“Where freedom is menaced or justice threatened or where aggression takes place, we cannot be and shall not be neutral.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru, Speech to the US Congress (1949)

About Jawaharlal Nehru

1889 – 1964

First Prime Minister of independent India.

“The past is over and it is the future that beckons to us now.”

“The ambition of the greatest men of our generation has been to wipe every tear from every eye.”

“At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.”

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

“It is unlikely that the good of a snail should reside in its shell: so is it likely that the good of a man should?”

“In theory there is nothing to hinder our following what we are taught; but in life there are many things to draw us aside.”

“If to do were as easy as to know what were good to do, chapels had been churches, and poor men's cottages princes' palaces.”

“That which makes the man no worse than he was makes his life no worse: it has no power to harm, without or within.”

“Always take the short cut; and that is the rational one. Therefore say and do everything according to soundest reason.”