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

The India I want, I'll never tire of repeating, is a more just and less poor India, one entirely free of foreign influences. If I thought the country was already marching toward these objectives, I'd give up politics immediately and retire as prime minister.

A nation' s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.

If I'm happy, I look happy; if I'm angry, I show it. Without worrying about how others may react.

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

I suggested a compromise to give the banks a year's time and see if they succeed in showing us that nationalization wasn't necessary. The year went by and we realized it hadn't done any good, that the money still ended up in the hands of the rich industrialists or friends of the bankers. So I concluded that it was necessary to nationalize the banks. And we did. Without considering it a socialist gesture or an antisocialist gesture, just a necessary one. Anyone who nationalizes only so as to be considered on the left to me is a fool.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.