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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Even I, when I was a student in London, often wore Western clothes, and yet I'm the most Indian Indian I know.