“When I was young, I was very selfish, now not any more.”

When it’s impossible, it’s better to stoop to compromise, without resisting and without complaining. People who complain are selfish.

There is not love where there is no will.

My father was a saint. I’m not.

It is our duty to create a social milieu in which the young and the socially weak feel that the present and future belong to them.

The old need the company of the young so that they renew their contact with life.

To become capable, one must have faith in oneself.

It’s not right to say that my father influenced me more than others, and I wouldn’t be able to say whether my personality was formed more by my father or my mother or the Mahatma [Gandhi] or the friends who were with us.

To be a mother, a housewife, never cost me any sacrifice – I savored every minute of those years.

Every new experience brings its own maturity and a greater clarity of vision.

In all communities you find groups that behave badly. But you must understand them too.

Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning.

Whenever you take a step forward, you are bound to disturb something.

That’s always been my philosophy. – I’ve never thought of the consequences of a necessary action.

I’ve never understood women who, because of their children, pose as victims and don’t allow themselves any other activities.

Education is a liberating force, and in our age it is also a democratizing force, cutting across the barriers of caste and class, smoothing out inequalities imposed by birth and other circumstances.

Women sometimes go too far, it’s true. But it’s only when you go too far that others listen.

It often turns out on closer inspection that acts of apparent altruism are really selfishness in disguise.

The only difference between a hero and the villain is that the villain chooses to use that power in a way that is selfish and hurts other people.

A cynic is a man who knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish. Let us understand what our own selfish genes are up to, because we may then at least have the chance to upset their designs, something that no other species has ever aspired to do.

I think I could go away tomorrow. I’ve already accomplished something. It’s such a selfish business that sometimes I get sick of myself.

We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.

Any altruistic system is inherently unstable, because it is open to abuse by selfish individuals, ready to exploit it.

Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are all born selfish.