Nehru Quotes

So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order. ~ Laura Kipnis

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

I want to live my life to its fullest potential. I want to embrace my own purpose, however large or small it may be. I want to find my own Nehru moments and take positive steps toward becoming the person I am meant to be. The journey will undoubtedly be a winding one, filled with surprises and setbacks as well as gifts. But I'm ready to embrace it fully, wherever it may take me. ~ Mallika Chopra

For fun, we sometimes unofficially changed our names when we crossed country borders, with such variations as Jean-Pierre and Fifi (France), Hans and Heidi (Germany and Austria), Carlos and Carlotta (Spain), Sergio and Sophia (Italy), Dominic and Nehru (Romania), and Mary and Josepf (Poland). This helped us get in the spirit of each new country. ~ Dan Krull

A theory must be tempered with reality. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

It's because Gandhi believed in villages and because the British ruled from the cities; therefore, Nehru thought of New Delhi as an un-Indian city. ~ Nandan Nilekani

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

Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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

Those who boast are seldom the great. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Kuwait was always historically part of Iraq. Like Nehru invading Portuguese Goa. ~ Frederick Forsyth

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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? ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, of its economic freedom and equality and, therefore, ultimately, in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, 'the livery of India's freedom'. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

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

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

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

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

There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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 ... ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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

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 ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

Citizenship consists in the service of the country. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

I remember my old friend and teacher U.R. Ananthamurthy. Before he died, he left behind a great manuscript, a testament, a manifesto. URA criticised the Nehruvian years but he made a more critical point. Nehru might have made mistakes but Narendra Modi is the mistake that India might regret one day in its angry backlash against the family. Nehru was a classic. Our current regime is a footnote. It can only become history if it destroys the Nehruvian years. ~ Shiv Visvanathan

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

You want self-knowledge? You should come to America.
Just as the Mahatma had to go to jail and sit behind bars
to write his autobiography.
Or Nehru had to go to England to discover India. Things are clear
only when looked at from a distance. ~ A.K. Ramanujan

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

We have nothing. We solace ourselves with the great men of our tribe, the Gandhi and the Nehru, and we castrate ourselves. 'Here, take my manhood and invest it for me. Take my manhood and be a greater man yourself, for my sake! ~ V.S. Naipaul

Why Menon got where he did under the patronage of Pandit Nehru remains, and probably will remain, unexplained. Panditji had him elected to Parliament and sent to the United Nations to lead the Indian delegation. His marathon thirteen-hour speech on Kashmir won India a unanimous vote against it. He was then made Defence Minister against the wishes of almost all the members of the Cabinet. He wrecked army discipline by promoting favourites over the heads of senior officers. He was vindictive against those who stood up to him. More than anyone else he was responsible for the humiliating defeat of our army at the hands of the Chinese in 1962. Pandit Nehru stuck by him to the last. ~ Khushwant Singh

A man who is afraid will do anything. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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

Thus, both Mountbatten and Nehru stipulated that the ultimate fate of Kashmir should be settled 'by reference to the people', and on 2 November Nehru broadcast on All India Radio that 'we are prepared when peace and law and order have been established to have a referendum'. ~ Katherine Frank

Whatever gods there be, there is something
godlike in man, as there is also something of the devil in him. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

Play the hand you're dealt. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

There was too much opinion in this country, too many sob stories. Nobody wanted to put a lid on anything; everyone wanted to say it all, about everything. If you as much as said hello to someone on a train or a plane, you were in for the unexpurgated memoirs. Nehru in 1947 had declared us a nation finding utterance - but in fifty years the utterance had become a mad clamour, a crazed babble, an unending howl. We were a nation of Scheherzades, afraid we'd die if, for a moment, we shut up. For myself, I'd mastered a face of steel, and an inscrutable nod. It did not always shut everyone up, but it did to some extent dam the ghastly flow. ~ Tarun J. Tejpal

But the ideal is terribly difficult to grasp or to hold. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

It is interesting that Nehru fought and kept saying that if you break India into languages, there is no end to it. ~ Shekhar Kapur

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

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

Most things, except agriculture, can wait ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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

I am a secularist in the Gandhian sense of the word, not the Nehruvian one. Nehru thought religion was an antique superstition which stood in the way of rational modern politics. I side with Gandhi, who wanted religious figures out of politics but also was suspicious of purely rational politics. ~ Pankaj Mishra

Action to be effective must be directed to clearly conceived ends. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

The country was passing through turbulent times. British Raj was on its last legs. The World War had sucked the juice out of the British economy. Britain neither had the resources nor the will to hold on to a country the size of India. Sensing the British weakness and lack of resources to rule, different leagues of Indians sniffed different destinies in the air following the imminent exit of the British: a long stretch of Nehru Raj, Hindu Raj extending from Kashmir to Kerala not seen since Emperor Ashoka in third-century BCE before the emperor himself renounced Hinduism and turned a non-violent Buddhist, a Muslim-majority state carved out of two shoulders of India with a necklace-like corridor running through her bosom along Grand Trunk Road, balkanisation of the country with princes ruling the roost, and total chaos.
From August 1946 onwards, chaos appeared to be the most likely destiny as it spurted in Bengal, Bihar, and United Provinces, ending in the carnage of minority communities at every place.
The predicament of British government was how to cut their losses and run without many British casualties before the inevitable chaos spread to the whole country.
The predicament of Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the leader of the Muslim League, was how to achieve his dream of Muslim-majority Pakistan carved out of India before his imminent demise from tuberculosis he suffered from, about which - apart from his doctor - only a handful of his closest relations and friends ~ Manjit Sachdeva

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 ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

It is possible to suggest that the first step towards inherited political power came when Motilal Nehru urged Mahatma Gandhi to name his son Jawaharlal as Congress president. Motilal did that on more than one occasion and Gandhiji obliged, to the dismay of both Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel. While Bose rejected Gandhiji's preference for Nehru, Patel was too much of a loyalist to question the Mahatma. The ~ Sanjaya Baru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

I was chef to the French Presidents between '56 and '59, finished with de Gaulle, and during de Gaulle I remember serving Eisenhower, Nehru, Tito, Macmillan; those were the heads of state at the time. I never saw anyone. No one would ever, ever, ever come to the kitchen. You couldn't even see them. ~ Jacques Pepin

Discovery of India' by Jawaharlal Nehru. ~ Thota Ramesh

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

I want to defend Ben Bella just as I am going to defend Boumedienne. Ben Bella was not the 'demon' that the nervous, demagogic communique of 19 June accused him of being, no more than Boumedienne is the 'reactionary' that L'Unita wrote about. Both are victims of the same drama that every Third World politician lives through if he is honest, if he is a patriot. This was the drama of Lumumba and Nehru; it is the drama of Nyerere and Sekou Toure. The essence of the drama lies in the terrible material resistance that each one encounters on taking his first, second, and third steps up the summit of power. Each one wants to do something good and begins to do it and then sees, after a month, after a year, after three years, that it just isn't happening, that it is slipping away, that it is bogged down in the sand. Everything is in the way: the centuries of backwardness, the primitive economy, the illiteracy, the religious fanaticism, the tribal blindness, the chronic hunger, the colonial past with its practice of debasing and dulling the conquered, the blackmail by the imperialists, the greed of the corrupt, the unemployment, the red ink. progress comes with great difficulty along such a road. The politician begins to push too hard. He looks for a way out through dictatorship. The dictatorship then fathers an opposition. The opposition organises a coup.

And the cycle begins anew. ~ Ryszard Kapuscinski

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. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

I was in high school when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled India's flag in New Delhi. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

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

Great causes and little men go ill together. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

A country is known by the way it treats its animals ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

I am the last Englishman to rule in India. ~ Jawaharlal Nehru

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 . ~ Jawaharlal Nehru