, Always Believing In It.

I Remember Harrowing Episodes. People Who Emigrated, People Who Didn't Want To Emigrate...many Muslims Didn't Want To Leave India To Go To Live In Pakistan, But The Propaganda Was That There They'd Have Greater Opportunities And So They Left. Many Hindus, On The Other Hand, Didn't Want To Stay In Pakistan, But They Had Ties There Or Property And So They Stayed.

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.

Every Democratic System Evolves Its Own Conventions. It Is Not Only The Water But The Banks Which Make The River.

I Can't Take It Seriously When People Get Excited And Scream That Religion Is In Danger, And Similar Stupidities.

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?

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.

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 Be Liberated, Woman Must Feel Free To Be Herself, Not In Rivalry To Man But In The Context Of Her Own Capacity And Her Personality.

Opportunities Are Not Offered. They Must Be Wrested And Worked For. And This Calls For Perseverance... And Courage.

[my Mother] Was The Oldest Of Two Sisters And Two Brothers, And She Grew Up With Her Brothers, Who Were About Her Age. She Grew Up, To The Age Of Ten, Like A Wild Colt, And Then All Of A Sudden That Was Over. They Had Forced On Her Her 'woman's Destiny' By Saying, 'this Isn't Done, This Isn't Good, This Isn't Worthy Of A Lady.'

If By Happiness You Mean Instead An Ordinary Contentment, Then Yes - I'm Fairly Contented. Not Satisfied - Contented.

For Me It's Absolutely The Same - I Treat One And The Other In Exactly The Same Way. As Persons, That Is, Not As Men And Women. But, Even Here, You Have To Consider The Fact That I've Had A Very Special Education, That I'm The Daughter Of A Man Like My Father And A Woman Like My Mother.

The Meek May One Day Inherit The Earth, But Not The Headlines.

I Don't See Why We And The Chinese Should Have To Be Enemies.

I Grew Up Like A Boy, Also Because Most Of The Children Who Came To Our House Were Boys.

I've Always Discovered Things For Myself, In Marvelous Freedom.

Even Today To Be Civilised Is Held To Be Synonymous With Being Westernised. Advanced Countries Devote Large Resources To Formulating And Spreading Ideas And Doctrines And They Tend To Impose On The Developing Nations Their Own Norms And Methods. The Pattern Of The Classical Acquisitive Society With Its Deliberate Multiplication Of Wants Not Only Is Unsuited To Conditions In Our Countries But Is Positively Harmful.

I Was A Welfare Worker For The Indian Council For Child Welfare. I'll Tell You A Story. Rajiv Was Only Four Years Old At That Time, And Was Going To Kindergarten. One Day The Mother Of One Of His Little Friends Came To See Us And Said In A Sugary Voice, 'oh, It Must Be So Sad For You To Have No Time To Spend With Your Little Boy!' Rajiv Roared Like A Lion: 'my Mother Spends More Time With Me Than You Spend With Your Little Boy, See! Your Little Boy Says You Always Leave Him Alone So You Can Play Bridge!' I Detest Women Who Do Nothing And They Play Bridge.

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.

Women Sometimes Go Too Far, It's True. But It's Only When You Go Too Far That Others Listen.

I Said, I'll Put On Weight. And I Started Having Massages, Taking Cod-liver Oil, And Eating Twice As Much. But I Didn't Even Gain An Ounce. I'd Made Up My Mind That On The Day The Engagement Was Announced I'd Be Fatter, And I Didn't Gain An Ounce. Then I Went To Mussoorie, Which Is A Health Resort, And I Ignored The Doctors' Instructions; I Invented My Own Regime And Gained Weight. Just The Opposite Of What I'd Like Now. Now I Have The Problem Of Keeping Slim. Still I Manage. I Don't Know If You Realize I'm A Determined Woman.

At First People Asked Us, 'can You Do It?' And We Kept Silent Because We Didn't Believe In Ourselves, We Didn't Believe That We Could Do Things. Today People No Longer Say To Us, 'can You?' They Say, 'when Can You?' Because The Indians Finally Believe In Themselves, They Believe They Can Do Things.

Forgiveness Is A Virtue Of The Brave.

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.

You Soon Realize That The Peak You've Climbed Was One Of The Lowest, That The Mountain Was Part Of A Chain Of Mountains, That There Are Still So Many, So Many Mountains To Climb...and The More You Climb, The More You Want To Climb - Even Though You're Dead Tired.

Popularity Is Not A Gurantee Of Quality.

The Power To Question Is The Basis Of All Human Progress.

Inspirational Life

We Always Said That Our Struggle Was Not Only Against The British As Representatives Of Colonialism, It Was Against All The Evil That Existed In India. The Evil Of The Feudal System, The Evil Of The System Based On Caste, The Evil Of Economic Injustice.

The Civil Servant Is Primarily The Master Of The Short-term Solution.

[mahatma Gandhi] Said That The First President Of India Ought To Be A Harijan Girl, An Untouchable. He Was So Against The Class System And The Oppression Of Women That An Untouchable Woman Became For Him The Epitome Of Purity And Benediction.

We Announced That There'd Be No More Starvation In India. And You Responded, 'impossible. You'll Never Succeed!' Instead We Succeeded; Today In India No One Dies Of Hunger Any More; Food Production Far Exceeds Consumption.

In An Underdeveloped Society, The First Anxiety Is Of Infant Mortality. In An Advanced One It Is To Keep Alive The Aged.

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.

It Is Our Duty To Create A Social Milieu In Which The Young And The Socially Weak Feel That The Present And Future Belong To Them.

In All Societies That Have Applied A Form Of Socialism, A Certain Degree Of Social Economic Equality Has Been Achieved.

We Couldn't Keep Ten Million Refugees On Our Soil; We Couldn't Tolerate Such An Unstable Situation For Who Knows How Long. That Influx Of Refugees Wouldn't Have Stopped - On The Contrary. It Would Have Gone On And On And On, Until There Would Have Been An Explosion. We Were No Longer Able To Control The Arrival Of Those People, In Our Own Interest We Had To Stop It! That's What I Said To Mr.[richard] Nixon, To All The Other Leaders I Visited In An Attempt To Avert The War.

All My Games Were Political Games; I Was, Like Joan Of Arc, Perpetually Being Burned At The Stake.

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.

People With Clenched Fists Can Not Shake Hands.

Inspirational Life

Nothing That Is Worthwhile Is Ever Easy.

Message In A Bottle

Until The Day She Died, My Mother Continued To Fight For The Rights Of Women. She Joined All The Women's Movements Of The Time; She Stirred Up A Lot Of Revolts. She Was A Great Woman, A Great Figure. Women Today Would Like Her Immensely.

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.

I'm Not Ambitious. Not A Bit.

My Husband Lived In Lucknow. My Father Lived In Delhi, Of Course. So I Shuttled Between Delhi And Lucknow And...naturally, If My Husband Needed Me On Days When I Was In Delhi, I Ran Back To Lucknow. But If It Was My Father Who Needed Me, On The Days When I Was In Lucknow. And...yes, My Husband Got Angry. And He Quarreled. We Quarreled. We Quarreled A Lot. It's True.

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.

Never Forget That When We Are Silent, We Are One. And When We Speak We Are Two.

The Life I've Had, The Difficulties, The Hardships, The Pain I've Suffered Since I Was A Child. It's A Great Privilege To Have Led A Difficult Life, And Many People In My Generation Have Had This Privilege - I Sometimes Wonder If Young People Today Aren't Deprived Of The Dramas That Shaped Us.

To Me The Function Of Politics Is To Make Possible The Desirable.

We Were To Equally Strong Types [with My Husband], Equally Pigheaded - Neither Of Us Wanted To Give In. And...i Like To Think Those Quarrels Made Us Better, That They Enlivened Our Life, Because Without Them We Would Have Had A Normal Life, Yes, But Banal And Boring.

You Cannot Shake Hands With A Clenched Fist.

Forgiveness Is The Virtue Of Brave.

There Are Moments In History When Brooding Tragedy And Its Dark Shadows Can Be Lightened By Recalling Great Moments Of The Past.

The International Control Commission Isn't Doing Anything, It's Never Done Anything. What Good Does It Do To Be On It Or Not? Before Opening The Embassy In Hanoi, I Gave It A Lot Of Thought, But It Wasn't Really A Painful Decision. American Policy In Vietnam Is What It Is, In Saigon The Situation Is Anything But Normal, And I'm Happy To Have Done What I Did.

Rebels And Non-conformists Are Often The Pioneers And Designers Of Change.

At No Point, At A Very Important Point: That Of Having Convinced The Indians That They Can Do Things.

Happiness Is Such A Fleeting Point Of View - There's No Such Thing As Continual Happiness.

I Began To Travel By Myself, In Europe, When I Was Eight Years Old. At That Age I Was Already On The Move Between India And Swizerland, Switzerland And France, France And England. Administering My Own Finances Like An Adult.

Life Is Always Full Of Dangers And I Don't Think One Should Avoid Dangers.

As I Always Say, I Do Not Wish You An Easy Time, But I Wish You That Whatever Difficulty You May Have, You Will Overcome It.

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.

It's Not At All Hard To Reconcile The Two Things If You Organize Your Time Intelligently. Even When My Sons Were Little, I Was Working.

I Went Back Into Politics Only When It Was Clear That Things Weren't Going As They Should Have In My Party. I Was Always Arguing, I Argued With Everyone - With My Father, With The Leaders I Had Known Since I Was A Child...and One Day, It Was In 1955, One Of Them Exclaimed, 'you Do Nothing But Criticize! If You Think You Can Correct Things, Correct Them. Go Ahead, Why Don't You Try?' Well, I Could Never Resist A Challenge, So I Tried.

When [my Father] Asked Me To Help Him, I Really Didn't Suspect The Consequences.

The Greatest Of All Contraceptives Is Affluence.

Sometimes We Hurt One Another Without Realizing It.

It Would Seem That It Was Not In The Interest Of 'someone' For Us To Make Progress. It Was In 'someone's' Interest That We Be Always At War, That We Tear Each Other To Pieces. Yes, I'm Inclined To Absolve The Pakistanis. How Should They Have Behaved? Someone Encouraged Them To Attack Us, Someone Gave Them Weapons To Attack Us. And They Attacked Us.

I Like To Think I've Provided This Faith. I Also Think That By Providing Faith, I've Focused Their Pride. I Say Focused Because Pride Isn't Something You Give. It Doesn't Even Break Out Suddenly; It's A Feeling That Grows Very Slowly, Very Confusedly.

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.

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.

We Couldn't Be Everywhere, We Couldn't See Everything, And It Was Inevitable That Some Things Would Escape Us.

Do You Know That, Until Recently, Poor People Brought Children Into The World For The Sole Purpose Of Making Use Of Them? But How Can You Change, By Force Or All Of A Sudden, An Age-old Habit? The Only Way Is To Plan Births, By One Means Or Another.

No One Ever Indoctrinated Me.

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 Mind If My Life Goes In The Service Of The Nation. If I Die, Every Drop Of My Blood Will Invigorate The Nation.

Nothing Lasts Forever, And No One Can Predict What Will Happen To Me In The Near Or Distant Future.

Nothing Lasts Forever

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!

We Have Believed - And We Do Believe Now - That Freedom Is Indivisible, That Peace Is Indivisible, That Economic Prosperity Is Indivisible

The Doctors Advised Me Not To Have Even One. My Health Was Still Not Good, And They Said That Pregnancy Might Be Fatal. If They Hadn't Said That To Me, Maybe I Wouldn't Have Got Married. But That Diagnosis Provoked Me, It Infuriated Me. I Answered, 'why Do You Think I'm Getting Married If Not To Have Children? I Don't Want To Hear That I Can't Have Children; I Want You To Tell Me What I Have To Do In Order To Have Children!'

It's A Law Of Life - Check It And You'll See It Holds True In Every Situation Of Life.

I've Never Understood Women Who, Because Of Their Children, Pose As Victims And Don't Allow Themselves Any Other Activities.

Until I Was About Eighteen, Yes [i Didn't Want To Get Married]. But Not Because I Felt Like A Suffragette, But Because I Wanted To Devote All My Energies To The Struggle To Free India. Marriage, I Thought, Would Have Distracted Me From The Duties I'd Imposed On Myself.

The Indians And Pakistanis Are Literally Brothers.

As For The Job Of Prime Minister, I Like It, Yes. But No More Than I've Liked Other Work That I've Done As An Adult.

Mankind Will Endure When The World Appreciates The Logic Of Diversity.

Our Pride Has Grown In The Last Twenty-five Years, Though Others Don't Understand It And Underestimate It.

The Old Need The Company Of The Young So That They Renew Their Contact With Life.

Do You Know Why I Won The Last Elections? It Was Because The People Liked Me, Yes, Because I Had Worked, Yes, But Also Because The Opposition Had Behaved Badly Toward Me. And Do You Know Why I Won This War? Because My Army Was Able To Do It, Yes, But Also Because The Americans Were On The Side Of Pakistan.

Peace We Want Because There Is Another War To Fight Against Poverty, Disease And Ignorance.

We Would Rather Starve Than Sell Our National Honor.

I Don't Know How To Put On An Act; I Always Show Myself For What I Am, In Whatever Mood I'm In.

Even I, When I Was A Student In London, Often Wore Western Clothes, And Yet I'm The Most Indian Indian I Know.

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.

In All Communities You Find Groups That Behave Badly. But You Must Understand Them Too.

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.

People Tend To Forget Their Duties But Remember Their Rights.

Political Games

People Often Ask Me: Who Has Influenced You The Most? Your Father? Mahatma Gandhi? Yes, My Choices Were Fundamentally Influenced By Them, By The Spirit Of Equality They Infused In Me - My Obsession For Justice Comes From My Father, Who In Turn Got It From Mahatma Gandhi.

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.

If By Happiness You Mean Ecstasy ... Yes, I've Known Ecstasy, And It's A Blessing To Be Able To Say It Because Those Who Can Say It Are Very Few. But Ecstasy Doesn't Last Long And Is Seldom If Ever Repeated.

A Revolution Is Already Taking Place In India. Things Are Changing Here Already - Peacefully And Democratically. There's No Danger Of Communism. There Would Be If We Had A Rightist Government Instead Of Mine.

Now I Don't Get Upset By Unpleasant Things, I Don't Play The Victim, And I'm Always Ready To Come To Terms With Life.

One Must Beware Of Ministers Who Can Do Nothing Without Money, And Those Who Want To Do Everything With Money.

In Today's World No Country Can Be Absolutely Independent Of Another. It Is A World Of Interdependence.

Poverty Assumes So Many Aspects Here In India. There Aren't Only The Poor That You See In The Cities, There Are The Poor Among The Tribes, The Poor Who Live In The Forest, The Poor Who Live On The Mountains. Should We Ignore Them As Long As The Poor In The Cities Are Better Off? And Better Off With Reference To What? To What People Wanted Ten Years Ago? Then It Seemed Like So Much. Today It's No Longer So Much.

Sometimes Friends Are Dangerous. We Must Be Very Careful About The Help Friends Give Us.

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Nathaniel Hawthorne

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