As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it - otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.

My father cared very much about courage, physical courage as well. He despised those who didn't have it. But he never said to me, 'I want you to be courageous.' He just smiled with pride every time I did something difficult or won a race with the boys.

[Mahatma Gandhi] said that the first president of India ought to be a harijan girl, an untouchable. He was so against the class system and the oppression of women that an untouchable woman became for him the epitome of purity and benediction.

I'm not ambitious. Not a bit.

Nothing lasts forever, and no one can predict what will happen to me in the near or distant future.

When you look at the beginning of the actual war, it's not hard to recognize that the Pakistanis were the ones to attack.

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.