“The life of many a person could probably be changed if only someone would make him feel important.”

If you do something for someone else, never remember. If someone does something for you, never forget.

Any fool can criticize, condemn and complain – and most fools do. But it takes character and self control to be understanding and forgiving.

If you want to be a good conversationalist, be a good listener. To be interesting, be interested.

Talk about your own mistakes before criticizing the other person.

If you believe in what you are doing, then let nothing hold you up in your work.

Do the thing you fear to do and keep on doing it… that is the quickest and surest way ever yet discovered to conquer fear.

When dealing with people, remember you are not dealing with creatures of logic, but creatures of emotion.

Our trouble is not ignorance, but inaction.

Forget yourself by becoming interested in others. Do every day a good deed that will put a smile of joy on someone’s face.

The world is filled with interesting things to do. Don’t lead a dull life in such a thrilling world.

Let’s never try to get even with our enemies, because if we do we will hurt ourselves far more than we hurt them. Let’s do as General Eisenhower does: let’s never waste a minute thinking about people we don’t like.

Take charge of your attitude. Don’t let someone else choose it for you.

You are something new in this world. Never before, since the beginning of time, has there ever been anybody exactly like you; and never again throughout all the ages to come will there ever be anybody exactly like you again.

Your smile brightens the lives of all who see it.

Remember happiness doesn’t depend upon who you are or what you have; it depends solely on what you think.

Three-fourths of the people you will ever meet are hungering and thirsting for sympathy. Give it to them, and they will love you.

[On being indecisive and changeable:] On my gravestone I want inscribed: ‘On the other hand, maybe I should have lived.

We can master change not though force or fear, but only though the free work of an understanding mind, though an openness to new knowledge and fresh outlooks, which can only strengthen the most fragile and most powerful of human gifts: the gift of reason.

In science the important thing is to modify and change one’s ideas as science advances.

My life was an unending, unchanging midnight. It must, by necessity, always be midnight for me. So how was it possible that the sun was rising now, in the middle of my midnight?

Yes, I tried to change the classical style in a way that people who don’t understand it can enjoy.

I appreciate the change associated with people’s growth, but I don’t like the changes in our lives. I came to Mumbai in 1945, so imagine my acceptance of the massive changes around. I have witnessed every kind of revolution.

In my opinion, the biggest achievement was by Shankar-Jaikishan. With Raj Kapoor’s ‘Barsaat,’ they changed the way we looked at playback singing.

The only time a woman really succeeds in changing a man is when he is a baby.