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.

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.

They're the problems of poverty, of the rights of the individual, of the changes brought about by technology. They're the ones that count, more than religion!

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.

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

I learned very soon to get along by myself.

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