Mishra Quotes & Sayings

The onslaught of new and complex information, the academic and thinktank cults of expertise, not to mention the impossibility of bohemia in the age of high rents, have conspired to assassinate the public intellectual. — Pankaj Mishra

In 1980, shortly before my 11th birthday, I wrote my first essay in English. — Pankaj Mishra

Girls, well, when God was coding their speech pattern, he deliberately left out the brevity parameter. He probably had a good laugh, and did the needful to the other kind to maintain the balance. — Rajat Mishra

Most books germinate within you for a long time before they are ready to come out. I wrote several drafts of the novel over many years and when I finally got to the last one, it didn't take much time. — Pankaj Mishra

After the oil crisis of 1973, many European countries tightened restrictions on immigrants. By then, millions of Muslims had decided to settle in Europe, preferring the social segregation and racial discrimination they found in the West to political and economic turmoil at home. — Pankaj Mishra

Policymakers can draw much from 'The Need for Roots': such clear prescriptions as that employers ought to provide an adequate vocational training for their employees, education should be compulsory and publicly funded, and include technical as well as elementary education. — Pankaj Mishra

I think so much
may be it never ends
when this night ends
there's another at hand
I sleep with one
and wake with one
with everything else on
this life goes on. — Jyoti Mishra

The advocates of retaliatory wars will continue to assume a much simpler reality with their hoary oppositions: Religious and secular, backward and enlightened, free and unfree. But if we are to admit how deeply and irrevocably interconnected our world is, then we must find new ways to break the cycle of counter-productive violence. — Pankaj Mishra

My dominant feeling every day is one of great ignorance. — Pankaj Mishra

While a democratic process is morally desirable for arriving at a decision, it doesn't necessarily produce the best outcomes. — Pawan Mishra

Destiny changes, Fate changes, just believe in your inner self, your dreams and your strength — Anamika Mishra

I think what's important and extraordinarily practical about Buddhism, is that it offers very concrete methods for people to work with. — Pankaj Mishra

The thirty-plus years of marriage between the ceiling and the cement plaster showed signs of weakness by frequently developing cracks and holes. — Pawan Mishra

I still prefer going to the classical writers, the modernists and the nineteenth century writers. Much of what has been done since then has just been repetition. A lot of it is marvelous but the forms haven't changed. — Pankaj Mishra

If a certain event repeats itself over and over again, it means somewhere someone has destined it. — Anamika Mishra

When the world around is ready to back one unconditionally, one can become as unreasonable, unfair, and coldly sadistic as one likes. — Pawan Mishra

Most writers have very little that's important or valuable to offer; most of them are just repeating each other. — Pankaj Mishra

Hope meets a dead end when the only chance in sight comes to naught. — Pawan Mishra

Certainly, imperial power is never peaceably acquired or maintained. — Pankaj Mishra

I suppose I've become less judgmental about individuals leading lives according to false ideas and false consciousness, because sometimes entire societies are prey to false ideologies and national delusions. — Pankaj Mishra

The whole Hollywood conception of Tibet as this peace-loving country denies the complex humanity of the Tibetan people. Their ideas exist in a high degree of tension with impulses toward corruption, toward violence, toward all sorts of things. The Dalai Lama himself would say that he has to fight these impulses himself on a daily basis. — Pankaj Mishra

In 1919, at the Paris Peace Conference, Japan had put forward a proposal to guarantee racial equality at the League of Nations, but Woodrow Wilson overturned it in the face of majority support. — Pankaj Mishra

In December 2004, I travelled on the road from Uzbekistan across the Oxus River on which the first Soviet convoys had rolled into Afghanistan 25 years before. — Pankaj Mishra

Preach little, Pray more;
But Pray for all, not for your own satisfaction; — Ankit Mishra

Devout Anatolian masses rising from poverty have transformed Turkey politically and economically. — Pankaj Mishra

After India and China, Indonesia was the biggest new nation-state to emerge in the mid-twentieth century. — Pankaj Mishra

The whole idea of mindfulness is all about having a second-level monitoring of your thoughts and being able to recognize them as being negative or harmful before they become a part of your being, before they become some kind of action like writing an angry letter to someone or speaking too strongly to someone. — Pankaj Mishra

So much of writing is fed by vanity and the feeling that what you are doing is the most important thing in the world and it has not been done before and only you can do it. Without these feelings, many writers would not be able to write anything at all. — Pankaj Mishra

Now that I am past picking the knife to stab one, the reward of stabbing a few more comes at an unfairly lower risk! — Pawan Mishra

In the modern world, nationalism remains a very important force. We delude ourselves into thinking that globalization has made all of that redundant and that everyone just wants to be like America. — Pankaj Mishra

You have to be able to decide, 'Well no, I'm not going to be violent, I'm going to suppress that impulse; I'm not going to be greedy.' Unless you're able to do that you're stuck with adversarial politics that leads nowhere and creates ever greater violence. — Pankaj Mishra

One needs to pursue some sort of a creative interest in order to keep life from eating us alive. — Pawan Mishra

The idea that modernisation makes for enhanced national power and rapid progress and helps everyone achieve greater happiness has its origins in the astonishing political, economic and military successes of western Europe in the 19th century. — Pankaj Mishra

As in the early 20th century, the elemental forces of globalisation have unravelled broad solidarities and loyalties. — Pankaj Mishra

the taste of death does not comes from the recipe of cowardness — Rishi Mishra

National independence, and the preceding political struggles, helped create the space for literary creation in many post-colonial countries. Much of modern Indian or Chinese literature is inconceivable without the political movement for freedom from foreign rule. — Pankaj Mishra

If you think that what you're doing is not all that important in the larger scheme of things and that you're just an insignificant creature in the whole wide world, which is full of six billion people, and that people are born and die every day and it makes no difference to future generations what you write, and that writing and reading are increasingly irrelevant activities, you'd probably never get out of bed. — Pankaj Mishra

You need to be my wife to win with me. — Pawan Mishra

It was definitely a rare situation where a career had started and ended simultaneously on a very high note. — Pawan Mishra

And then one day the sun was bright, the wind was strong and my eyes shone with a godly light — Anubhav Mishra

A good selfie is when you successfully capture the feeling of that very moment! — Anamika Mishra

I wonder if they were aware of the power of complimentary alcohol during World War I. — Pawan Mishra

In order to live the life of your dreams, first you will have to dream! — Anamika Mishra

Realizing that you are in love is itself a beautiful feeling ... And there is nothing like one-sided love or both-sided love. Love is simply love. Celebrate this feeling — Anamika Mishra

As a writer, I tend to be drawn to marginal people - writers, poet-prophets, seers, eccentrics - who embody the deeper ambivalences of their societies and bear deeper witness to their world than the famous figures we are used to celebrating, or demonizing, in our histories. — Pankaj Mishra

The Korean War, which China entered on the side of North Korea, fixed Mao's image in the United States as another unappeasable Communist. — Pankaj Mishra

The Buddha would not have liked people to call themselves Buddhist. To him that would have been a fundamental error because there are no fixed identities. He would have thought that someone calling himself a Buddhist has too much invested in calling himself a Buddhist. — Pankaj Mishra

The Sino-Indian War in 1962 has fundamentally shaped and distorted Indian attitudes towards China. It also obscured a great deal of what has happened in China since 1962. — Pankaj Mishra

Across the board at the office there was a belief, an unproved theorem, about Coinman's blind faith in Ratiram; that if one thought Coinman could willingly sip a cup of Botulinum if Ratiram wished so, it still underestimated the reverence that dwelt in Coinman's heart for Ratiram. — Pawan Mishra

Buddhism resonated very powerfully with a lot of my preoccupations. — Pankaj Mishra

Her beauty effortlessly managed to arrest the pulse of each heart at the office and keep it in a dreamlike cage where she could have a look at each at her will and derive pleasure which, it had to be said, was a touch malicious in nature. — Pawan Mishra

One of the things people did best at the office was to use flexibility to its last atom. — Pawan Mishra

An enlarged global public society, with its many dissenting and corrective voices, can quickly call the bluff of lavishly credentialled and smug intellectual elites. — Pankaj Mishra

Bandar had effortlessly converted Ratiram's grit into the smoke rings that he blew triumphantly in the air. — Pawan Mishra

There are a thousand beautiful women out there, but only a handful of them possess the grace required by such beauty to stop it from looking ugly. — Pawan Mishra

The most ironic thing in the world is having no say when your name is determined for the first time (which is also for the last time for most), because newborns are not necessarily known for speaking their minds. — Pawan Mishra

Christianity and Islam are concerned with the idea of justice, which can turn into political justice, social justice, economical justice, and so on. Buddhism is not so concerned with the idea of rights. There is more talk of responsibility than of demanding rights. — Pankaj Mishra

O woman, thou art my imperfection! — Pawan Mishra

Availability of knowledge is only next to prevalence of stupidity in its overwhelming abundance. — Pawan Mishra

Someone asked me when is my birthday?
The poet inside me replied,
My birthday is on the last day of the year,
It's 31st December my dear! — Anamika Mishra

Minorities within nation-states frayed by global capitalism are naturally more resentful of hollowed-out but still heavily centralised systems of political and economic domination. — Pankaj Mishra

Many writers from the suburbs of history, such as Ireland and Argentina, produced more original work than their counterparts in the United States; they still seem to. — Pankaj Mishra

It should be no surprise that religion in the non-western world has failed to disappear under the juggernaut of industrial capitalism, or that liberal democracy finds its most dedicated saboteurs among the new middle classes. — Pankaj Mishra

All I desire is to be so happy that I die. — Sandeep Kumar Mishra

So much of democracy is built on antagonism. It institutionalizes a certain kind of antagonism. This is not to say that we shouldn't have any democracy, but the fact is that democracy has hardened political identities and made them more violent. — Pankaj Mishra

Coinman lets out another legendary explosive from his hindquarters! — Pawan Mishra

I am often struck by the anxious inferiority many well-educated British people display towards the U.S., particularly Londoners dazzled by New York, when many postcolonials are accustomed to regarding Britain's old imperial cosmopolis as the true capital of the western world. — Pankaj Mishra

I write because I know magic happens — Anamika Mishra

Politics now is really only about self-interest, which means it has violence built into it because your self-interest is going to collide with the self-interest of the rest of the world. That's inevitable. — Pankaj Mishra

Is that the biggest favor your vocal cords have done to anyone this week? — Pawan Mishra

Writing is self-expression and no matter how complex the idea might be in the head when it is put in paper, it simplifies. It gives pleasure. It keeps track of who we are. Keeping a habit of writing is very beneficial to anyone. It is a bliss. — Bishwas Mishra

Since 1857 we know what we are capable of,
And Since 1947 we know what is at Stake. — Ankit Mishra

The terrorist attacks of 9/11 briefly disrupted celebrations of a world globalised by capital and consumption. — Pankaj Mishra

Gandhi's ideas were rooted in a wide experience of a freshly globalized world. — Pankaj Mishra

Keep the inspiration alive and reach for what you want — Anamika Mishra

Decolonisation seems to have dented little the sense of superiority that since 1945 has made American leaders in particular consistently underestimate the intensity of nationalist feeling in Asia and Africa. — Pankaj Mishra

You aren't in the ivy halls of your miserable literature pursuit now. Without wasting more time, will thou cometh to the pointeth? Dost thou wanteth us to stayeth or leaveth? — Pawan Mishra

If you put your best foot forward and if you overcome your fears, you will surely be able to attain the heights of success — Anamika Mishra

When people say they try to find themselves, their inner self, to understand the meaning of life I smile and I say, instead why don't you create yourself and give a new meaning to your life — Anubhav Mishra

A writer is the one who loves to write ... on and about anything ... And this clears that I am a writer!! — Anamika Mishra

How many times can one have a heart attack within a week? — Pawan Mishra

Shri Bhagvan said: Acts of sacrifice, charity and penance should not be renounced but must certainly be performed, for these three - sacrifice, charity and penance - purify even the great souls. — J.S. Mishra

People say there are thousands of options we have in life. I say we have only two: we can either be happy or be unhappy. — Pawan Mishra

Believe in things impossible, love the magic of a place, mystery in a person, passion in a relationship and seek adventures in life.. Live the life don't go through it.. — Anubhav Mishra

It's not the obviousness or the complexity of the things that's deftly deluding mankind. It's man himself. — Pawan Mishra

As the years passed in my village, I witnessed poorly educated young men leaving to seek the greater comforts and liberations of big cities. I would see them on my visits to Delhi. — Pankaj Mishra

There is a lot of anxiety in India about writers selling out to foreign audiences, but I'm neither flattering the Indian audience nor the American audience. I'm uneasily somewhere in the middle. — Pankaj Mishra

I feel that I already have the life I love and I don't see how it could be improved radically by any greater material success I might have - bigger advances, more prizes. It's a kind of madness. And the culture of prize-giving is so corrupt. — Pankaj Mishra

The respect one gets in the forces by virtue of the 'rank' is not absolute. 'True respect' is the one that is earned by virtue of actions, experience, knowledge and demeanor. — Rajat Mishra

It's impossible to know everything about everything but the real pleasure lies in knowing something about everything — Anubhav Mishra

Gandhi, brought out of his semirural setting and given a Western-style education, initially attempted to become more English than the English. — Pankaj Mishra

Norbu rejects the Western stereotype of Tibetans as an innately nonviolent people, a romantic notion which he thinks gratifies many Western people discontented with the aggressive selfishness of their societies but obscures the political aspirations of the Tibetan peoples and the variety of means available to them to achieve independence. In 1989, he published a book about one of the Khampa warriors of eastern Tibet, who fought the invading Chinese Army in 1950 and then initiated the bloody revolt against Chinese rule that eventually led to the Dalai Lama's departure for India.
"We are ordinary Tibetans," Norbu told PBS. "We drink; we eat; we feel passion; we love our wives and kids. If someone sort of messes around with them, even if they're an army, you pick up your rifle. — Pankaj Mishra

Make Your wish Your Dream and Your Dream Your Goal; Your goal should be your passion to turn your wish into a reality — Ankit Mishra

Her tears were as much anger and frustration as sadness. — Anamika Mishra

Britain's unique success as an industrialised nation-state prompted strong imitative endeavours not only across Europe, but also in Asia. Now many people, who were once humiliated into a sense of nationality by British rule, loom larger than their former masters. — Pankaj Mishra

I wish functions of MS Office suite worked on Life, and things were as simple as pressing "Ctrl + Z" to undo the accident that changed everything — Rajat Mishra

I write because I always want good to win over evil — Anamika Mishra

With time, the hurt would begin to fade away, but not the memories. — Anamika Mishra

I think there is no reason for us to bring to Islamism or political Islam the fear and ignorance of Western commentators and their hysterical vocabulary. — Pankaj Mishra

What is the point of all the money in the world if you don't have the freedom to do the things you love? — Anamika Mishra