Indira Gandhi

“Mankind will endure when the world appreciates the logic of diversity.”

“I said, I'll put on weight. And I started having massages, taking cod-liver oil, and eating twice as much. But I didn't even gain an ounce. I'd made up my mind that on the day the engagement was announced I'd be fatter, and I didn't gain an ounce. Then I went to Mussoorie, which is a health resort, and I ignored the doctors' instructions; I invented my own regime and gained weight. Just the opposite of what I'd like now. Now I have the problem of keeping slim. Still I manage. I don't know if you realize I'm a determined woman.”

“The meek may one day inherit the earth, but not the headlines.”

“Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision.”

“As I always say, I do not wish you an easy time, but I wish you that whatever difficulty you may have, you will overcome it.”

“We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.”

“When I was young, I was very selfish, now not any more.”

“At no point, at a very important point: that of having convinced the Indians that they can do things.”

“I think one should do what seems right. And if what seems right involves danger...well, one must risk the danger.”

“On the one hand, the rich look askance at our continuing poverty - on the other, they warn us against their own methods.”

“I'm certainly not tired - work doesn't tire people, it's getting bored that's tiring.”

“If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.”

“I'm certainly not a workaholic.”

“In India's distant past, when the population was low, the blessing given a woman was, 'May you have many children.' Most of our epics and literature stress this wish, and the idea that a woman should have many children hasn't declined.”

“There are only moments of happiness - from contentment to ecstacy.”

“Popularity is not a gurantee of quality.”

“Opportunities are not offered. They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance... and courage.”

“Defeats are always pitiful. Victories are always last resources.”

“I always defended my father, as a child, and I think I'm still defending him - his policies at least. Oh, he wasn't at all a politician, in no sense of the word. He was sustained in his work only by a blind faith in India - he was preoccupied in such an obsessive way by the future of India. We understood each other.”

“If by happiness you mean instead an ordinary contentment, then yes - I'm fairly contented. Not satisfied - contented.”

“We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.”

“Nothing lasts forever, and no one can predict what will happen to me in the near or distant future.”

“The question before the advanced nations is not whether they can afford to help the developing nations, but whether they can afford not to do so.”

“We were to equally strong types [with my husband], equally pigheaded - neither of us wanted to give in. And...I like to think those quarrels made us better, that they enlivened our life, because without them we would have had a normal life, yes, but banal and boring.”

“We couldn't be everywhere, we couldn't see everything, and it was inevitable that some things would escape us.”

“Just when you think you've achieved something, you realize you've achieved nothing. And still you have to go forward just the same - toward a dream so distant that your road has neither beginning nor end.”

“I'm told [ Zulfikar Ali] Bhutto is ambitious. I hope he's very ambitious; ambition may help him see reality.”

“I discovered [Joan of Arc] toward the age of ten or twelve, when I went to France. I don't remember where I read about her, but I recall that she immediately took on a definite importance for me. I wanted to sacrifice my life for my country. It seems like foolishness and yet...what happens when we're children is engraved forever on our lives.”

“Dacca is now the free capital of a free country.”

“Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.”

“Nowadays you can no longer let yourself be indoctrinated - the world is changing so fast! Even what you wanted twenty years ago is no longer relevant today; it's outdated.”

“My father was prime minister, and to take care of his home, to be his hostess, automatically meant to have my hands in politics - to meet people, to know their games, their secrets.”

“There are grave misgivings that the discussion on ecology may be designed to distract attention from the problems of war and poverty.”

“I am frequently attacked.”

“Naturally, if the Americans had fired a shot, if the Seventh Fleet had done something more than sit there in the Bay of Bengal...yes, the Third World War would have exploded. But, in all honesty, not even that fear occurred to me.”

“At a certain point the family moved to Jaipur, where no woman could avoid the doli or purdah. They kept her in the house from morning to night, either cooking or doing nothing. [My mother] hated doing nothing, she hated to cook. So she became pale and ill, and far from being concerned about her health, my grandfather said, 'Who's going to marry her now?' So my grandmother waited for my grandfather to go out, and then she dressed my mother as a man and let her go out riding with her brothers.”

“Without peace there can be no prosperity for any people, rich or poor. And yet, there can be no peace without erasing the harshness of the growing contrast between the rich and the poor.”

“You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.”

“I want to succeed. And I want to succeed in the best way possible, without caring whether people call my actions leftist or rightist.”

“People who say it was her father who prepared her for the post of prime minister, it was her father who launched her, are wrong.”

“One must beware of ministers who can do nothing without money, and those who want to do everything with money.”

“I have lived a long life, and I am proud that I spend the whole of my life in the service of my people. I am only proud of this and nothing else. I shall continue to serve until my last breath, and when I die, I can say, that every drop of my blood will invigorate India and strengthen it.”

“Winning or losing of the election is less important than strengthening the country.”

“I certainly won't have an empty life!”

“It's not at all hard to reconcile the two things if you organize your time intelligently. Even when my sons were little, I was working.”

“There are moments in history when brooding tragedy and its dark shadows can be lightened by recalling great moments of the past.”

“Sometimes friends are dangerous. We must be very careful about the help friends give us.”

“That's always been my philosophy. - I've never thought of the consequences of a necessary action.”

“I do not like carving the world into segments; we are one world.”

“I fall in love with anything I do and I always try to do it well.”