Indira Gandhi Quotes

“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.”

“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.”

“I don't think my father was my mentor.”

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

“By now even the word socialism has so many meanings and interpretations. The Russians call themselves socialists, the Swedes call themselves. And let's not forget that in Germany there was also a national socialism.”

“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.”

“It is our duty to create a social milieu in which the young and the socially weak feel that the present and future belong to them.”

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

“There is not love where there is no will.”

“India wants to avoid a war at all costs but it is not a one-sided affair, you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.”

“Satisfied is a word I use only in reference to my country, and I'll never be satisfied for my country. For this reasons I go on taking difficult paths, and between a paved road and a footpath that goes up the mountain, I choose the footpath. To the great irritation of my bodyguards.”

“Never forget that when we are silent, we are one. And when we speak we are two.”

“I was happy to be with my parents. I didn't see very much of them, so I was very happy when my father was there and out of jail.”

“When it's impossible, it's better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.”

“There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.”

“Home is wherever I go.”

“To become capable, one must have faith in oneself.”

“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.”

“The life I've had, the difficulties, the hardships, the pain I've suffered since I was a child. It's a great privilege to have led a difficult life, and many people in my generation have had this privilege - I sometimes wonder if young people today aren't deprived of the dramas that shaped us.”

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

“Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.”

“The doctors advised me not to have even one. My health was still not good, and they said that pregnancy might be fatal. If they hadn't said that to me, maybe I wouldn't have got married. But that diagnosis provoked me, it infuriated me. I answered, 'Why do you think I'm getting married if not to have children? I don't want to hear that I can't have children; I want you to tell me what I have to do in order to have children!'”

“Forgiveness is a virtue of the brave.”

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

“I'm not interested in one label or the other - I'm only interested in solving certain problems, in getting where I want to go.”