Indira Gandhi quotes:

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share
  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

  • You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

  • Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.

  • The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

  • A nation' s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.

  • People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.

  • One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.

  • Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something.

  • You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

  • Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

  • Politics is the art of acquiring, holding, and wielding power.

  • I am proud that I spent the whole of my life in the service of my people ... I shall continue to serve until my last breath and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.

  • We have believed - and we do believe now - that freedom is indivisible, that peace is indivisible, that economic prosperity is indivisible

  • Rebels and non-conformists are often the pioneers and designers of change.

  • You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

  • One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money

  • My father was a statesman, I am a political woman. My father was a saint. I am not.

  • There is not love where there is no will.

  • In an underdeveloped society, the first anxiety is of infant mortality. In an advanced one it is to keep alive the aged.

  • in today's world no country can be absolutely independent of another. It is a world of interdependence.

  • 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.

  • Women sometimes go too far, it's true. But it's only when you go too far that others listen.

  • Opportunities are not offered. They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance... and courage.

  • To become capable, one must have faith in oneself.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision.

  • 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.

  • The purpose of life is to believe, to hope, and to strive.

  • I've never understood women who, because of their children, pose as victims and don't allow themselves any other activities.

  • 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.

  • I cannot understand how anyone can be an Indian and not be proud.

  • 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.

  • Let's not forget that in India the symbol of strength is a woman; the goddess Shakti.

  • 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.

  • Sometimes friends are dangerous. We must be very careful about the help friends give us.

  • 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.

  • As a nation, I believe we've acquired faith in ourselves.

  • India had barely become independent, in 1947, when Pakistan invaded Kashmir, which at the time was ruled by a maharajah. The maharajah fled, and the people of Kashmir, led by Sheikh Abdullah, asked for Indian help. Lord [Louis] Mountbatten, who was still governor general, replied that he wouldn't be able to supply aid to Kashmir unless Pakistan declared war, and he didn't seem bothered by the fact that the Pakistanis were slaughtering the population.

  • In all societies that have applied a form of socialism, a certain degree of social economic equality has been achieved.

  • It is legitimate to have one's own point of view and political philosophy. But there are people who make anger, rather than a deeply held belief, the basis of their actions. They do not seem to mind harming society as a whole in the pursuit of their immediate objective. No society can survive if it yields to the demands of frenzy, whether of the few or the many.

  • 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.

  • Popularity is not a gurantee of quality.

  • There are only moments of happiness - from contentment to ecstacy.

  • I think one should do what seems right. And if what seems right involves danger...well, one must risk the danger.

  • For me the only point that has remained unchanged through the years is that in India there is still so much poverty.

  • As my father [Javāharlāl NehrÅ«] 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.

  • It's the same story as when we nationalized the banks. I'm not for nationalization because of the rhetoric of nationalization, or because I see in nationalization the cure-all for every injustice. I'm for nationalization in cases where it's necessary.

  • 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.

  • I want to state that there will be friendship between Bangladesh and ourselves. And not a one-sided friendship, of course - no one does anything for nothing; each has something to give and something to take.

  • Satisfied is a word I use only in reference to my country, and I'll never be satisfied for my country. For this reasons I go on taking difficult paths, and between a paved road and a footpath that goes up the mountain, I choose the footpath. To the great irritation of my bodyguards.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • To be a mother, a housewife, never cost me any sacrifice - I savored every minute of those years.

  • 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.

  • You found an uncle on one side and a nephew on the other, a cousin here and a cousin there. Besides it's still true today. I'll tell you something else. There was a time when even two ambassadors to Switzerland, the one from India and the one from Pakistan, were two blood brothers. Oh, the Partition imposed on us by the British was so unnatural!

  • 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.

  • In all communities you find groups that behave badly. But you must understand them too.

  • Life is a continuous process of adjustment.

  • [ 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.

  • 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.

  • Never forget that when we are silent, we are one. And when we speak we are two.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • I suggested a compromise to give the banks a year's time and see if they succeed in showing us that nationalization wasn't necessary. The year went by and we realized it hadn't done any good, that the money still ended up in the hands of the rich industrialists or friends of the bankers. So I concluded that it was necessary to nationalize the banks. And we did. Without considering it a socialist gesture or an antisocialist gesture, just a necessary one. Anyone who nationalizes only so as to be considered on the left to me is a fool.

  • America always thought it was helping Pakistan. But if it hadn't helped Pakistan, Pakistan would have been a stronger country.

  • I learned very soon to get along by myself.

  • When one has had a life as difficult as mine, one doesn't worry about how others will react.

  • [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.

  • My father was a saint, I'm not.

  • The Indians and Pakistanis are literally brothers.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Happiness is such a fleeting point of view - there's no such thing as continual happiness.

  • To me the function of politics is to make possible the desirable.

  • 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...

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Ability is not always gauged by examination.

  • Nothing that is worthwhile is ever easy.

  • When it's impossible, it's better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.

  • 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.

  • In fact the communists gained strength in India when the people thought my party was moving to the right. And they were correct.

  • When I was young, I was very selfish, now not any more.

  • We would rather starve than sell our national honor.

  • 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.

  • Naturally, if the Americans had fired a shot, if the Seventh Fleet had done something more than sit there in the Bay of Bengal...yes, the Third World War would have exploded. But, in all honesty, not even that fear occurred to me.

  • 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.

  • Not only my parents but the whole family was involved in the resistance - my grandfather and grandmother, my uncles and aunts, my cousings of both sexes. So ever so often the police came and took them away, indiscriminately. Well, the fact that they arrested both my father and mother, both my grandfather and grandmother, both an uncle and an aunt, made me accustomed to looking on men and women with the same eyes, on an absolute plane of equality.

  • 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.

  • In any case, I married Feroze Gandhi. Once I get an idea in my head, no one in the world can make me change my mind.

  • 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.

  • The greatest of all contraceptives is affluence.

  • The fact that I have an ideology, however, doesn't mean I'm indoctrinated.

  • Every democratic system evolves its own conventions. It is not only the water but the banks which make the river.

  • 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.

  • I don't know how to put on an act; I always show myself for what I am, in whatever mood I'm in.

  • 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.

  • The immediate is often the enemy of the ultimate.

  • 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.

  • When [my father] asked me to help him, I really didn't suspect the consequences.

  • Defeats are always pitiful. Victories are always last resources.

  • Dacca is now the free capital of a free country.

  • How can anybody who is the head of a nation afford not to be a prag-matist?

  • 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.

  • When I'm not governing my country any more, I'll go back to taking care of children. Or else I'll start studying anthropology - it's a science that's always interested me very much, also in relation to the problem of poverty. Or else I'll go back to studying history - at Oxford I took my degree in history. Or else...I don't know, I'm fascinated by the tribal communities. I might busy myself with them.

  • People with clenched fists can not shake hands.

  • 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.

  • Forgiveness is the virtue of Brave.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • Muslim women had to go out in purdah, that heavy sheet that covers even the eyes. Hindu women had to go out in the doli, a kind of closed sedan chair like a catafalque. My mother always told me about these things with bitterness and rage.

+1
Share
Pin
Like
Send
Share