Indira Gandhi 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.

To be liberated, woman must feel free to be herself, not in rivalry to man but in the context of her own capacity and her personality.

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something.

In the early 1970s, the KGB presence in India became one of the largest in the world outside the Soviet bloc. Indira Gandhi placed no limit on the number of Soviet diplomats and trade officials, thus allowing the KGB and GRU as many cover positions as they wished. Nor, like many other states, did India object to admitting Soviet intelligence officers who had been expelled by less hospitable regimes. The expansion of KGB operations in the Indian subcontinent (and first and foremost in India) during the early 1970s led the FCD to create a new department. Hitherto operations in India, as in the rest of non-Communist South and South-East Asia, had been the responsibility of the Seventh Department. In 1974 the newly founded Seventeenth Department was given charge of the Indian subcontinent.

In India, women have never been in hostile competition with men-even in the most distant past, every time a woman emerged as a leader, perhaps as a queen, the people accepted her. As something normal and not exceptional. Let’s not forget that in India the symbol of strength is a woman; the goddess Shakti. Not only that—the struggle for inde­ pendence here has been conducted in equal measure by men and by women. And when we got our independence, no one forgot that. In the Western world, on the other hand, nothing of the kind has ever happened—women have participated, yes, but revolutions have always been made by men alone.

The great need in the world today is for for nations to so define their national interest that it makes for greater harmony, greater equality and justice and greater stability in the world.

We make no discrimination against the adherent of any religion. All faiths are entitled to equal protection and equal respect. This we have named "Secularism", which entitles each Indian to pursue his own belief and learn more about his own creed. But it also requires him to extend the same right to persons of other religions.

My grandfather once told me that there were 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.

Fear, any fear, is a waste of time. As the regrets.

Dacca is now the free capital of a free country.

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

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

You can't shake hands with a clenched fist.

I made the trip knowing I was like the child putting his finger into the hole in the dike. And there are things that ... I don’t know ... one can’t ... oh, why not! The truth is that I spoke clearly to Mr. Nixon. And I told him what I had already told Mr. Heath, Mr. Pompidou, Mr. Brandt. I told him without mincing words that we couldn’t go on with ten million refugees on our backs, we couldn’t tolerate the fuse of such and explosive situation any longer. Well, Mr. Heath, Mr. Pompidou, and Mr. Brandt had understood very well. But not Mr. Nixon. The fact is that when the others understand one thing, Mr. Nixon understands another. I suspected he was very pro-Pakistan. Or rather I knew that the Americans had always been in favor of Pakistan—not so much because they were in favor of Pakistan, but because they were against India.

Have a bias toward action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away