Jawaharlal Nehru Quotes

The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing.

Most things, except agriculture, can wait

India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over a gain she has renewed her childhood and youth and age

At the dawn of history India started on her unending quest, and trackless centuries are filled with her striving and the grandeur of her success and her failures. Through good and ill fortune alike she has never lost sight of that quest or forgotten the ideals which gave her strength.

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.

Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes.

The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.

The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer.

In order to understand people, we have to understand their way of life and approach. If we wish to convince them, we have to use their language in the narrow sense of the mind. Something that goes even much further than that is not the appeal to logic and reason, but some kind of emotional awareness of the other people.

People avoid action. Often because they are afraid of the consequences, for action means risk and danger. Danger seems terrible from a distance; it is not so bad if you have a close look at it

Act with courage and dignity; stick to the ideals that give meaning to life.

Socialism is... not only a way of life, but a certain scientific approach to social and economic problems.

Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit.

Play the hand you're dealt.

What we really are matters more than what other people think of us.

What is history, indeed, but a record of change?

I have always thought that the best way to find out what is right and what is not right, what should be done and what should not be done, is not to give a sermon, but to talk and discuss, and out of discussion sometimes a little bit of truth comes out.

Let us be a little humble; let us think that the truth may not perhaps be entirely with us.

Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends.

Democracy and socialism are means to an end, not the end itself.

I have become a queer mixture of the East and the West, out of place everywhere, at home nowhere.

Only a prisoner who has been confined for long behind high walk can appreciate the extraordinary psychological value of these outside walks and open views.

What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me.

It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive.