Nilekani Sirsi Quotes & Sayings

If ... a principle of true Religion [i.e., true Christianity] should ... gain ground, there is no estimating the effects on public morals, and the consequent influence on our political welfare. — William Wilberforce

Your favourite virtue ... Simplicity
Your favourite virtue in man ... Strength
Your favourite virtue in woman ... Weakness
Your chief characteristic ... Singleness of purpose
Your idea of happiness ... To fight
Your idea of misery ... Submission
The vice you excuse most ... Gullibility
The vice you detest most ... Servility
Your aversion ... Martin Tupper
Favourite occupation ... Book-worming
Favourite poet ... Shakespeare, Aeschylus, Goethe
Favourite prose-writer ... Diderot
Favourite hero ... Spartacus, Kepler
Favourite heroine ... Gretchen [Heroine of Goethe's Faust]
Favourite flower ... Daphne
Favourite colour ... Red
Favourite name ... Laura, Jenny
Favourite dish ... Fish
Favourite maxim ... Nihil humani a me alienum puto [Nothing human is alien to me]
Favourite motto ... De omnibus dubitandum [Everything must be doubted]. — Karl Marx

The greatest failure is the failure to try. — William Arthur Ward

One of my less pleasant chores when I was young was to read the Bible from one end to the other. Reading the Bible straight through is at least 70 percent discipline, like learning Latin. But the good parts are, of course, simply amazing. God is an extremely uneven writer, but when He's good, nobody can touch Him. — John W. Gardner

Will you be my forever, Donia? — Melissa Marr

Our lives are a battlefield on which is fought a continuous war between the forces that are pledged to confirm our humanity and those determined to dismantle it; those who strive to build a protective wall around it, and those who wish to pull it down; those who seek to mould it and those committed to breaking it up; those who aim to open our eyes, to make us see the light and look to tomorrow [ ... ] and those who wish to lull us into closing our eyes — Ngugi Wa Thiong'o

She allowed the feeling to emerge, regardless of whether it was good or bad; she was sick of self-control, of masks, of appropriate behavior. — Paulo Coelho

You can never be overdressed or overeducated. — Oscar Wilde

He danced on the knife's edge between awareness and sleep. When he dreamt like this, he was a king. The world was his to bend. His to burn. — Maggie Stiefvater

Religion, oh, just another of those numerous failures resulting from an attempt to popularize art. — Ezra Pound

The word 'yes' is just a sound. It's nothing without context. It can signal the end of a life, an exultation after a scored basket or a vanquished foe; it can answer questions or refute them; it's an affirmation. — Josh Hanagarne

I'm not ready to give you a clear answer on whether electoral politics holds any particular hope for progressives. It would mean that nothing I did ever mattered. — Tom Hayden

I have learned to interface - what I think would be the contemporary term - with various different lexicons, and people speak very different languages. I've learned to speak in a lot of tongues, and I can live with the bellicose language of some fervent, fire-breathing Christians, sure. — Bono

With the cruel natural order that had made me simultaneously undesirable to men and unable to feel complete without one. — Hillary Jordan