Indira Gandhi Quotes

Yes, he [Mahatma Gandhi] was a great man. However...between me and Gandhi there was never the understanding there was between me and my father.

People who say it was her father who prepared her for the post of prime minister, it was her father who launched her, are wrong.

I fall in love with anything I do and I always try to do it well.

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

That's always been my philosophy. - I've never thought of the consequences of a necessary action.

I don't see the world as something divided between right and left.

I refuse to indulge in small talk. And compliments, if at all, I save for after the job is done.

I don't care if I remain prime minister. I'm only interested in doing a good job as long as I'm capable and for as long as I don't get tired.

It depends on what you mean by the word religion. Certainly I don't go to temples and pray to the gods or anything like that.

I'm trained to difficulties; difficulties can't be eliminated from life.

I've always discovered things for myself, in marvelous freedom.

My children needed me, and I like my job as a social worker.

I don't waste time in flowery small talk, as people do in India.

Sometimes we hurt one another without realizing it.

What good does it do to remain tied to an ideology if you don't achieve anything by it? I have an ideology myself - you can't work in a vacuum; you have to have faith in something.

How is it possible for people in the modern world to go on killing each other for religion? The problems we should be concerned with nowadays are quite different!

Home is wherever I go.

Everything I've done, I've done because I wanted to do it. In doing it, I've plunged in headlong, always believing in it.

When you govern a country, and especially a country so vast and complex as India, you never arrive at anything.

I want to succeed. And I want to succeed in the best way possible, without caring whether people call my actions leftist or rightist.

No one ever indoctrinated me.

I see nothing wrong in sterilizing a man who has already brought eight or ten children into the world. Especially if it helps those eight or ten children to live better.

With boys I climbed trees, ran races, and wrestled. I had no complexes of envy or inferiority toward boys. At the same time, however, I liked dolls.

I can't take it seriously when people get excited and scream that religion is in danger, and similar stupidities.

If by religion we mean a belief in humanity rather than the gods, an effort to make man better and a little happier, then yes, I'm very religious.

It's a law of life - check it and you'll see it holds true in every situation of life.

I know I'll astonish everyone by talking like this, but it's God's truth. Honors have never tempted me and I've never sought them.

If by happiness you mean instead an ordinary contentment, then yes - I'm fairly contented. Not satisfied - contented.

I don't see why we and the Chinese should have to be enemies.

My father was a saint. He was the closest thing to a saint that you can find in a normal man.

I'm not ambitious. Not a bit.

I never believed in the danger of a third world war.

They're the problems of poverty, of the rights of the individual, of the changes brought about by technology. They're the ones that count, more than religion!

Mahatma Gandhi was always talking of religion...He was convinced that was right...The fact is, we young people didn't agree with him on many things.

In India people can't stomach this attitude of mine, and when I say, 'Hurry up, let's get to the point,' they feel hurt.

I assure you we'll go on making our decisions without worrying whether it pleases or displeases the Soviet Union, China, America, France, or anyone else.

I myself, in my heart, say that people should have all the children they want. But it's a mistaken idea, like many of our ideas that go back thousands of years, and it must be rooted out.

My sons...I was crazy about my sons and I think I've done a super job in bringing them up.

It's not at all hard to reconcile the two things if you organize your time intelligently. Even when my sons were little, I was working.

Our pride has grown in the last twenty-five years, though others don't understand it and underestimate it.

It's true that I refused foreign aid. It's true. It wasn't my personal decision, however - it was the whole country that said no.

The word 'when' is so important for a people, for an individual! If an individual thinks he won't do it, he'll never do it. Even if he's highly intelligent, even if he has countless talents.

I don't at all care who's on the right or left or in the center. Even though we use them, even though I use them myself, these expressions have lost all meaning.

I'm not interested in one label or the other - I'm only interested in solving certain problems, in getting where I want to go.

Nothing lasts forever, and no one can predict what will happen to me in the near or distant future.

Nowadays you can no longer let yourself be indoctrinated - the world is changing so fast! Even what you wanted twenty years ago is no longer relevant today; it's outdated.

I always wanted to have children - if it had been up to me, I would have had eleven. It was my husband who wanted only two.

Little by little I changed my mind, and when I was about eighteen, I began to consider the possibility of getting married. Not to have a husband, but to have children.

The doctors shrugged their shoulders and grumbled that perhaps if I were to put on weight that would protect me a little - being so thin, I would never succeed in remaining pregnant.

I think I'm cold, indeed icy, hard. Then there's another reason, one that goes with my frankness: I don't put on act.