Indira Gandhi Quotes

“Our pride has grown in the last twenty-five years, though others don't understand it and underestimate it.”

“I don't mind if my life goes in the service of the nation. If I die, every drop of my blood will invigorate the nation.”

“As my father [Javāharlāl Nehrū] said, you have to keep an open mind, but you have to pour something into it - otherwise ideas slip away like sand between your fingers.”

“I always stayed married to my husband! Always, until the day he died! It's not true that we were separated!”

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

“Until today the rights of people have always been put forward by a few individuals acting in the name of the masses. Today instead of people no longer want to be represented; each wants to speak for himself and participate directly - it's the same for the Negroes, for the Jews, for women.”

“Now I don't get upset by unpleasant things, I don't play the victim, and I'm always ready to come to terms with life.”

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

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

“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.”

“We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?”

“The greatest of all contraceptives is affluence.”

“I don't see why we and the Chinese should have to be enemies.”

“People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.”

“A nation' s strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.”

“Maybe I would have considered the problem if I'd met someone with whom I'd have liked to live. But I never met this someone and... No, even if I had met him, I'm sure I wouldn't have got married again. Why should I get married now that my life is so full? No, no, it's out of the question.”

“I don't know how to put on an act; I always show myself for what I am, in whatever mood I'm in.”

“I am frequently attacked.”

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

“In all societies that have applied a form of socialism, a certain degree of social economic equality has been achieved.”

“I examine the consequences later, when a new situation arises and I then face the new situation. And that's it.”

“For me the only point that has remained unchanged through the years is that in India there is still so much poverty.”

“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.”

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

“How can anybody who is the head of a nation afford not to be a prag-matist?”