Chinmay Janbandhu > Chinmay's Quotes

“It's all romanticism, nonsense, rottenness, art.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Nature cares nothing for logic, our human logic: she has her own, which we do not recognize and do not acknowledge until we are crushed under its wheel.”
― Ivan Turgenev

“Take for yourself what you can, and don't be ruled by others; to belong to oneself - the whole savour of life lies in that.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Spring Torrents

“Every man hangs by a thread, any minute the abyss may open under his feet, and yet he must go and invent for himself all kinds of troubles and spoil his life.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“it’s fun talking to you… like walking on the edge of a precipice. At first one’s nervous but then courage takes over from somewhere.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“Well, what had I to say to you ... I loved you! there was no sense in that even before, and less than ever now. Love is a form, and my own form is already breaking up. Better say how lovely you are! And now here you stand, so beautiful ...”
― Ivan Turgenev, Fathers and Sons

“We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us.”
― Charles Bukowski

“If you are afraid of loneliness, don't marry.”
― Anton Chekhov, Notebook of Anton Chekhov

“This is the only thing that makes life worth living. If you have succeeded in doing something you wanted to do, something that seemed impossible—well, then, make the most of it, with all your heart, to the very brim.”
― Ivan Turgenev, Spring Torrents

“People who can speak well, speak briefly.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Possessed

“I do not wish you much happiness--it would bore you; I do not wish you trouble either; but, following the people's philosophy, I will simply repeat: 'Live more' and try somehow not to be too bored; this useless wish I am adding on my own.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Demons

“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed. It is the person who continues in his self-deception and ignorance who is harmed.”
― Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

“If we encounter a man of rare intellect, we should ask him what books he reads.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Will people ever be wise enough to refuse to follow bad leaders or to take away the freedom of other people?”
― Eleanor Roosevelt, This is My Story

“Wise men are not pacifists; they are merely less likely to jump up and retaliate against their antagonizers. They know that needless antagonizers are virtually already insecure enough.”
― Criss Jami, Killosophy

“I sincerely believe that banking establishments are more dangerous than standing armies, and that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“The people cannot be all, and always, well informed. The part which is wrong will be discontented, in proportion to the importance of the facts they misconceive. If they remain quiet under such misconceptions, it is lethargy, the forerunner of death to the public liberty. ... What country before ever existed a century and half without a rebellion? And what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon and pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“Difference of opinion is advantageous in religion. The several sects perform the office of a Censor morum over each other. Is uniformity attainable? Millions of innocent men, women, and children, since the introduction of Christianity, have been burnt, tortured, fined, imprisoned; yet we have not advanced one inch towards uniformity. What has been the effect of coercion? To make one half the world fools, and the other half hypocrites. To support roguery and error all over the earth. Let us reflect that it is inhabited by a thousand millions of people. That these profess probably a thousand different systems of religion. That ours is but one of that thousand. That if there be but one right, and ours that one, we should wish to see the 999 wandering sects gathered into the fold of truth. But against such a majority we cannot effect this by force. Reason and persuasion are the only practicable instruments. To make way for these, free enquiry must be indulged; and how can we wish others to indulge it while we refuse it ourselves.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the State of Virginia

“And to preserve their independence, we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts, as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses; and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes; have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account; but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers.”
― Thomas Jefferson, Letters of Thomas Jefferson

“If once the people become inattentive to the public affairs, you and I, and Congress and Assemblies, Judges and Governors, shall all become wolves. It seems to be the law of our general nature, in spite of individual exceptions.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Some men look at constitutions with sanctimonious reverence, and deem them like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched. They ascribe to the men of the preceding age a wisdom more than human, and suppose what they did to be beyond amendment...But I know also, that laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also, and keep pace with the times.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“no people can be both ignorant and free.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind. With such persons, gullibility, which they call faith, takes the helm from the hand of reason, and the mind becomes a wreck.”
― Thomas Jefferson

“Be courteous to all, but intimate with few, and let those few be well tried before you give them your confidence. True friendship is a plant of slow growth, and must undergo and withstand the shocks of adversity before it is entitled to appellation. ”
― George Washington

“Freedom of mind is the real freedom.
A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man.
One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man.
One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead.
Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“The Hindus criticise the Mahomedans for having spread their religion by the use of the sword. They also ridicule Christianity on the score of the Inquisition.

But really speaking, who is better and more worthy of our respect—the Mahomedans and Christians who attempted to thrust down the throats of unwilling persons what they regarded as necessary for their salvation, or the Hindu who would not spread the light, who would endeavour to keep others in darkness, who would not consent to share his intellectual and social inheritance with those who are ready and willing to make it a part of their own make-up?

I have no hesitation in saying that if the Mahomedan has been cruel, the Hindu has been mean; and meanness is worse than cruelty.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers,
but by relentless struggle.... Goats are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“History shows that where ethics and economics come in conflict, victory is always with economics. Vested interests have never been known to have willingly divested themselves unless there was sufficient force to compel them.”
― Bhim Rao Ambedkar

“The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all.”
― Jawaharlal Nehru

“Politics and Religion are obsolete. The time has come for Science and Spirituality.”
― Jawaharlal Nehru