India Quotations

The British seizure of Hongkong was an aspect of one of the most ugly crimes of the British Empire: the takeover and destruction of India, and the use of India to flood China with opium.

A feeling of alienation existed in India about life in Pakistan because most of what was known was negative. So, everyone used to believe things in our country are always bad, and we don't lead a happy life. But this has changed to some extent. After watching our dramas, people now know that we lead our lives similar to the way they live.

India-Seychelles relations have been characterized by close friendship, understanding and cooperation.

I don't think there's any dearth of talent in India - we've always had the best juniors in the world.

Oh, we want a new breed of men before India can be cleansed of her disease.

Education in India has made monumental progress since Independence but continues to face daunting challenges at multiple levels, particularly in terms of quality, infrastructure and dropout rates. We have islands of excellence floating in a sea of mediocrity.

Nobody programmes the brain, yet it keeps learning. India shouldn't miss the emerging age of brain-inspired computing.

When I die India will be found engraved on my heart.

It was in 1967, and I was on a spiritual pilgrimage to India to study with the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. That was before the Beatles saw him, by the way, when not too many people knew of him. Anyway, I visited the Taj and noticed its wonderful sound.

India was a sensation. It was remarkable to see all those parrots flying about, the brilliant foliage and the brilliant sky. It was a tremendous pageant. I never noticed the poverty.

Many characters in the novel are representative of types that exist in India. He represents the caste system in India with an air of superiority, the caste system in India and the people thinking that western things are better.

To balance China, the democracies will need new friends - and India with its fast-growing economy, youthful population, and democratic politics seems the obvious candidate.

One thing that is constantly on my iPod is India Arie - I like her a lot; I listen to her a lot. I think she is just a spectacular artist.

More dreams are realised and extinguished in Bombay than any other place in India.

India is a global power and an important partner with whom we are building an intense, broad and enduring relationship.

It doesn't matter how much wisdom you have. If you don't have position, you have nothing. That's the tragedy of India.

India's dynamic growth, coupled with its large reservoir of skilled workforce, its commitment to democracy, and the rule of law, all taken together make India a very attractive investment destination.

I believe destiny and hard work go hand in hand. I was studying to be an engineer when my mom and my brother sent my pictures for the Miss India contest. I didn't even know about it. If that isn't destiny, what is?

We take ourselves so seriously moment by moment, but India shows you a sense of eternity. You're one little ant on a hill. You're part of life, but you're not the whole thing.

I just lead my life as naturally, as normally as I possibly can. But I can't help it if controversy is hounding me day in and day out. I'm quite amazed sometimes by the way they go about it. I grow a beard and it lands up in the editorial in The Times of India.

The principal end both of my father and of myself in the conquest of India... has been the propagation of the holy Catholic faith.

This republic was not established by cowards; and cowards will not preserve it.

Real estate is one sector that India is not very proud of.

I was in Bangalore, India, the Silicon Valley of India, when I realized that the world was flat.

In India, there are real consequences to inattention; drivers who jeopardize pedestrians can be lynched on the spot.

I turned atheist in the '90s when India went through troubled times - communal riots, bomb blasts... Mumbai, where I live, was badly affected. I blamed religion; also, extremists on both sides - right and left.

There is no conclusive proof of Unidentified Flying Objects flying over India-China border.

I still feel that in India we look upon sports as a recreational activity - which it is - but people have to understand that there is a career in sports. It's not just necessary to be a doctor or a lawyer or an engineer, as most of us Indians appear to think that our children should grow up to be.

It's estimated that one million girls in India 'disappear' every year.

The East India Company's domination of the Indian economy was based on its private army.

In India, it's the rich who have problems with obesity. And the poor are darker-skinned because they work outside and often work without their tops on so you can see their ribs.

I believe in an India of pluralism and diversity, not of religious bigotry and caste politics. I believe in an India that is secure in itself and confident of its place in the world, an India that is a proud example of tolerance, freedom and hope for the downtrodden.

Elephant populations in India and also in the whole of Asia are under severe stress. The captive ones are rendered jobless due to changes in the mode of transport and lifestyle of people. The ones in the wild are also no better off, as the forests are shrinking.

My transactions are above board: I do not have money deposited in other accounts and have transparently declared all assets. My real wealth is, however, my experience as cofounder of Infosys and as Aadhar Chairman, which gave away 60,000 crore identity cards to people of India as promised.

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.

Fear of foreign domination in India led the Janata Party, in the 1970s, to push for partial Indian ownership of all multinational firms within the country. The result was a spectacular pullback, by companies such as IBM and Coca-Cola, and a stagnant economy.

The British Empire passed quickly and with less humiliation than its French and Dutch counterparts, but decades later, the vicious politics of partition still seems to define India and Pakistan.

Well, I am from India and I wanted to make films in English for the international market in India. So that was really the main thing, and then of course economically it was cheaper to make films in India.

Unity and secularism will be the motto of the government. We can't afford divisive polity in India.

Mundra Port remains committed towards setting up of world-class port infrastructure and facilities in India.

I have always been very confident and very upbeat about the future potential of India. I think it is a great country with great potential.

I believe India has multi-talented people, so I have also embarked on my journey as an actor. I don't need to be a celebrity, since tennis has already given fame to me.

I returned to India because I believe in an India of honesty and hard work, not of corruption and crookedness. I believe in an India of openness and straightforwardness, not of hypocrisy and double-dealing. I believe in an India where opportunities are available to all, and not just to a chosen few.

Google is omniscient of what people search for and do. Facebook has over a billion subscribers, meaning Mark Zuckerberg has personal information about one in every seven people on Earth. U.S.A., Brazil, Mexico, India and Indonesia are at the top of that list.

When I was 17, I went to India for six weeks and had what, at the time, was a very challenging trip. You walk down the street and you see lepers and beggars, and there were several of us, a group of Americans. I remember we were just trying to park one night somewhere and people were just sleeping in the parking lot.

Many small towns I know in Maine are as tight-knit and interdependent as those I associate with rural communities in India or China; with deep roots and old loyalties, skeptical of authority, they are proud and inflexibly territorial.

I was the last person to get high-speed Internet, I was the last person to get an iPod, the last person to get an iPhone... I travel to India for one month out of the year and I don't have a phone there, so I can go without, which is beautiful, too.

To make a very specific car only for India - where you don't know where the segments are tomorrow or will it shift - is tough.

We cannot, with good conscience, expect the British to set up an orderly schedule for the liberation of India before we have decided for ourselves to make all who live in America free.

I wanted to emulate my parents - Mum captained India in basketball, and Dad won a bronze in hockey in 1972 Olympics. My focus has always been to achieve excellence whether in the field of tennis, in the corporate field, in the art of acting or in motivating youngsters.

I'd really like to visit India and South America. I think India will be a great mix of sightseeing and relaxing, and I've got a feeling it will also be good for one's soul and spirit. And I'd love to go backpacking around South America at some point. I did that in Australia when I was younger, and the camaraderie was great fun.

Sometimes I say in France: Europe is no more the center of the world - and the United States, neither. We have other key players on the international stage: China, of course; but also Brazil, India and South Africa. And their influence is very, very strong.

Two things in India are religion - one is cricket, and one is movies - these are two things.

When I came back to India after Harvard Business School, I started as a lawyer and as a trade union leader.

The mentality we have in India is not very sporting.

I have been particularly struck with the overwhelming evidence which is given as to the fitness of the natives of India for high offices and employments.

One of India's biggest advantages is our young demographic and that we have a youthful population that is indeed our future.

I feel completely at home in the absurdities of India.

When we think of India, most of us are in fact thinking of Rajasthan, that large splotch of dun-colored desert in the country's northwest which, from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, was ruled by a succession of maharajas whose sense of color, opulence, and splendor created the most enduring images of India in the West.

Recognising that the future growth of India will depend on greater skill development, the National Policy for Skill Development aims to create a skilled workforce of 500 million by 2022.

I noted that people are happy here in India. When I went back home, people had everything in the materialistic sense and were surrounded with abundance, but they were not happy.

If I have the choice of traveling to Russia, India or New Zealand alone for a week for preliminary discussions or to spend that week with my family, I routinely choose my family.

Finally, we should help developing nations like China and India curb their exponentially increasing consumption of oil and natural gas, which is driving world prices higher.

Cricket is a self-sustaining industry; but corporates need to realise that other sports don't have that luxury. This is the time when they need to invest, and keep the faith. Every sport has the potential to create world champions. Imagine India as a country full of world champions. Why imagine? Let's just make it happen.

The primary difference that I have found between the system of education in India and other countries, particularly the U.S., is that they focus on problem solving and relating theories to reality around them. These two things are lacking in the education system in India.

When you have the first show set in India on American television, there's gonna be a Nervous Nellie kind of vibe.

India may be the only country in the world that has been free of anti-Semitic prejudice throughout its history.

India has been contributing very much to the reconstruction of Afghanistan; we are strongly engaged there.

If it was not for Rajiv Gandhi, urbanization in India would have been history.

India is the meeting place of the religions and among these Hinduism alone is by itself a vast and complex thing, not so much a religion as a great diversified and yet subtly unified mass of spiritual thought, realization and aspiration.

Hopefully the presence in Congress of an American who happens to be Hindu will increase America's understanding of India as well as India's understanding of America.

I guess the most surprising discovery was how long Gandhi remained loyal to the ideal of the British Empire, even in India.

I think they quite like me when I work because I'm one of the safer directors to back, because even if my films don't bring their costs in back home, once they're shown outside of India they manage to cover the costs.

From China and India to Turkey and Brazil, when women have gotten access to education, to family planning and to a vital place in the economy, greater prosperity has followed. And when women are free to speak and learn, they temper the extremes of ideology and fanaticism and raise sons who are less likely to become human bombs.

India may be the soul of world cricket, but IPL is its commercial heart. Just as 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire' changed the ground rules for quiz shows by injecting a massive dose of money into the equation, IPL has changed the dynamics of the cricket economy.

What is most amusing and can happen only in India is that the most posh and big households that I've seen in Mumbai, the 'big city', will have their balconies and windows festooned with rows of baniyans and tauliyas hanging on them.

My father did irrigation jobs, and I would sometimes accompany him, and that gave me a taste of what was going on in the innards of India.

Jack Welch is someone who I have always admired. In India, Narayana Murthy is someone who I have great respect for.

I hate the title of being called 'the richest woman in India,' but it's the recognition that this was the value that I had created as a woman entrepreneur, and that makes me very, very proud.

I think politics is the biggest lever of change in India.

If I am incompetent, I am useless, the people of India will see that.

In India, one has to plan according to the monsoons.

It's not quite right to be sitting outside India and to be judging what is happening in India.

Michael Bates was a very funny actor; he'd served in India, could speak Urdu, and had great comic timing.

You have to remember that although Gandhi and Churchill only met physically once, their paths crossed again and crossed again all over the globe, from London and South Africa and India and back to London. In fact, I discovered that during the Boer War in 1899 they literally passed yards from each other on the battlefield.

England and France were rivals, not only on the continent, but in the West Indies, in India, and in Europe.

Over two billion people in China and India need commodities to grow their economies and improve their living standards.

If India has to achieve exponential growth, it would have to be on the back of strong growth in the manufacturing sector.

Big business' was a bad phrase in India. To be accused of being big business was the worst accusation you could make. All that has gone now. The whole mindset has changed.

I do not rule out the possibility of being prime minister of India one day, but there is still time.

I did not particularly enjoy modeling. I felt I was only utilizing 10 or 20 percent of my abilities. In India, it's just another job.

People see poverty all around them in India, but they are desensitized or immune to it. I came to the conclusion that poverty is driven by lack of education.

I know the guru route, I know you go sit on a mountain. But screw India. I ain't going there.

Kolkata is the relatively unexplored part of India as far as Hindi films are concerned.

It's great to see countries like China and India lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty by essentially copying Western ways of doing things.

The G8 nations, together with the five major emerging economies of China, India, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, use almost three-quarters of the Earth's biocapacity - the capacity of the world's ecosystems to produce natural resources and to reduce harmful substances.

Chennai is the birthplace of a new language in cinema. The audiences here are the most evolved moviegoers to be found anywhere in India.

Do we recognize the platform that Indian cinema has been given? Of course. And typically India of us, we gracefully acknowledge our host's grace and we thank you for celebrating us and our cinema.

For me, my secularism is, India first. I say, the philosophy of my party is 'Justice to all. Appeasement to none.' This is our secularism.

One feels very blessed to be born into a family like the Birla family, which is a household name in India, which stands for tradition, is yet contemporary, stands for trust.