Indira Gandhi was an Indian politician, who served as the Prime Minister of India for around 15 years across two spells and is widely regarded as one of the most important figures in the history of South Asian politics. Gandhi was the first and till date, the only female Prime Minister of India and was known for her aggressive stance on a variety of issues. She is particularly famous for sending the Indian Army to East Pakistan in the 1971 war that eventually led to the creation of Bangladesh. Her domestic policies, while largely socialist in nature, made her the undisputed mass leader of the country. She remains the 2nd longest serving Prime Minister of India ever, just behind her father Jawaharlal Nehru, the country’s first ever Prime Minister. Indira Gandhi was extremely well known for her rousing speeches that she delivered all over the country. Some of her quotes are still repeated by politicians across party lines to this day due to their resonance. Here is a collection of some inspiration quotes and sayings by Indira Gandhi on education, freedom, kids, power, poverty and other things.
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.
Winning or losing of the election is less important than strengthening the country.
Indira Gandhi
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.
We have to prove to the disinherited majority of the world that ecology and conservation will not work against their interest but will bring an improvement in their lives.
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 to make it strong and dynamic.
The environmental problems of developing countries are not the side effects of excessive industrialisation but reflect the inadequacy of development.
Indira Gandhi
We do not wish to impoverish the environment any further, and yet we cannot for a moment forget the grim poverty of large numbers of people. Are not poverty and need the greatest polluters?
The power to question is the basis of all human progress.
Indira Gandhi
I've never turned to anybody for advice and counsel. Even when I was a very small child, I had to stand on my feet because of the circumstances of those times, and somehow, the circumstances have remained more or less the same. I have to take my own decisions.
Wearing khadi was a badge of honour. It was something one was proud to do.
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.
Without courage, you cannot practice any other virtue. You have to have courage - courage of different kinds: first, intellectual courage, to sort out different values and make up your mind about which is the one which is right for you to follow. You have to have moral courage to stick up to that - no matter what comes in your way, no matter what the obstacle and the opposition is.
Until the day she died, my mother continued to fight for the rights of women. She joined all the women's movements of the time; she stirred up a lot of revolts. She was a great woman, a great figure. Women today would like her immensely.
You soon realize that the peak you've climbed was one of the lowest, that the mountain was part of a chain of mountains, that there are still so many, so many mountains to climb...And the more you climb, the more you want to climb - even though you're dead tired.
We always said that our struggle was not only against the British as representatives of colonialism, it was against all the evil that existed in India. The evil of the feudal system, the evil of the system based on caste, the evil of economic injustice.
Difficulties can't be eliminated from life. Individuals will always have them, countries will always have them...The only thing is to accept them, if possible overcome them, otherwise to come to terms with them. It's all right to fight, yes, but only when it's possible.
The meek may one day inherit the earth, but not the headlines.
Indira Gandhi
My grandfather once told me that there are 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.
Education is a liberating force, and in our age it is also a democratizing force, cutting across the barriers of caste and class, smoothing out inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances.
Indira Gandhi
You must learn to be still in the midst of activity and to be vibrantly alive in repose.
