Indira Gandhi Quotes

“... where does strength come from? It is not muscle strength any more. It is not also mere intellectual strength. What is strength? Strength is the support of the people.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

“The immediate is often the enemy of the ultimate.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

“[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.'”

“Nothing that is worthwhile is ever easy.”

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

“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 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.”

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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