Quotes & Sayings About India

If any Englishman dedicated his life to securing the freedom of India, resisting tyranny and serving the land, I should welcome that Englishman as an Indian. — Mahatma Gandhi

After I retired, it seemed to me that there was a whole new world out there, which was a digital world driven by a marketplace, basically, which had a huge potential driven by handheld devices, which would one day become the virtual retail store of India. — Ratan Tata

E-Governance to me is easy, effective and efficient governance. — Narendra Modi

If there is any substance in what I have said, will not the great missionary bodies of India, to whom she owes a deep debt of gratitude for what they have done and are doing, do still better and serve the spirit of Christianity better by dropping the goal of proselytising while continuing their philanthropic work? — Mahatma Gandhi

I did not know then that words and music are more deadly than any spear. — India Edghill

I don't do anything just 'cause nothing else is happening, or for money. — La India

thought about it and concluded that I would go ahead with the venture since Shapoorji was confident about the movie's success. The more I worked on the basic conflict in the script between the brother who has to uphold the law of the country and the brother who flees from the law, which favours the rich and the powerful and unjustly incriminates the poor and the defenceless, the more I felt it was time for me to make a picture that raised some critical issues about the people of rural India who had gained little from the country's independence from foreign rule. The oppressed farmers and tillers — Dilip Kumar

In India there was a sense of time that does not tick with modern clocks, just as there is a knowledge that is not gained through science and empirical experiments. In the modern West knowledge is of objective, finite particulars in historical time. India recognizes that kind of useful information: it calls it "lower knowledge." Higher knowledge (paravidya) proceeds differently, or rather it doesn't proceed at all but enters history full-blown on the morning of a new creation. — Huston Smith

India is a youthful country. A country with such a major percentage of youth has the capability to change not only its own, but the fate of the entire world. — Narendra Modi

I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

They weren't bad guys, just products of a society run by men and infused with rules to leave everyone sexually frustrated. Even in marriage sex in India is often just a brief, clumsy fumble in the dark, trying not to wake up grandma who's sleeping in the same bed. — Tom Thumb

Declaring victory without war .. the belief that India gave up the option of war under American pressure is totally wrong. — Atal Bihari Vajpayee

Badminton is not a popular sport in India. — Saina Nehwal

India Lima Yankee — Teresa Mummert

Aditi is a comedy superstar over in India. She's only one of three female English-speaking comedians in India. — Hasan Minhaj

You have to build a culture of philanthropy. In a country like India, we need to be sensitive and caring about the poorer, more disadvantaged section of our country. — Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw

This missile test reflects India's mindset, ... India's desire to control the subcontinent will never become a reality. — Rashid Bin Mohammed Al Maktoum

people who have made India awesome aren't all politicians. Most of the people that did this are not from the government. Whether it is entrepreneurs like J.R.D. Tata and N.R. Narayana Murthy, sportspersons like Sachin Tendulkar or musicians like A.R. Rahman, people from all walks of life have helped improve our nation. Not just celebrities, but E. Sreedharan, responsible for the Delhi Metro, and Dr Verghese Kurien, who created the Amul revolution, were all ordinary people doing their work extraordinarily well. Mahatma Gandhi and Swami Vivekananda, two of the most influential figures in India's history, never held political office. Aim to be one of those people who made India awesome. — Chetan Bhagat

In 2011 India's Test team was crowned as world cricket's leading side for the first time in its history. The foundations for this global domination can be traced to a decade earlier, when a career-defining performance by VVS Laxman helped to turn a whole series on its head as India, in the face of a seemingly unassailable deficit, staged an unbelievable recovery to go on and overpower what many considered to be the finest cricket team ever assembled. — Dave Wilson

He was the best shot in India, and I expect that there are few better in London. Have you heard the name?'
'No, I have not.'
'Well, well, such is fame! — Arthur Conan Doyle

Maids in India have egos. Big egos. They do not like being spoken to curtly, and they do not like to be abruptly instructed by a woman they do not know. They come with the feeling that they already know everything. So while training them to do things your way, speak gently, and when they do it right, appreciate it. — Karisma Kapoor

In India and other places, there are people who fool themsleves. They walk around all day saying, "Who am I? Who am I?" — Frederick Lenz

The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life. — Friedrich Max Muller

When the truth is known, all descriptions cease, and silence alone remains. #Yoga Vasistha — Abhishek Kumar

My mother is chairman of a bank called the Indo-Zambia Bank. It's a joint venture between Zambia and India. My father runs Integrity Foundation, an anticorruption organization. — Dambisa Moyo

You can go to India and you can see gurus go into samadhi. But when they come out of samadhi, they're nasty. They're egocentric. They don't have a deep regard or understanding of what life is. It's just a little trick they can do, a one-trick pony. — Frederick Lenz

A government builds its prestige upon the apparently voluntary association of the governed. — Mahatma Gandhi

And if I were to ask myself from what literature we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw the corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life ... again I should point to India. — Max Muller

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. — Indira Gandhi

When you look at the number of nuclear power plants in China and India, we can't afford not to pursue similar alternative energy sources. If we do not, it would do immense harm to the manufacturing industry in the Midwest. — Bob Latta

I.B.M. was not really bringing their best technologies to India. They were dumping old machines in the country that had been thrown away in the rest of the world 10 years before. — Azim Premji

Let us remember that we are all Indians eating Indian grain and salt, and living on the dumb Indian masses. — Mahatma Gandhi

India needs a change - it cannot be ruled by 80-year-olds and by people who have done nothing for it. — Arjun Rampal

I would love to live in India or in the South of France, but Roger Vivier doesn't have offices yet in New Delhi or Jaipur. — Ines De La Fressange

The Government which attacks its own innocent subjects has no claim to be called a civilised government. Bear in mind, such a government does not survive long. I declare that the blows struck at me will be the last nails in the coffin of the British rule in India. — Lala Lajpat Rai

There is nothing quite as unpleasant as wearing a pair of briefs which have been trailed through a Calcutta courtyard. Nothing, that is, except having one's elbows and knees lacerated by unseen slivers of glass and discarded razor blades. — Tahir Shah

It never bored them to hear words, words; they breathed them with the cool night air, never stopping to analyse; the name of the poet, Hafiz, Hali, Iqbal, was sufficient guarantee. India - a hundred Indias - whispered outside beneath the indifferent moon, but for the time India seemed one and their own, and they regained their departed greatness by hearing its departure lamented, they felt young again because reminded that youth must fly. — E. M. Forster

The law, right now, permits companies that close down American factories and offices and move those jobs overseas to take a tax deduction for the costs associated with moving the jobs to China or India or wherever. — Sheldon Whitehouse

I think 'Slumdog' was probably the first big film that happened in India, but even that seemed like a one-off thing. — Tena Desae

... the designation of wife in India, of the Hindu wife, is higher and grander than that of Empress. She is called Devi — Virchand Gandhi

George Bernard Shaw of England stopped over just long enough to make one speech in Bombay, India, started a war and 100 Indians killed each other. That's what I call good speech-making. The only enthusiasm any of our speakers can rouse is a demand to kill the speaker. — Will Rogers

Independence means.. enjoying freedom and empowering others too to let them do so. — Vikrmn

I have always been bullish about India's potential. I still am, and I feel India is a country that really has an enormous amount of potential and has the human capital to succeed. — Ratan Tata

Over the years, the British had strategically pitted the Muslims against the Hindus, supporting the All India Muslim League and encouraging the notion that the Muslims were a distinct political community. Throughout British India, separate electorates had been offered to Muslims, underscoring their separateness from Hindus and sowing the seeds of communalism. Teh Morley-Minto reforms in 1908 had allowed direct election for seats and separate or communal representation for Muslims. This was the harbinger for the formation of the Muslim League in 1906. In 1940, the Muslim League, representing one-fifth of the total population of India, became a unifying force. They were resentful that they were not sufficiently represented in Congress and feared for the safety of Islam. — Prem Kishore

I would love to go to India. And also someday, I want to have a family. That's my bucket-list. — Kacey Musgraves

All I ever want is to return to either Bangladesh, my motherland, or India, my adopted home. — Taslima Nasrin

The burning zeal ... that had led her to India had apparently vanished. At the same time ... she clung steadfastly to the faith she professed, and without a drop of consolation, labored wholeheartedly in her daily service ... of the poor. — Brian Kolodiejchuk

E-governance easy governance, E-governance is economical governance. — Narendra Modi

The seers of ancient India had, in their experiments and efforts at spiritual training and the conquest of the body, perfected a discovery which in its importance to the future of human knowledge dwarfs the divinations of Newton and Galileo , even the discovery of the inductive and experimental method in Science was not more momentous ... — Sri Aurobindo

It matter so little to the majority of living beings what the minority, that calls itself human, desires or decides. — E.M.Foster

It is amazing what a woman can do if only she ignores what men tell her she can't. — Carol K. Carr

In many parts of India, chit funds address gaps left by the traditional banking sector. — R. Vaidyanathan

BOMBAY WAS CENTRAL, had been so from the moment of its creation: the bastard child of a Portuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indian of Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-was-not-India, what came across the black water to flow into our veins. Everything north of Bombay was North India, everything south of it was the South. To the east lay India's East and to the west, the world's West. Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its human sea. It was an ocean of stories; we were all its narrators, and everybody talked at once. — Salman Rushdie

I said it before and I will say it again, MS Dhoni has been simply exceptional. His captaincy has been India's biggest strength in high pressure matches. He has always been 'THE RIGHT MAN' to take India forward. — Sourav Ganguly

Either cry for exchanging new currency notes for couple of days or crib for corruption for ages and generations with old one. Choice is yours. — Vikrmn

No, Lin! This is India. Nobody can take his clothes off, not even to wash his bodies. This is India. Nobody is ever naked in India. And especially, nobody is naked without clothes. — Gregory David Roberts

I believe that a prosperous, democratic Pakistan will be a steadfast partner for America, a peaceful neighbor for India, and a force for freedom and moderation in the Arab world. — George W. Bush

We are not here to give challenges to anyone, but we will also not take challenges casually. Our defence mechanisms would be the best in the world. A secure India is the first requirement for the country to progress and achieve new heights. — Narendra Modi

Perhaps, in return for conquest, arrogance and spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all living things. — Will Durant

I have never been to India and I am not a specialist on Indian culture, and I would not wish to be heard to be taking swipes at a culture which I've never experienced and where I've never lived. — N. T. Wright

was seven o'clock of a very warm evening in the Seeonee hills when Father Wolf woke up from his day's rest, scratched himself, yawned, and spread out his paws one after the other to get rid of the sleepy feeling in their tips. Mother Wolf lay with her big gray nose dropped across her four tumbling, squealing cubs, and the moon shone into the mouth of the cave where they all lived. "Augrh!" said Father Wolf. "It is time to hunt again." He was going to spring down hill when a little shadow with a bushy tail crossed the threshold and whined: "Good luck go with you, O Chief of the Wolves. And good luck and strong white teeth go with noble children that they may never forget the hungry in this world." It was the jackal - Tabaqui, the Dish-licker - and the wolves of India — Rudyard Kipling

The thing she loved most about being Jewish was that you could step into a synagogue anywhere on earth and feel like you'd come home. India, Brazil, New Zealand, even Mars - if you could rely on Shalom, Spacemen!, the homemade comic book that had been the highlight of Simon's third-grade Hebrew school experience. — Cassandra Clare

The International Committee to support People's War in India salutes all the initiatives held in different countries of the world for the International Days of action on 29-30-31 January 2015. We are carefully collecting all these small and wide actions. They are a sign of solidarity of proletarians and peoples with the fighting masses in India, marching to the liberation from imperialism, feudalism and comprador bourgeoisie, along the epic rebellion began in Naxalbari on 1967, which impetuously comes up to the present day. — Anonymous

I, therefore, demand the formation of a consolidated Muslim State in the best interest of India and Islam. — Muhammad Iqbal

The structure of the corporation is a telling case in point - and it is no coincidence that the first major joint-stock corporations in the world were the English and Dutch East India companies, ones that pursued that very same combination of exploration, conquest, and extraction as did the conquistadors. It is a structure designed to eliminate all moral imperatives but profit. The executives who make decisions can argue - and regularly do - that, if it were their own money, of course they would not fire lifelong employees a week before retirement, or dump carcinogenic waste next to schools. Yet they are morally bound to ignore such considerations, because they are mere employees whose only responsibility is to provide the maximum return on investment — David Graeber

India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the Equator. — Winston Churchill

We keep waiting for another Mahatma to make a difference in our society and nation. Well it is time to stop waiting. The mantra is "I change to change India". Which means each of us is the Mahatma and has the power to change this nation. Failing which we shall never change for the better. — Jeroninio Almeida

More reforms will give more impetus to German industries to invest in India. German companies want to be treated on par with Indian companies, and creation of an equitable market is crucial for investments. — Angela Merkel

The Ganga, especially, is the river of India, beloved of her people, round which are intertwined her memories, her hopes and fears, her songs of triumph, her victories and her defeats. She has been a symbol of India's age-long culture and civilization, ever changing, ever flowing, and yet ever the same Ganga. — Jawaharlal Nehru

I dream of making India a $20 trillion economy. For that, I am pushing for agriculture, manufacturing and service sectors. — Narendra Modi

China and India are feeding their people for the first time in human history due to free markets, and the Left knows that, and it gets them nervous. — Dave Brat

India is known for much development that has happened since our independence, but at the same time, we have also failed on many levels. It is the responsibility of the future generation to ensure that all these failures are corrected and help create a civilised society with equal opportunities for one and all. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

It's soul force that removed the English from India. It's soul force that brought down the Berlin Wall. It's soul force that gave life to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s struggle for civil rights. — Marianne Williamson

Invisible Man. A Passage to India. The Magnificent Ambersons. — E. Lockhart

India went through a dramatic revolution after the '90s when our economy started opening up for the first time and Indians were now experiencing the Western life, if you will. Drugs and sex and a lot of those influences came in as the economy stabilized, and we were growing up and experiencing that. The Indian writing market was very small at that time. Our literature was very attuned to what Western audiences were interested in, so everybody was writing about the slums in India and magic realism or stories about Hindus and Muslims and partition. — Karan Bajaj

I know my Republican friends were glad to see my wife feeding an elephant in India. She gave him sugar and nuts. But of course the elephant wasn't satisfied. — John F. Kennedy

What is done cannot be undone,
Knowing that, face it but do not run. — Rupansh Gupta

Zoroastrianism? Oh, there's never been but a few hundred thousand of them at any one time, mostly located in Iran and India, but that's it. The one true faith. If you're not a Zoroastrian, I'm afraid you are bound for Hell."
The man looked stunned and shocked. "It's not fair."
The demon gave a mirthful laugh. "Well, it was fair when you were sending all the Chinese to Hell who had never heard of Jesus. Wasn't it? — Steven L. Peck

All pomp and show." Anjali's glare at the house would've exploded bricks if she'd had superhuman powers. "A fat cow needs a big barn. — Nicola Marsh

I'm not just saying this, but I love everything about India. — Russell Peters

In America and Europe, it was said, people know what is going to happen when they turn on the water tap or flick on the light switch. In India, a land of few safe assumptions, chronic uncertainty was said to have helped produce a nation of quick-witted, creative problem-solvers. — Katherine Boo

This is the kind of corruption we understand, the corruption of the petty clerk writ large, and so this is the kind of corruption we look for. This is the kind of guilt we expect and understand: personal, targeted, involving suitcases. We really need suitcases. — Mihir S. Sharma

But not all Gaza residents were committed to the war. A reporter asked one of the Arabs what he most wanted. He was a taxi driver, father of ten. All he wanted was 'to eat and to work.' What did he think of Nasser? 'Nasser is good, Israel is good, America is good, Britain is good, Canada is good, India is good, Anything is good. — Robert John Donovan

Since being in India, I am more convinced than ever before that the method of nonviolent resistance is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for justice and human dignity. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Be realistic with your expectations. I'd really like to cuddle a unicorn, but it aint going to happen. — India Knight

But what is our ultimate goal? We want freedom of thought, freedom of action, freedom to fashion our own destiny and build up an India - suited to the genius of her people. We do not wish to make of India a cheap and slavish imitation of the West. We have so far sought to liberalise our government on the Western model. Whether that will satisfy us in the future I cannot say.31 — Savita Narain

Sardonic, seriocomic saga of the plight of India's poor. — Aravind Adiga

Apart from being celebrities, there's a huge amount of respect associated with being cricketers and a certain amount of reverence and honour associated with representing India. In people's eyes, apart from other celebrities in India, I think for sportsmen in India there's a certain amount of regard. — Rahul Dravid

Religion is the secret of life. It teaches us to love, to serve, to forgive, to endure, and to interact with our brothers and sisters with empathy and compassion. Advaita (non-duality) is a purely subjective experience. But in daily life it may be expressed as love and compassion. This is the great lesson taught by the great saints and sages of India, the exponents of Sanatana Dharma. — Mata Amritanandamayi

When I left England, my hope of India's conversion was very strong; but amongst so many obstacles, it would die, unless upheld by God. Well, I have God, and His Word is true. Though the superstitions of the heathen were a thousand times stronger than they are, and the example of the Europeans a thousand times worse; though I were deserted by all and persecuted by all, yet my faith, fixed on the sure Word, would rise above all obstructions and overcome every trial. God's cause will triumph. (William Carey, quoted in Iain Murray, The Puritan Hope, Banner of Truth 1971, p 140.) — William Carey

I have come to the conclusion that a goodly number of the fables that pass under the name of the Samian slave, Aesop, were derived from India, probably from the same source whence the same tales were utilised in the Jatakas, or Birth-stories of Buddha. — Joseph Jacobs

It would be really great if I discovered a cure for cancer, but it would only be a little bit less great if my neighbor did. So I am pretty happy when my neighbor becomes wealthier, better educated and more innovative. I feel the same about China and India. — Alex Tabarrok

Ethics and Equity are at the core of debate of climate change. Debate has to move from Climate Change to Climate Justice. — Narendra Modi

Young Alexander conquered India.
He alone?
Caesar beat the Gauls. Was there not even a cook in his army?
Philip of Spain wept as his fleet was sunk and destroyed. Were there no other tears?
Frederick the Great triumphed in the Seven Years War. Who
Triumphed with him? — Bertolt Brecht

This is a place that was "discovered" by a dude who didn't know how to read a map, so he just showed up on some shore, thought he was in India, and then proceeded to plant a flag there, like, "TA-DA." No, sir, no. What Christopher Columbus's goofass needed was a compass and a clue for being so aggressively mediocre, but that dude has a federal holiday in his honor. He showed up on someone else's property and claimed it as his because he didn't know what it was. This country started off all the way wrong and continued in the same fashion. Chris — Luvvie Ajayi

In religion, India is the only millionaire ... the One land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. — Mark Twain

Praise to our Indian brothers, and the dark face have his due!
Thanks to the kindly dark faces who fought with us, faithful and few,
Fought with the bravest among us, and drove them, and smote them, and slew.
That ever upon the topment roof our banner in India blew. — Alfred Tennyson

The mere mention of the Farakka Express, which jerks its way eastward each day from Delhi to Calcutta, is enough to throw even a seasoned traveller into fits of apoplexy. At a desert encampment on Namibia's Skeleton Coast, a hard-bitten adventurer had downed a peg of local fire-water then told me the tale. Farakka was a ghost train, he said, haunted by ghouls, Thuggees, and thieves. Only a passenger with a death wish would go anywhere near it. — Tahir Shah

If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods. It renews itself tirelessly showing no signs of decay. — Romain Rolland

When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East
above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe
we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy. — Victor Cousin