Jawaharlal Nehru Quotes

I wish to declare with all earnestness that I do not want any religious ceremonies performed for me after my death. I do not believe in such ceremonies, and to submit to them, even as a matter of form, would be hypocrisy and an attempt to delude ourselves and others.

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.

But the ideal is terribly difficult to grasp or to hold.

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

Logic and cold reason are poor weapons to fight fear and distrust. Only faith and generosity can overcome them.

When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration.

Its [Communism's] unfortunate association with violence encourages a certain evil tendency in human beings.

I have long believed that the only way peace can be achieved is through world government.

A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and a culture, and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies
that have moulded them

Play the hand you're dealt.

We can't encourage narrow mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought.

What we need is a generation of peace.

Ignorance is always afraid of change.

No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded

The future has to be lived before it can be written about.

Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes.

A country is known by the way it treats its animals

No two persons could be so different from one another in their make up or temperaments. Tagore, the aristocratic artist, turned democrat with proletarian sympathies, represented essentially the cultural tradition of India, the tradition of accepting life in the fullness thereof and going through it with song and dance. Gandhi, more a man of the people, almost the embodiment of the Indian peasant, represented the other ancient tradition of India, that of renunciation and asceticism. And yet Tagore was primarily the man of thought, Gandhi of concentrated and ceaseless activity. Both, in their different ways had a world outlook, and both were at the same time wholly Indian. They seemed to present different but harmonious aspects of India and to complement one another.

But it is distressing that any organisation consisting of large numbers of young men, should be so utterly little minded and lacking in not only vision but in commonsense or common understanding. The R.S.S. is typical in this respect of the type of organisation that grew up in various parts of Europe in support of fascism ...

The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere following Gandhi's assassination.

It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.

Great causes and little men go ill together.

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.

Slogans are apt to petrify man's thinking ... every slogan, every word almost, that is used by the socialist, the communist, the capitalist. People hardly think nowadays. They throwT words at each other.

A man who is afraid will do anything.

And yet fear builds its phantoms which are more fearsome than reality itself, and reality, when calmly analysed and its consequences willingly accepted, loses much of its terror.

I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming master of his fate and captain of his soul.

We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again. The achievement we celebrate today is but a step, an opening of opportunity, to the greater triumphs and achievements that await us. Are we brave enough and wise enough to grasp this opportunity and accept the challenge of the future?

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people ... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid ... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.

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

If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Samskrit language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the basic genius of India continue. If our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), India would cease to be India .

History is the record of human progress, a record of the struggle of the advancement of the human mind, of the human spirit, towards some known or unknown objective.

Our desires seek out supporting reasons and tend to
ignore facts and arguments that do not fit in with them.

Every great revolution, whether it is right or not, we really know has any vital, urgent need to basis. It comes not just from itself.

Most things, except agriculture, can wait

Where freedom is menaced or justice threatened or where aggression takes place, we cannot be and shall not be neutral.

Time is not measured by the passing of yaers but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves.

You can tell the condition of a nation by looking at the status of its women.

That great lover of peace, a man of giant stature who moulded, as few other men have done, the destinies of his 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.

A tyrst with destiny - A the stroke of midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awaken to life and Freedom

The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous.

But if we go in for reservations on communal and caste basis, we swamp the bright and able people and remain second-rate or third-rate. I am grieved to learn of how far this business of reservation has gone based on communal considerations. It has amazed me to learn that even promotions are based sometimes on communal or caste considerations. This way lies not only folly, but disaster. Let us help the backward groups by all means, but never at the cost of efficiency.

Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.

There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action.

Wars are fought to gain a certain objective. War itself is not the objective; victory is not the objective; you fight to remove the obstruction that comes in the way of your objective. If you let victory become the end in itself then you've gone astray and forgotten what you were originally fighting about.

It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of human ity.

The ideals and objectives of yesterday was still ideals of today, but they lost some of their luster and even, as one seemed to go towards them, they lost the shining beauty which had warmed the heart and vitalized the body. Evil triumphed often enough, but what was far worse was the coarsening and distortion of what seemed so right. Was human nature so essentially bad that it would take ages of training ,through suffering and misfortune, before it could behave reasonably and raise man above the creature of lust and violence and deceit that he now was? And, meanwhile , was every effort to change radically in the present or the near future doomed to failure

Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

Science and technology have freed humanity from many burdens and given us this new perspective and great power. This power can be used for the good of all. If wisdom governs our actions; but if the world is mad or foolish, it can destroy itself just when great advances and triumphs are almost without its grasp.

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.

The art of a people is a true mirror of their minds.

I think the years I have spent in prison have been the most formative and important in my life because of the discipline, the sensations, but chiefly the opportunity to think clearly, to try to understand things.

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

Success often comes to those who dare to act. It seldom goes to the timid who are ever afraid of the consequences.

Life is like a game of cards.
The hand you are dealt is determinism;
The way you play it is free will.

Children are like buds in a garden and should be carefully and lovingly nurtured, as they are the future of the nation and the citizens of tomorrow.

The basic fact of today is the tremendous pace of change in human life.

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

The Bhagavad Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe.

America is a country no one should go to for the first time.

Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction.

A theory must be tempered with reality.

In our society competitive capitalism has put family life and working life on a collision course.In Canada statistics show that over 70 percent of the burden of caring for children, the aged, the disabled and the sick falls on women most of whom receive no pay for these very essential tasks.Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of capitalism, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them.

To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition.

There are two things that have to happen before an idea catches on. One is that the idea should be good. The other is that it should fit in with the temper of the age. If it does not, even a good idea may well be passed by.

Remember always that there not so very much difference between various people as we seem to imagine. Maps and atlases show us countries in different colors. Undoubtedly people do differ from one another, but they resemble each other also a great deal, and it is well to keep this in mind and not misled by colors on the map or by national boundaries.

Those who boast are seldom the great.

Those who are prepared to die for any cause are seldom defeated.

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.

India cannot sit on the fence anymore. It may have to make a choice. Either way it is going face problems,

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse.

Aurobindo Ghose writes somewhere of the present as 'the pure and virgin moment,' that razor's edge of time and existence which divides the past from the future, and is, and yet, instantaneously is not. The phrase is attractive and yet what does it mean? The virgin moment emerging from the veil of the future in all its naked purity, coming into contact with us, and immediately becoming the soiled and stale past. Is it we that soil it and violate it? Or is the moment not so virgin after all, for it is bound up with all the harlotry of the past?

I am getting old and the sign of old age is that I begin to philosophize and ponder over problems which should not be my concern at all.

I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion.

The spectacle of what is called religion, or at any rate organised religion, in India and elsewhere, has filled me with horror and I have frequently condemned it and wished to make a clean sweep of it. Almost always it seemed to stand for blind belief and reaction, dogma and bigotry, superstition, exploitation and the preservation of vested interests.

As fear is a close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness.

Citizenship consists in the service of the country.

It is better to understand a part of truth and apply it to our lives than to understand nothing at all and flounder helplessly in a vain attempt to pierce the mystery of existence.

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

Fine buildings, fine pictures and books and everything that is beautiful are certainly signs of civilization. But an even better sign is a fine man who is unselfish and works with others for the good of all. To work together is better than to work singly, and to work together for the common good is best of all.

Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in.

Often in history we see that religion, which was meant to raise us and make us better and nobler, has made people behave like beasts. Instead of bringing enlightenment of them, it has often tried to keep them in the dark; instead of broadening their minds, it has frequently made them narrow-minded and intolerant of others.

I am the last Englishman to rule in India.

If the world suffers from mental deterioration or from moral degradation, then something goes wrong at the very root of civilization or culture. Even though that civilization may drag out for a considerable period, it grows less and less vital and ultimately tumbles down.

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

We talk of high philosophies and our ancient greatness but act in narrow grooves and show intolerance to our neighbour. These are basic questions for us to keep in mind, for our future depends on the answer that we give to them.

I wish that more and more adventurous young men would give up the gun in favour of the camera.

It is a fundamental rule of human life, that if the approach is good, the response is good.

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

There is only one thing that remains to us, that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life.

For only they can sense life who stand often on the verge of it, only they whose lives are not governed by the fear of death.

Someone said the other day: death is the birthright of every person born - a curious way of putting an obvious thing. It is a birthright which nobody has denied or can deny, and which all of us seek to forget and escape so long as we may. And yet there was something novel and attractive about the phrase. Those who complain so bitterly of life have always a way out of it, if they so choose. That is always in our power to achieve. If we cannot master life we can at least master death. A pleasing thought lessening the feeling of helplessness.

By education I am an Englishman, by views an internationalist, by culture a Muslim & a Hindu only by accident of birth.

Unity must be of the mind and heart, a sense of belonging together and of facing together those who attack it.

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

The light has gone out of our lives ... Yet I am wrong, for the light that shone in this country was no ordinary light ... and a thousand years later that light will still be seen in this country and the world will see it ... For that light represented the living truth.

The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye. That may be beyond us, but so long as there are tears and suffering, so long our work will not be over.

Obviously, the highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage.

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.