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.

... where does strength come from? It is not muscle strength any more. It is not also mere intellectual strength. What is strength? Strength is the support of the people.

I refuse to indulge in small talk. And compliments, if at all, I save for after the job is done.

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.

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

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.

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.