Before Memory Fades Quotes

“I have lived and flourished in a secular India. In the fullness of time if God wills, I would also like to die in a secular India.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“Teachers should have a proud place in society. In India, regrettably, they do not – as exemplified, by what I chanced to witness a few years back in Delhi. A wizened old man driving his 1938 Austin at a speed under 20 mph with a sign at the back of the car reading, ‘Please overtake me – as all my students have.’ Pathetic, but how true!”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“Advice is nice / On it I’ve thriven / Not mother’s or other’s / But what I’ve given!”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“If you do not acquire the fine art of suppressing your ego when you are young, it will surely overtake you when you are older, after which it will become an incurable disease. What is worse is that you will also become a bit of a bore.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“the Olympic Games: ‘The most important thing in the Olympic Games is not winning but taking part; the essential thing in life is not conquering but fighting well.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“we should avoid relying on high-profile lawyers (with political inclinations) because with their argumentative skills, they are able to rationalize all forms of tyranny.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“Men at some time are masters of their fate:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves that we are underlings.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“Edmund Burke used to say that the study of law ‘renders men acute’, and that ‘they are able to augur misgovernment at a distance and sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze’.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“When India voted, a whole world voted. A whole world – hundreds of millions of people, speaking in a great orchestra of different languages, praying to different gods, living in a continental hugeness that not long ago was divided into hundreds of principalities people driven to centuries of war against each other by rulers seeking conquest, foreigners seeking booty, religious zealots seeking blood, educated people by the millions, illiterate peasants by the scores of millions, from mountains through great stretches of plains to southern seas. On my mind – The World of India (1 December 1989), A. M. Rosenthal”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“The diversity of India is tremendous; it is obvious: it lies on the surface and anybody can see it. It concerns itself with physical appearances as well as with certain mental habits and traits. There is little in common, to outward seeming, between the Pathan of the Northwest and the Tamil in the far South. Their racial stocks are not the same, though there may be common strands running through them; they differ in face and figure, food and clothing, and, of course, language … The Pathan and Tamil are two extreme examples; the others lie somewhere in between. All of them have still more the distinguishing mark of India. It is fascinating to find how the Bengalis, the Marathas, the Gujaratis, the Tamils, the Andhras, the Oriyas, the Assamese, the Canarese, the Malayalis, the Sindhis, the Punjabis, the Pathans, the Kashmiris, the Rajputs, and the great central block comprising the Hindustani-speaking people, have retained their peculiar characteristics for hundreds of years, have still more or less the same virtues and failings of which old tradition or record tells us, and yet have been throughout these ages distinctively Indian, with the same national heritage and the same set of moral and mental qualities.    There was something living and dynamic about this heritage, which showed itself in ways of living and a philosophical attitude to life and its problems. Ancient India, like ancient China, was a world in itself, a culture and a civilization which gave shape to all things. Foreign influences poured in and often influenced that culture and were absorbed. Disruptive tendencies gave rise immediately to an attempt to find a synthesis. Some kind of a dream of unity has occupied the mind of India since the dawn of civilization. That unity was not conceived as something imposed from outside, a standardization of externals or even of beliefs. It was something deeper and, within its fold, the widest tolerance of beliefs and customs was practiced and every variety acknowledged and even encouraged.    In ancient and medieval times, the idea of the modern nation was non-existent, and feudal, religious, racial, and cultural bonds had more importance. Yet I think that at almost any time in recorded history an Indian would have felt more or less at home in any part of India, and would have felt as a stranger and alien in any other country. He would certainly have felt less of a stranger in countries which had partly adopted his culture or religion. Those, such as Christians, Jews, Parsees, or Moslems, who professed a religion of non-Indian origin or, coming to India, settled down there, became distinctively Indian in the course of a few generations. Indian converts to some of these religions never ceased to be Indians on account of a change of their faith. They were looked upon in other countries as Indians and foreigners, even though there might have been a community of faith between them.6”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“The moral of this story is that we should avoid relying on high-profile lawyers (with political inclinations) because with their argumentative skills, they are able to rationalize all forms of tyranny.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“the study of law ‘renders men acute’, and that ‘they are able to augur misgovernment at a distance and sniff the approach of tyranny in every tainted breeze’.7 That is our strength; that is why we are also feared, particularly by those in power and authority.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“In 1787, the future Lord Eldon (then plain John Scott) had argued a case in the equity court and lost. Thirty-three years later, the same case was cited to Lord Eldon when, as lord chancellor, he presided in the court of chancery. Lord Eldon said that he remembered the case: And very angry I was with the decision; but I [have] lived long enough to find out that one may be very angry and very wrong.9”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“When you mention a famous race horse, they always ask you, ‘From which stable?’ The stable is important. It establishes the ancestry and the breed. When you name a lawyer who has done well, people ask you, ‘From which chamber?’ The chamber is important. It establishes the hierarchy and cultural tradition in which the lawyer has been reared.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

“Lord Atkin once said that an impartial administration of the law is like oxygen in the air; people know and care little about it till it is withdrawn.”
― Fali S. Nariman, Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography