Quotes

Quotes

By Author 

Like faint glimmers of light in the dark, we have emerged for a moment from the nothingness of dark unconsciousness of material

Andrei Sakharov

existence. We must make good the demands of reason and create a 

life worthy of ourselves and of the goals we only dimly perceive. “Anybody can become angry - that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the

Aristotle

right purpose, and in the right way - that is not within everybody's 

power and is not easy.” “For me, some combination of righteous refusal, enlightened self-interest, reasoned negotiation and compensatory justice is the correct path to

BR Ambedkar



liberty and social equality.” “There is no nation of Indians in the real sense of the word. The nation



does not exist, it is to be created.” “It is wrong for the majority to deny the existence of minorities. It is



equally wrong for minorities to perpetuate themselves.” “Turn in any direction you like, caste is the monster that crosses your



path” “Democracy in India is only a top dressing on an Indian soil, which is



Bhagwad Gita



essentially undemocratic.” To action alone you have a right And never at all to its fruits Let not the fruits of action be your goal But neither let there be in you any attachment to inaction The psychological conflict for health, prosperity, self control, and wisdom has to be started anew each day in order for man to advance toward victory, reclaiming inch by inch the territories of the soul occupied by the

Desmond Tutu EB White



rebels of ignorance. If you are neutral in situations of injustice, then you have chosen the side



of the oppressor. I arise in the morning torn b/w a desire to improve the world and a desire



to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day. The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found

Elisabeth Kübler-

their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation,

Ross

sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just

Gary Kasparov



happen. He who knows how will always have a job,

1

Quotes

 George Orwell

George Santayana

disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying,   

since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats. Those who forget history are condemned to relive it. "Only the dead have seen the end of war." Santayana is broadly included among the pragmatists. He said that he



stood in philosophy "exactly where he stood in daily life." Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never

George W Bush

Immanuel Kant Isaiah Berlin

stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and



neither do we. When moral worth is at issue, what counts is not actions, which one sees,



but those inner principles of action that one does not see. “Hatred lends sharpness to vision as much as love: … one can learn more



from enemies than from friends”. “Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is

 

not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are underlings.” – Julius Caesar There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune; Omitted, all the voyage of their life Is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, And we must take the current when it serves, Or lose our ventures "Our thoughts are ours, their ends none of our own" - Hamlet A man who wishes to profess goodness at all times will come to ruin



himself among so many who are not so good. I would go to the length of giving the whole congress a decent burial,

 

rather than put up with the corruption that is rampant. (May 1939) The more efficient a force is, the more silent and the more subtle it is. A small body of determined spirits fired by an unquenchable faith in their



mission can alter the course of history. Refuting the charge that he or his NCM were a manifestation of

 Shakespeare

Machiavelli Mahatma Gandhi

He who also knows why will always be his boss... An autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something

xenophobia, Gandhi said: ‘I hope I am as great a believer in free air as the great Poet (Tagore). I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off 

by any’. “The radical test of our ability to coexist would not be the ability to parrot principles. It would be the ability to understand each other’s anxieties and



fears.” “A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption in

2

Quotes our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He

Martin Luther Jr.



is part of it.” ‘’There are so many hungry people that God cannot appear to them



except in the form of bread.’’ Take the 1st step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just



take the 1st step. I have missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning

Michael Jordan

Newton

shot, and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my  

life. And that is precisely why I succeed. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had



never made anything. To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. 'Tis much better to do a little with certainty, & leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things by conjecture



 Orhan Pamuk (Museum of Innocence)



Oscar Wilde

  

without making sure of anything. The profound happiness I felt made me anxious. I was confused, my soul teetering between the danger of taking this joy too seriously and the crassness of taking it too lightly. (46) Happiness no longer seemed God’s gift to me from birth; no longer was it the right I could claim without effort; it had become a state of grace that only the luckiest, brightest, and most cautious people could attain, and with the most assiduous cultivation. (158) There was still one part of my mind sound enough to see things clearly, and it was telling me that a chapter of my life was now coming to a close, but the greater part of me was still too anxious and fearful of being alone to let me accept this truth. (208) We all are in the gutter. But some of us are looking at the stars. "Truth is the infinite pursued by metaphysics; fact is the infinite pursued by science." Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high Where knowledge is free Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls Where words come out from the depth of truth Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary

Rabindranath Tagore

desert sand of dead habit Where the mind is lead forward by thee into ever widening thought and

Ralph Waldo Emerson



action Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let the world awake. "The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, and to have it make some difference that you have

3

Quotes

 Rang De Basanti

lived and lived well." "Sometimes a person can be pushed so far that they reach a point beyond fear; a place where you find a strange peace, where you free yourself to



do the right thing; because sometimes, that's the hardest thing to do." ''Smother yourself in fashion at your peril. These are your flesh and blood, rough and honest, your barbarian ancestry. They made you Dutch, so banish your embarrassment, embrace them, honor them. For everything that you think matters, doesn't. The town hall, with all its acres of marble, could go tomorrow. Amsterdam can sink back into the sea again. As long as you have your rough freedom, you have all you need to stay Dutch.

Rembrandt

Stephen Hawking



"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance. It is the illusion of



knowledge." “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it,

Swami

live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body,

Vivekananda

be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way

Thomas Jefferson VS Naipaul

Walter Lippmann

 

to success.” “Dissent is the highest form of patriotism.” "The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to



become nothing, have no place in it." Above all the other necessities of human nature, above the satisfaction of any other need, above hunger, love, pleasure, fame – even life itself – what a man most needs is the conviction that he is contained within the discipline of an ordered existence.

4

Quotes

By Topic Ambition 1. Through the figure of Pericles, Thucydides shows us how to live a life of civilized ambition, in which individual achievement is fused with patriotic service. Art 1. This is what drives the very greatest art – contempt for ingratiation! Books 1. Books can’t carve your convictions about the world. Only life can do that — only relationships, struggle, love, play and work. Books can give you vocabularies and frameworks to help you understand and decide, but life provides exactly the education you need. 2. “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” Caste 1. “Focusing on political democracy while doing little to achieve social democracy was to build a palace on a dung heap.” – Ambedkar Civil Services 1. It is widely recognized that no profession offers the kind of opportunity and authority for participating in nation building and societal transformation as does a career in the civil services. Democracy 1. My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have the same opportunity as the strongest. – Mahatma Gandhi 2. All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy. – Alfred Emanuel Smith 3. Democracy means tolerance, tolerance not merely of those who agree with us, but those who do not agree with us. – Jawaharlal Nehru Economics 1. “It is in the transition that we actually have our being.” – Keynes 2. ‘The market is a good servant but a bad master.’ – Economics maxim (sometimes applied to money ) Education 1. Mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting. – Plutarch

5

Quotes Government 1. “Congress in session is Congress on exhibition; Congress in Committees is Congress at work”. – Woodrow W 2. The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons. – Fyodor Dostoevsky 3. Democratic Government demands not only a parliamentary majority but also a parliamentary minority. - Ivor Jennings 4. “An amendment is a constitutional alternative of revolution.” – SC in Golaknath vs. State of Punjab (1967) Human Development 1. Development is the best contraceptive. – Health Minister 1975 2. There are no disabled people – only people. – Henri Viscardi 3. And the great owners, who must lose their land in an upheaval, the great owners with access to history, with eyes to read history and to know the great fact: when property accumulates in too few hands it is taken away. And that companion fact: when a majority of the people are hungry and cold they will take by force what they need. And the little screaming fact that sounds through all history: repression works only to strengthen and knit the repressed. – The Grapes of Wrath Hope 1. Hope, the thing with feathers, often bears little resemblance to realities on the ground. – Emily Dickinson 2. Crisis and deadlocks when they occur have atleast this advantage that they force us to think. – Nehru Ideas 1. Empires of the future are the empires of the minds – Churchill 2. No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come – Victor Hugo 3. History of progress of mankind is a history of informed dissent. Ideologies 1. “You cannot be liberal by halves. You cannot be liberal in politics and conservative in religion. The heart and the head must go together” – MG Ranade India 1. "India is home to all that is truly noble and truly disgusting in human experience." – Nehru 2. “The temptation in democratic politics is to buy the peace by being seen to be doing things, rather than doing what is going to be effective.” – Pratap Bhanu Mehta 3. On all the problems in India, the pessimist shakes his head in despair, but the optimist sees teething problems that will be overcome, that must be overcome. 4. “No modern state, however benign its political system, and however eloquent its public voices may be, about the virtues of tolerance, multiculturalism and inclusion, is free of the

6

Quotes idea that its national sovereignty is built on some sort of ethnic genius” – Appadurai (2006). 5. "Those who dream of bleeding India dry through a thousand cuts will drown in their own hatred, before our great nation runs out of either blood or spirit." – Tharoor (on Pakistan) 6. In India one lives simultaneously in the 12th and 21st century—as well as in all centuries in between. - U R Ananthamurthy 7. “Anything that can be done by God or man has been done in this land.” - Mark Twain 8. “India is perhaps the most important country for the future of the world. All the convergent influences of the world run through this society: Hindu, Muslim, Christian, secular, Stalinist, liberal, Maoist, democratic socialist, Gandhian. There is not a thought that is being thought in the West or East that is not active in some Indian mind.” - E P Thompson, the great British historian Leadership 1. “Nothing comes to my desk that is perfectly solvable,” Obama said at one point. “Otherwise, someone else would have solved it. So you wind up dealing with probabilities. Any given decision you make you’ll wind up with a 30 to 40 percent chance that it isn’t going to work. You have to own that and feel comfortable with the way you made the decision. You can’t be paralyzed by the fact that it might not work out.” On top of all of this, after you have made your decision, you need to feign total certainty about it. People being led do not want to think probabilistically. 2. "Face the problem. Don't evade it. Find a solution, however small. People will be satisfied if you do something." – Kamaraj 3. "A human being should be able to heal a wound, plan an expedition, order from a French menu, climb a mountain face, enjoy a ballet, balance accounts, roll a kayak, embolden a friend, tell a joke, laugh at himself, cooperate, act alone, sing a children's song, solve equations, throw a dog a stick, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, love heartily, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects." — Lew Hitchner 4. Statesman is one who can perform the amazing feat of being always guided by circumstances while never losing sight of principles. – Burke 5. You can buy a man's time, you can buy a man's physical presence at a certain place, you can even buy a measured number of skilled muscular motions per hour or day. But you cannot buy enthusiasm, you cannot buy initiative, you cannot buy loyalty; you cannot buy the devotion of hearts, minds, and souls. You have to earn these things. – Clarence Francis

Motivation 1. "A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be" 2. "The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be." 3. "Those who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, usually do." – Unknown

7

Quotes 4. “Being realistic is the quickest path to mediocrity.” 5. "The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." 6. “When the rare chance comes, seize it; To do the rare deed.” ― Thiruvalluvar, Kural 7. The line between good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. That means that line is not out there. That's a decision that you have to make, a personal thing. 8. To be a hero, you have to learn to be a deviant, because you're always going against the conformity of the group. Heroes are ordinary people whose social actions are extraordinary. The key to heroism is two things. A. You have to act when other people are passive. B: You have to act socio-centrically, not egocentrically. 9. “Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” — REINHOLD NIEBUHR Politics 1. In politics the lows are lower than the highs are high. That is, when politicians mess up, the size of the damage they cause is larger than the size of the benefit they create when they do well. Poverty 1. The difference b/w rich and poor is not wealth, but opportunity. – Muhammad Yunus Reason 1. “Jab dil bhara ho aur dimag khali, to kisko charcha mein ruchi hogi?” ("When the heart is possessed and the mind is empty, who will then be interested in deliberations?") -- Hazari Prasad Dwivedi 2. "The art of being wise is the art of knowing what to overlook." -- William James Religion 1. “To be good and to do good, is the whole of Religion” – Swami Vivekananda (SV) Strategy 1. "Strategy is art of connecting resources in order to complete certain ends." Tolerance 1. Rig-Veda “Ekam Satyam Viprah Bahuda Vadanti” : Truth is One, Educated call it by different Names 2. “It is compassion, the most gracious of virtues, Which moves the world.” ― Thiruvalluvar, Kural

8

Quotes War 1. “To be prepared for war is one of the most effective means of preserving peace.” – George 2.

Washington “Do not hope for Plato’s utopia, but be content to make a very small step forward and reflect that the result even of this is no trifle.” – Marcus Aurelius  For much of his reign, the emperor was at constant war, stamping out rebellions by barbarian tribes and rival powers in a perpetual struggle to secure trade and imperial order. From Marcus Aurelius, though, leaders ought to learn that perpetual war is the inexorable consequence of the pursuit of peace.

Women 1. Original sin in the Garden of Eden was woman's. She tasted the forbidden fruit, tempted Adam and has been paying for it ever since. In Genesis, the Lord said, 'I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee'. Sociologists would regard the above quotation as a mythological justification for the position of women in society. Many women might see the summary it contains of their relationship with their spouses as affair description of their status through the ages.

9

Quotes

Exam-specific collection Polity               

"Ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” – JFK Dissent is the highest form of patriotism. - Thomas Jefferson History of progress of mankind is a history of informed dissent. My notion of democracy is that under it the weakest should have same opportunity as the strongest. – Gandhi All the ills of democracy can be cured by more democracy. – Alfred Emanuel Smith (US Statesman) Democratic govt. demands not only a parliamentary majority but also a parliamentary minority – Ivor Jennings Asia is rich in people, rich in culture and rich in resources. It is also rich in trouble.- H Humphrey The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens. ― Alexis de Tocqueville Administrators are not born but made – Laxmi Kant Jha IAS (ex-RBI Guv) A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed.” – Gandhi The measure of a country's greatness should be based on how well it cares for its most vulnerable populations. - Gandhi As human beings, our greatness lies not so much in being able to remake the world - that is the myth of the atomic age - as in being able to remake ourselves - Mahatma Gandhi "It is in the life, thoughts and actions of the average man and woman that the solid strength of a nation really lies" Gokhale No democracy can hope to be self-guaranteeing; but the longer it endures, the more it is able to develop resources to endure still further in time. – Khilnani Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty  Only by continued oversight can the democrat in office be prevented from hardening into a despot.  If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary

Economics   

Development is the best contraceptive. – Health Minister 1975 The market is a good servant but a bad master. – Economics maxim (Socialists) The difference b/w rich and poor is not wealth, but opportunity. – Muhammad Yunus

Ethics      

Rig-Veda “Ekam Satyam Viprah Bahuda Vadanti” : Truth is One, Educated call it by different Names What you do not wish done to yourself, do not do to others. – Confucius With malice towards none, with charity for all. – Abraham Lincoln “It is compassion, the most gracious of virtues, Which moves the world.” ― Thiruvalluvar, Kural The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others. – Gandhi In a gentle way, you can shake the world. – Gandhi

10

Quotes   

Passion is a muscle that gets stronger with use. – Gandhi If untouchability lives, Hinduism must die. – Gandhi Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has. – Margaret mead

Education & Health  “Educating the mind without educating the heart is no education at all.” – Aristotle  “You educate a man; you educate a man. You educate a woman; you educate a generation.” ― Brigham Young  The real safeguard of democracy is education. – Franklin D. Roosevelt  “Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.” – Winston S. Churchill Future  

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow will be our doubts of today. Let us move forward with strong and active faith. – FD Roosevelt Human progress is neither automatic nor inevitable – Martin Luther King सतयमम व जयतम अहहह सस परमम धमरर पपधध मम परमसतमस ददखनस आ नम भददरसरकद रतवम यनतत हवशवतर सवर पह थ समभसव वसत धध व कतटत मबकमद सवर भवनतत सत हखनर सवर सनतत हनरसमयसर वध षणव जन तम तम नम कहहयम जम पदड परसयद जसणम रम दहरददर नसरसयण सम वस नर करनद करम तम नसरसयण हम जसए नसरद तत नसरसयणद

Truth Alone Triumphs Non-violence is the topmost Dharma God seen even in Plants Let good thoughts come from everywhere - from all the world All Spiritual Paths are treated Equally The whole World is one single Family May all be prosperous and happy May all be free from illness One who is a true devotee of God - Feels the pain of others Service of the poor is equivalent in importance and piety to the service of God If a human being Acts – He can become god Woman you are a veritable Goddess

11