Nehru's Quotes & Sayings

Slogans are apt to petrify man's thinking ... every slogan, every word almost, that is used by the socialist, the communist, the capitalist. People hardly think nowadays. They throwT words at each other. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Remember always that there not so very much difference between various people as we seem to imagine. Maps and atlases show us countries in different colors. Undoubtedly people do differ from one another, but they resemble each other also a great deal, and it is well to keep this in mind and not misled by colors on the map or by national boundaries. — Jawaharlal Nehru

So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame-'That's so 60's!'-the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last century,' just another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets. No, rebellion won't pose a problem for this social order. — Laura Kipnis

When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration. — Jawaharlal Nehru

I want nothing to do with any religion concerned with keeping the masses satisfied to live in hunger, filth, and ignorance. I want nothing to do with any order, religious or otherwise, which does not teach people that they are capable of becoming happier and more civilized on this earth, capable of becoming master of his fate and captain of his soul. — Jawaharlal Nehru

I think the years I have spent in prison have been the most formative and important in my life because of the discipline, the sensations, but chiefly the opportunity to think clearly, to try to understand things. — Jawaharlal Nehru

I have long believed that the only way peace can be achieved is through world government. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It is the habit of every aggressor nation to claim that it is acting on the defensive. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Citizenship consists in the service of the country. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Before he was assassinated in 1948, Gandhi - a senior journalist told me - rebuked Nehru and Patel for not being able to reign in the partition madness and wished that his "other son [Subhas] was here!" Reminded by a Congressman, who had witnesses the dressing down, that Bose was dead and he had himself come to hold that belief, Gandhi shot back: "He's in Russia". — Anuj Dhar

If I was asked what is the greatest treasure which India possesses and what is her finest heritage, I would answer unhesitatingly that it is the Samskrit language and literature and all that it contains. This is a magnificent inheritance and so long as this endures and influences the life of our people, so long will the basic genius of India continue. If our race forgot the Buddha, the Upanishads and the great epics (Ramayana and Mahabharata), India would cease to be India . — Jawaharlal Nehru

I remember my old friend and teacher U.R. Ananthamurthy. Before he died, he left behind a great manuscript, a testament, a manifesto. URA criticised the Nehruvian years but he made a more critical point. Nehru might have made mistakes but Narendra Modi is the mistake that India might regret one day in its angry backlash against the family. Nehru was a classic. Our current regime is a footnote. It can only become history if it destroys the Nehruvian years. — Shiv Visvanathan

Because we have sought to cover up past evil, though it still persists, we have been powerless to check the new evil of today.Evil unchecked grows, Evil tolerated poisons the whole system. And because we have tolerated our past and present evils, international affairs are poisoned and law and justice have disappeared from them. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life's course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving the truth. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence. We become prisoners of the past and some part of its immobility sticks to us. — Jawaharlal Nehru

In our society competitive capitalism has put family life and working life on a collision course.In Canada statistics show that over 70 percent of the burden of caring for children, the aged, the disabled and the sick falls on women most of whom receive no pay for these very essential tasks.Normally speaking, it may be said that the forces of capitalism, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer and thus increase the gap between them. — Jawaharlal Nehru

The National Herald, founded by Jawaharlal Nehru, supported the Emergency throughout, and cautiously removed the quote 'Freedom is in peril, defend it with all your might' from its masthead. — Coomi Kapoor

The Ganga to me is the symbol of India's memorable past which has been flowing into the present and continues to flow towards the ocean of the future. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Let people become the persons they want to be, not the person you want them to be. — Tirumalai S. Srivatsan

But it is distressing that any organisation consisting of large numbers of young men, should be so utterly little minded and lacking in not only vision but in commonsense or common understanding. The R.S.S. is typical in this respect of the type of organisation that grew up in various parts of Europe in support of fascism ... — Jawaharlal Nehru

The best and noblest gifts of humanity cannot be the monopoly of a particular race or country; its scope may not be limited nor may it be regarded as the miser's hoard buried underground. — Jawaharlal Nehru

In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud...
the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.
-Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157. — Ramachandra Guha

We talk of high philosophies and our ancient greatness but act in narrow grooves and show intolerance to our neighbour. These are basic questions for us to keep in mind, for our future depends on the answer that we give to them. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Children are like buds in a garden and should be carefully and lovingly nurtured, as they are the future of the nation and the citizens of tomorrow. — Jawaharlal Nehru

History is the record of human progress, a record of the struggle of the advancement of the human mind, of the human spirit, towards some known or unknown objective. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Ignorance is always afraid of change. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Democracy is good. I say this because other systems are worse. — Jawaharlal Nehru

America is a country no one should go to for the first time. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It is now clear that science is incapable of ordering life. A life is ordered by values. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Poverty anywhere is a danger to prosperity everywhere — Jawaharlal Nehru

I was in high school when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled India's flag in New Delhi. — A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

In order to understand people, we have to understand their way of life and approach. If we wish to convince them, we have to use their language in the narrow sense of the mind. Something that goes even much further than that is not the appeal to logic and reason, but some kind of emotional awareness of the other people. — Jawaharlal Nehru

When you imitate the enemy's tactics, you take on his liabilities. — Jawaharlal Nehru

There is perhaps nothing so bad and so dangerous in life as fear. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Only a prisoner who has been confined for long behind high walk can appreciate the extraordinary psychological value of these outside walks and open views. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people ... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid ... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognized, ultimately bears fruit — Jawaharlal Nehru

I do not attach much importance to America's bombs. I attach importance to her great vitality and integrity. The strength of America is deeper and more significant than her financial power. — Jawaharlal Nehru

The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere following Gandhi's assassination. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Nehru, speaking of his country's dreams, said: 'Those dreams are for India, but they are also for the world, for all the nations and peoples are too closely knit together today for any one of them to imagine that it can live apart. Peace has been said to be indivisible; so is freedom, so is prosperity now, and so also is disaster in this One World that can no longer be split into isolated fragments.' It — Shashi Tharoor

It is possible to suggest that the first step towards inherited political power came when Motilal Nehru urged Mahatma Gandhi to name his son Jawaharlal as Congress president. Motilal did that on more than one occasion and Gandhiji obliged, to the dismay of both Subhas Chandra Bose and Vallabhbhai Patel. While Bose rejected Gandhiji's preference for Nehru, Patel was too much of a loyalist to question the Mahatma. The — Sanjaya Baru

Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Its [Communism's] unfortunate association with violence encourages a certain evil tendency in human beings. — Jawaharlal Nehru

For the first time i began to think, consciously and deliberately of religion and other worlds. The Hindu religion especially went up in my estimation; not the ritual or ceremonial part, but it's great books, the "Upnishads", and the "Bhagavad Gita". — Jawaharlal Nehru

History is almost always written by the victors and conquerors and gives their view. Or, at any rate, the victors' version is given prominence and holds the field. — Jawaharlal Nehru

If in the modern world wars have unfortunately to be fought (and they do, it seems) then they must be stopped at the first possible moment, otherwise they corrupt us, they create new problems and make our future even more uncertain. That is more than morality; it's sense. — Jawaharlal Nehru

What we really are matters more than what other people think of us. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Five decades ago, as India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began visibly ailing, the nation and the world were consumed by the question: 'After Nehru, who?' The inexpressible fear lay in the subtext to the question: 'After Nehru, what?' — Shashi Tharoor

You don't change the course of history by turning the faces of portraits to the wall. — Jawaharlal Nehru

I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion. — Jawaharlal Nehru

I am the last Englishman to rule in India. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Let us be a little humble; let us think that the truth may not perhaps be entirely with us. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Successive governments in India have not been able to get out of the chakravyuh created by Jawaharlal Nehru in J&K. — Anonymous

Most things, except agriculture, can wait — Jawaharlal Nehru

Success often comes to those who dare to act. It seldom goes to the timid who are ever afraid of the consequences. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of human ity. — Jawaharlal Nehru

The person who talks most of his own virtue is often the least virtuous. — Jawaharlal Nehru

My entire family has been with the Congress right from the time of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. Congress is in our blood and as a loyalist, I am always there for Congress. — Sanjay Dutt

They'd rather see me fail than succeed,
That's why I'm alone on my own with no team.
Don't need no green, though I got some to spend;
In the end ... all I really need is a friend. — Bishop Nehru

India cannot sit on the fence anymore. It may have to make a choice. Either way it is going face problems, — Jawaharlal Nehru

Khadi to me is the symbol of unity of Indian humanity, of its economic freedom and equality and, therefore, ultimately, in the poetic expression of Jawaharlal Nehru, 'the livery of India's freedom'. — Mahatma Gandhi

What the mysterious is I do not know. I do not call it God because God has come to mean much that I do not believe in. I find myself incapable of thinking of a deity or of any unknown supreme power in anthropomorphic terms, and the fact that many people think so is continually a source of surprise to me. Any idea of a personal God seems very odd to me. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It is interesting that Nehru fought and kept saying that if you break India into languages, there is no end to it. — Shekhar Kapur

The fact that Nehru had risked his life to save a single Moslem had a profound effect far beyond New Delhi. Many thousands of Moslems who had intended to flee to Pakistan now stayed in India, staking their lives on Nehru's ability to protect them and assure them justice. In — Shashi Tharoor

Obviously, the highest type of efficiency is that which can utilize existing material to the best advantage. — Jawaharlal Nehru

We can't encourage narrow mindedness, for no nation can be great whose people are narrow in thought. — Jawaharlal Nehru

A leader whose speech is prepared by others is not a leader; he is just an empty and stupid bottle! Use your own ideas and your own brain; write your own speech, just like Gandhi, Churchill or Nehru! That is indeed a good ethics and a good honour! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I want to live my life to its fullest potential. I want to embrace my own purpose, however large or small it may be. I want to find my own Nehru moments and take positive steps toward becoming the person I am meant to be. The journey will undoubtedly be a winding one, filled with surprises and setbacks as well as gifts. But I'm ready to embrace it fully, wherever it may take me. — Mallika Chopra

During the meeting in Delhi with Dirac on 12 January 1955, Nehru asked him if he had any recommendations for the future of the new republic of India. After his usual reflective pause, Dirac replied: 'A common language, preferably English. Peace with Pakistan. The metric system. — Graham Farmelo

Science and technology have freed humanity from many burdens and given us this new perspective and great power. This power can be used for the good of all. If wisdom governs our actions; but if the world is mad or foolish, it can destroy itself just when great advances and triumphs are almost without its grasp. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance — Jawaharlal Nehru

Play the hand you're dealt. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Thus, both Mountbatten and Nehru stipulated that the ultimate fate of Kashmir should be settled 'by reference to the people', and on 2 November Nehru broadcast on All India Radio that 'we are prepared when peace and law and order have been established to have a referendum'. — Katherine Frank

The boundaries of democracy have to be widened so as to include economic equality also. This is the great revolution through which we are all passing. — Jawaharlal Nehru

We have nothing. We solace ourselves with the great men of our tribe, the Gandhi and the Nehru, and we castrate ourselves. 'Here, take my manhood and invest it for me. Take my manhood and be a greater man yourself, for my sake! — V.S. Naipaul

A great disaster is a symbol to us to remember all the big things of life and forget the small things, of which we have thought too much. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Those who are prepared to die for any cause are seldom defeated. — Jawaharlal Nehru

In our generation, the role models were Gandhi and Nehru. We revered them. They were venerated personalities. I read almost every speech of Nehru. — Pranab Mukherjee

The Bhagavad Gita deals essentially with the spiritual foundation of human existence. It is a call of action to meet the obligations and duties of life; yet keeping in view the spiritual nature and grander purpose of the universe. — Jawaharlal Nehru

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

There is only one thing that remains to us, that cannot be taken away: to act with courage and dignity and to stick to the ideals that have given meaning to life. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Peace is not merely an absence of war. It is also a state of mind. — Jawaharlal Nehru

It's because Gandhi believed in villages and because the British ruled from the cities; therefore, Nehru thought of New Delhi as an un-Indian city. — Nandan Nilekani

Great causes and little men go ill together. — Jawaharlal Nehru

As fear is a close companion to falsehood, so truth follows fearlessness. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Jawaharlal Nehru's first Cabinet list set a standard that would never again be matched, while establishing a precedent for diversity that all his successors would strive to emulate. A — Shashi Tharoor

Act with courage and dignity; stick to the ideals that give meaning to life. — Jawaharlal Nehru

What we need is a generation of peace. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Time is not measured by the passing of yaers but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves. — Jawaharlal Nehru

To be in good moral condition requires at least as much training as to be in good physical condition. — Jawaharlal Nehru

The future has to be lived before it can be written about. — Jawaharlal Nehru

No country or people who are slaves to dogma and the dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded — Jawaharlal Nehru

Please remember that law and sense are not always the same. — Jawaharlal Nehru

The traditional Indian view was to protect our independence; it was therefore quite consistent with the requirements of the time and the feeling of the people. The world may have been misled by Jawaharlal Nehru's own international projection, which in fact had no reality on the ground. — Subramanian Swamy

A man who is afraid will do anything. — Jawaharlal Nehru

The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction. — Jawaharlal Nehru

Those who boast are seldom the great. — Jawaharlal Nehru

A country is known by the way it treats its animals — Jawaharlal Nehru