Indira Gandhi Quotes

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.

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

I can't take it seriously when people get excited and scream that religion is in danger, and similar stupidities.

I'm not ambitious. Not a bit.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 would rather starve than sell our national honor.

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

The greatest of all contraceptives is affluence.

You must also understand us - always undervalued, underestimated, not believed. Even when we believed, you didn't believe us. You said, 'How is it possible to fight without violence?' But without violence we obtained freedom.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I don't see the world as something divided between right and left.

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.

Not only Negroes and Jews, but also women are part of a great revolt of which one can only approve.

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

It has been my experience that people who are at cross-purposes with nature are cynical about mankind and ill at ease with themselves.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I always defended my father, as a child, and I think I'm still defending him - his policies at least. Oh, he wasn't at all a politician, in no sense of the word. He was sustained in his work only by a blind faith in India - he was preoccupied in such an obsessive way by the future of India. We understood each other.

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!

At no point, at a very important point: that of having convinced the Indians that they can do things.

I learned very soon to get along by myself.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

I grew up like a boy, also because most of the children who came to our house were boys.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

What does nonalignment mean? It means we don't belong to any military bloc and that we reserve the right to be friends with any country, independently of the influence of any country. All this has remained unchanged after the signing of the Indo-Soviet treaty, and others can say or think what they like - our policy won't change because of the Soviet Union.

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

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.