Indira Gandhi Quotes

44 Sourced Quotes

India wants to avoid a war at all costs but it is not a one-sided affair, you cannot shake hands with a clenched fist.

Indira Gandhi
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.

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

Indira Gandhi
We have believed — and we do believe now — that freedom is indivisible, that peace is indivisible, that economic prosperity is indivisible.

Indira Gandhi
Whenever you take a step forward you are bound to disturb something. You disturb the air as you go forward, you disturb the dust, the ground. You trample upon things. When a whole society moves forward this tramping is on a much bigger scale and each thing that you disturb, each vested interest which you want to remove, stands as an obstacle.

Indira Gandhi
All unprejudiced persons objectively surveying the grim events in Bangladesh since March 25 have recognized the revolt of 75 million people, a people who were forced to the conclusion that neither their life, nor their liberty, to say nothing of the possibility of the pursuit of happiness, was available to them.
Referring to the fundamental rights of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness" in the United States Declaration of Independence

Indira Gandhi
There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten.

Indira Gandhi
Every democratic system evolves its own conventions. It is not only the water but the banks which make the river.

Indira Gandhi
It has been my experience that people who are at cross purposes with nature are cynical about mankind and ill at ease with themselves.

Indira Gandhi
Even if I died in the service of the nation, I would be proud of it. Every drop of my blood... will contribute to the growth of this nation and make it strong and dynamic.

Indira Gandhi
The civil servant is primarily the master of the short-term solution.

Indira Gandhi
The question before the advanced nations is not whether they can afford to help the developing nations, but whether they can afford not to do so.

Indira Gandhi
Nothing can convince me that people are at one with their work unless they're joyous about it.

Indira Gandhi
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.

Indira Gandhi
I cannot understand how anyone can be an Indian and not be proud—the richness and infinite variety of our composite heritage, the magnificence of the people's spirit, equal to any disaster or burden, firm in their faith…even in poverty and hardship.

Indira Gandhi
A nation's strength ultimately consists in what it can do on its own, and not in what it can borrow from others.

Indira Gandhi
People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights.

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

Indira Gandhi
Even today to be civilised is held to be synonymous with being westernised. Advanced countries devote large resources to formulating and spreading ideas and doctrines and they tend to impose on the developing nations their own norms and methods. The pattern of the classical acquisitive society with its deliberate multiplication of wants not only is unsuited to conditions in our countries but is positively harmful.

Indira Gandhi
Opportunities are not offered. They must be wrested and worked for. And this calls for perseverance... and courage.

Indira Gandhi
We should not mourn for men of high ideals. Rather we should rejoice that we had the privilege of having had them with us, to inspire us by their radiant personalities.

Indira Gandhi
I would like to ask a question. Would this sort of war or savage bombing which has taken place in Vietnam have been tolerated for so long, had the people been European?

Indira Gandhi
If I die a violent death, as some fear and a few are plotting, I know that the violence will be in the thought and the action of the assassins, not in my dying.

Indira Gandhi
The meek may one day inherit the earth, but not the headlines.

Indira Gandhi
My father was a statesman, I'm a political woman. My father was a saint. I'm not.

Indira Gandhi
It is our duty to create a social milieu in which the young and the socially weak feel that the present and future belong to them.

Indira Gandhi
I am here today, I may not be here tomorrow. But the responsibility to look after national interest is on the shoulder of every citizen of India. I have often mentioned this earlier. Nobody knows how many attempts have been made to shoot me, lathis have been used to beat me. In Bhubaneswar itself, a brickbat hit me. They have attacked me in every possible manner. I do not care whether I live or die. 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
Mankind will endure when the world appreciates the logic of diversity.

Indira Gandhi
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.

Indira Gandhi
My grandfather once told me that there two kinds of people: those who do the work and those who take the credit. He told me to try to be in the first group; there was much less competition there.

Indira Gandhi