Top 120 Jawaharlal Nehru Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

102. “It is only too easy to make suggestions and later try to escape the consequences of what we say.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

103. “Every great revolution, whether it is right or not, we really know has any vital, urgent need to basis. It comes not just from itself.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

104. “When the present is full of gloom, the past becomes haven of refuge that provides relief and inspiration.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

105. “It is always more difficult to fight one’s own failings than the power of an adversary.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

106. “The purely agitational attitude is not good enough for a detailed consideration of a subject.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

107. “Restraint does not mean weakness. It does not mean giving in.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

108. “It is better to understand a part of truth and apply it to our lives than to understand nothing at all and flounder helplessly in a vain attempt to pierce the mystery of existence.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

109. “Most of us seldom take the trouble to think. It is a troublesome and fatiguing process and often leads to uncomfortable conclusions. But crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

110. “It is science alone that can solve the problems of hunger and poverty, of insanitation and illiteracy, of superstition and deadening custom and tradition, of vast resources running to waste, or a rich country inhabited by starving people... Who indeed could afford to ignore science today? At every turn we have to seek its aid... The future belongs to science and those who make friends with science.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

111. “If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both as the head of the government and from the outside.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

112. “Only a prisoner who has been confined for long behind high walk can appreciate the extraordinary psychological value of these outside walks and open views.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

113. “There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

114. “A theory must be tempered with reality.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

115. “I think that sacrifices of animals in the name of religion are barbarous and they degrade the name of religion.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

116. “In this materialistic age of ours,’ says Professor Albert Einstein, ’the serious scientific workers are the only profoundly religious people.’15 In.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

117. “I am a socialist not because I think it is a perfect system, but half a loaf is better than no bread. The other systems have been tried and found wanting. Let this one be tried – if for nothing else, for the novelty of the thing.’ Vivekananda.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

118. “When you imitate the enemy’s tactics, you take on his liabilities.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

119. “The best and noblest gifts of humanity cannot be the monopoly of a particular race or country; its scope may not be limited nor may it be regarded as the miser’s hoard buried underground.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

120. “For only they can sense life who stand often on the verge of it, only they whose lives are not governed by the fear of death.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

121. “There are two things that have to happen before an idea catches on. One is that the idea should be good. The other is that it should fit in with the temper of the age. If it does not, even a good idea may well be passed by.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

122. “History bears witness to the vital part that the ‘prophets’ have played in human progress – which is evidence of the ultimate practical value of expressing unreservedly the truth as one sees it. Yet it also becomes clear that the acceptances and spreading of that vision has always depended on another class of men – “leaders” who had to be philosophical strategists, striking a compromise between truth and men’s receptivity to it.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

123. “But, after all, no safeguards are adequate, unless the will to give effect to them fully is present.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

124. “Yet the past is ever with us and all that we are and that we have comes from the past. We are its products and we live immersed in it. Not to understand it and feel it as something living within us is not to understand the present. To combine it with the present and extend it to the future, to break from it where it cannot be so united, to make of all this the pulsating and vibrating material for thought and action – that is life.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

125. “We must remember that what our governments are doing today will set the tone for future administrations. The very powers that may be exercised, perhaps for adequate reasons today, may be exercised later for totally inadequate and perhaps even for objectionable reasons. It is always unsafe to weaken on principles.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

126. “It is dangerous and harmful to be guided in our life’s course by hatreds and aversions, for they are wasteful of energy and limit and twist the mind and prevent it from perceiving the truth.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

127. “Life is too complicated and, as far as we can understand it in our present state of knowledge, too illogical, for it to be confined within the four corners of a fixed doctrine. The.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

128. “A country under foreign domination seeks escape from the present in dreams of a vanished age, and finds consolation in visions of past greatness. That is a foolish and dangerous pastime in which many of us indulge. An equally questionable practice for us in India is to imagine that we are still spiritually great though we have come down in the world in other respects. Spiritual or any other greatness cannot be founded on lack of freedom and opportunity, or on starvation and misery.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

129. “She was like some ancient palimpsest on which layer upon layer of thought and reverie had been inscribed, and yet no succeeding layer had completely hidden or erased what had been written previously.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

130. “I wish that more and more adventurous young men would give up the gun in favour of the camera.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

131. “We talk of high philosophies and our ancient greatness but act in narrow grooves and show intolerance to our neighbour. These are basic questions for us to keep in mind, for our future depends on the answer that we give to them.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

132. “But the ideal is terribly difficult to grasp or to hold.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru

133. “I had little patience with leftist groups in India, spending much of their energy in mutual conflict and recrimination over fine points of doctrine which did not interest me at all. Life is too complicated and, as far as we can understand it in our present state of knowledge, too illogical, for it to be confined within the four corners of a fixed doctrine.”

— Jawaharlal Nehru