inequality of opportunity slows growth by keeping disadvantaged potential workers from developing their full capacity.

Obedience without questioning, without understanding is going to limit how you grow

Significant change might require those who are now high in the hierarchy to move downward many steps. This seems to them undesirable and is resisted.

Certainty is the enemy of growth.

Certainty is the enemy of growth. Nothing is for certain until it has already happened — and even then, it’s still debatable. That’s why accepting the inevitable imperfections of our values is necessary for any growth to take place.

The growth of new ideas is more difficult and lengthy the deeper they are rotted in life. Resistance to them is the more obsitnate and exasperated the more persistent their growth is.

Not everybody can grow with you.

The words “human nature” can be the greatest obstacle to human growth.

Size seems to make many organizations slow-thinking, resistant to change and smug.

[About cowardice in the leadership of institutions:] What we've seen is that you don't actually need a majority of people inside an institution to agree with these ideas for these ideas to gain force. [You need] a tiny minority and you need cowardice at the top. Cowardice at the top, that is the key ingredient. You need people at the top who are willing to sell out the authority of the institution and the values of the institution that have taken decades, sometimes centuries, to accrue. Basically for the short-term benefit of not being called a bad name.

The country failed to nurture its strength because the ruling group that refused to make accommodations for any changes whatsoever and because those who had vested interests also allied with the ruling group. Indulged in exclusive and dogmatic ideologies, the ruling group rejected alternative thoughts and systems; they did not even spare the lives of those advocate new ways of thinking. Their justifications might have been grand; unfortunately, however, their conclusions were always to protect the vested interests.

Why do we lack innovation in India? Because, we don't allow questioning. We don't promote inquisitiveness. If a child asks questions in school, he is asked to sit down. This should not go on. We need to promote inquisitiveness, children should ask questions

In India, people fight with all their might to kill an idea. The privileged people. The biggest problem with our establishment is that it has no space for a new idea. Art, cinema, and media haven’t developed enough to present new ideas for adoption. They are engaged in the politics of survival and therefore the outcome is mediocre and very often regressive. Most of the ideas are perceived as dissent. As disruption. As treason. Sometimes ideas like Naxalism, become violent and seditious. Despite being a democracy, in our country there is very little room for an alternate narrative. Whenever a child comes up with an innovative idea, parents, neighbours, teachers, and society crush the idea by telling him 'Kyon apna waqt barbad karte ho, yahan kuch nahin hone wala—don't waste your time.’ It can't be that all of them are idiots. They speak from their experience. 'Aise hi chalta hai … don't be stupid '…. Nothing is going to change… you don't know their power.'

Being about spiritual growth, this book is inevitably about the other side of the same coin: the impediments to spiritual growth. Ultimately there is only the one impediment, and that is laziness. If we overcome laziness, all the other impediments will be overcome. If we do not overcome laziness, none of the others will be hurdled.