Quotes on India, 14th April 2007

Dear Indians… I am echoing J.F. Kennedy’s words to his fellow Americans to relate to Indians……….” Ask what we can do for India and do what had to be done to make India what America and other western countries are today..”
- Dr. A.P. J. Adbul Kalam

“ The successful branding of Malaysia, Singapore, and Dubai for international business should become path finder for India. Indian capabilities go beyond infotech. We should build now and more to manufacturing and tourism. We have very little time to achieve these goals. Perform well. The major barrier was Indian mindset, the lack of confidence and focuses. We have achieved a lot, we have enough to talk, we have a very credible story. What we need is innovative delivery channels!”
- Birla

“21st century miracle India’s moment has arriveD. We have once in a life time opportunity to lead the world. We should deliver value and time. This will have multiplied effect. In India 4/5 of the population in India is youths and they will lead India..”
- Ambani

“All Indians are free, and none of them is a slave… Indians neither invade other people, nor do other peoples invade India… They live happily, because of their simplicity and their frugality… since they esteem beauty, they practice everything that can beautify their appearance. Further, they respect alike virtue and truth….”
- Megasthenes, who visited the Maurya court at Pataliputra in the 4th century BC

“India, the land of dreams and romance and the country of hundred tongues of a thousand religion and two million gods, saddle of the human speech, mother of history, grand mother of legends, great grand mother of traditions, the land that all men desire to see and having seen once by even a glimpse could not give that glimpse for any shows of all the rest of the globe combines.
- Mark Twain

“No set of people among the Hindus are so depraved as the dregs of our great towns. The villagers are everywhere amiable, affectionate to their families, kind to their neighbors…. The Hindus are mild and gentle people… Their superiority in purity of manners is not flattering to our self esteem.”
- Mount Stuart Elphinstone, In 1841, the first Governor of the Bombay Presidency,

“We have shown how much we surpass the Indians in courage and wickedness and how inferior to them we are in wisdom. Our European nations have mutually destroyed themselves in this land where we only go in search of money, while the first Greeks traveled to the same land only to instruct themselves… I am convinced that every thing has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metaphysics, etc.”
- Voltaire, French thinker

“Everything without exception is of Indian origin… whether directly or indirectly all nations are originally nothing but Indian colonies… the oriental antiquity could, if we consented to deepen it, bring us back more safely towards the divine”
- Friedrich Schlegel, in 1803