Shashi Tharoor Quotes

44 quotes in 896 categories

• Terrorism is a principal preoccupation in most of our international contacts.
• The good terrorists are the guys who bomb and kill Indians. The bad terrorists are the ones who attack Pakistani interests, whether in Afghanistan or…
• If you believe in truth and cared enough to obtain it, you had to be prepared actively to suffer for it.
• I make no bones about the fact that India matters to me, and I would like to matter to India.
• If America is a melting pot, then to me India is a thali--a selection of sumptuous dishes in different bowls. Each tastes different, and does…
• India is more than a sum of its contradictions, any truism about India can be contradicted with another truism. There is no fixed stereotype. But…
• Freedom of the press is the mortar that binds together the bricks of democracy -- and it is also the open window embedded in those…
• It's not the side of the bigger army that wins. It's the country that tells a better story.
• This is the one international institution we have in which governments get together to work collectively for a common purpose. International crises, by definition, require…
• There's no longer a superpower standoff. But there are real problems that divide countries around the world. And the UN is still the place where…
• Universality of the UN is a worthwhile thing in its own self because it means that every country belongs, feels it has a stake, and…
• Diplomacy is much like the "lovemaking of elephants", which is accompanied with a lot of bellowing and other sound effects, but no one can be…
• No one says "Gee Whiz!" very much these days, of course, not even in America - both because that expression has long since been supplanted…
• Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean irreligiousness.It means profusion of religions.
• India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed…
• India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like…
• In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.
• The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.
• A philosopher is a lover of wisdom, not of knowledge, which for all its great uses ultimately suffers from the crippling effect of ephemerality. All…
• On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his…

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