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

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.

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

Until today the rights of people have always been put forward by a few individuals acting in the name of the masses. Today instead of people no longer want to be represented; each wants to speak for himself and participate directly - it's the same for the Negroes, for the Jews, for women.

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

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.

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.