Indira Gandhi Quotes

Dacca is now the free capital of a free country.

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.

With boys I climbed trees, ran races, and wrestled. I had no complexes of envy or inferiority toward boys. At the same time, however, I liked dolls.

The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

Popularity is not a gurantee of quality.

I've never understood women who, because of their children, pose as victims and don't allow themselves any other activities.

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.

I have already reached out to the janata, and I am only trying to acquaint myself with people's problems.

I began to travel by myself, in Europe, when I was eight years old. At that age I was already on the move between India and Swizerland, Switzerland and France, France and England. Administering my own finances like an adult.

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

Politics...You see, it depends on what kind of politics. What we did during my father's generation was a duty. And it was beautiful because its goal was the conquest of freedom.

One day in 1965 Rajiv wrote me from London, where he was studying, and informed me, 'You're always asking me about girls, whether I have a special girl, and so forth. Well, I've met a special girl.' And when Rajiv returned to India, I asked him, 'Do you still think about her in the same way?' And he said yes. But she couldn't get married until she was twenty-one, and until she was sure she'd like to live in India. Sonia is almost completely an Indian by now, even though she doesn't always wear saris.

To me the function of politics is to make possible the desirable.

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

I can't take it seriously when people get excited and scream that religion is in danger, and similar stupidities.

what is popular need not necessarily be right or wise.

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

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

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.

I'm certainly not a workaholic.

When one has had a life as difficult as mine, one doesn't worry about how others will react.

Being prime minister isn't the only job in life! As far as I'm concerned, I could live in a village and be satisfied.

All my games were political games; I was, like Joan of Arc, perpetually being burned at the stake.

You say this victory is dangerous. I say that today no one can yet tell if it's dangerous, that today I don't see the risks you mention. If, however, those risks should become reality...I'll act in accordance with the new reality.

In all communities you find groups that behave badly. But you must understand them too.

I had many dolls. And you know how I played with them? By performing insurrections, assemblies, scenes of arrest. My dolls were almost never babies to be nursed but men and women who attacked barracks and ended up in prison.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

This is also something I've learned from experience. Didn't they perhaps give us the vote because we went too far?

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.

Life is a continuous process of adjustment.

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

My son had nothing to do with policy or decision making, nor did I discuss the elections or any other matter with him.

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

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

I don't at all care who's on the right or left or in the center. Even though we use them, even though I use them myself, these expressions have lost all meaning.

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

This is why we feel that democracy's important: because democracy allows you to have small explosions and therefore avoid the bigger explosions.

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.

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.

I went back into politics only when it was clear that things weren't going as they should have in my party. I was always arguing, I argued with everyone - with my father, with the leaders I had known since I was a child...and one day, it was in 1955, one of them exclaimed, 'You do nothing but criticize! If you think you can correct things, correct them. Go ahead, why don't you try?' Well, I could never resist a challenge, so I tried.

I am not a person to be pressured - by anybody or any nation.

Nothing that is worthwhile is ever easy.

[My mother] was the oldest of two sisters and two brothers, and she grew up with her brothers, who were about her age. She grew up, to the age of ten, like a wild colt, and then all of a sudden that was over. They had forced on her her 'woman's destiny' by saying, 'This isn't done, this isn't good, this isn't worthy of a lady.'

The International Control Commission isn't doing anything, it's never done anything. What good does it do to be on it or not? Before opening the embassy in Hanoi, I gave it a lot of thought, but it wasn't really a painful decision. American policy in Vietnam is what it is, in Saigon the situation is anything but normal, and I'm happy to have done what I did.

I cannot understand how anyone can be an Indian and not be proud.

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

When [my father] asked me to help him, I really didn't suspect the consequences.

Would you consider a man or a woman to be complicated? Is it that difficult to understand both the sexes? We say that we know what the other sex is all about, but is that really true? Perhaps the following witty, funny quotes and sayings can help simplify things down about men.

There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there.

The immediate is often the enemy of the ultimate.

The future doesn't frighten me, even if it threatens to be full of other difficulties.

The longer one doesn't write, the more difficult it is to communicate.

Peace we want because there is another war to fight against poverty, disease and ignorance.

When you govern a country, and especially a country so vast and complex as India, you never arrive at anything.

At first people asked us, 'Can you do it?' And we kept silent because we didn't believe in ourselves, we didn't believe that we could do things. Today people no longer say to us, 'Can you?' They say, 'When can you?' Because the Indians finally believe in themselves, they believe they can do things.

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.