Tell me to what you pay attention and I will tell you who you are.

Love is that splendid triggering of human vitality the supreme activity which nature affords anyone for going out of himself toward someone else.

An 'unemployed' existence is a worse negation of life than death itself.

Life is a series of collisions with the future; it is not the sum of what we have been, but what we yearn to be.

Life is an operation which is done in a forward direction. One lives toward the future, because to live consists inexorably in doing, in each individual life making itself.

For the person for whom small things do not exist, the great is not great.

We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.

Law is born from despair of human nature.

The good is, like nature, an immense landscape in which man advances through centuries of exploration.

Poetry is adolescence fermented, and thus preserved.

An idea is a putting truth in check-mate.

I am I plus my circumstances.

We cannot put off living until we are ready.

India is a land of plenty inhibited by poverty; India has an enthralling, uplifting civilization that sparkles not only in our magnificent art, but also in the enormous creativity and humanity of our daily life in city and village.

Propelled by freedom of faith, gender equality and economic justice for all, India will become a modern nation. Minor blemishes cannot cloak the fact that India is becoming such a modern nation: no faith is in danger in our country, and the continuing commitment to gender equality is one of the great narratives of our times.

As Indians, we must of course learn from the past; but we must remain focused on the future. In my view, education is the true alchemy that can bring India its next golden age.

The government of India and the government of Jammu and Kashmir are determined to ensure that every Kashmiri lives with dignity having equal rights and equal opportunities.

The precision of naming takes away from the uniqueness of seeing.

Draw your pleasure, paint your pleasure, and express your pleasure strongly.

A painting that is well composed is half finished.

Color does not add a pleasant quality to design - it reinforces it.

If not me, who? And if not now, when?

There should be competition and exchanges between different countries, but there are certainly certain universal values, and that is freedom and democracy.

A society should never become like a pond with stagnant water, without movement. That's the most important thing.

The world will not accept dictatorship or domination.

Imagine a country that flies into space, launches Sputniks, creates such a defense system, and it can't resolve the problem of women's pantyhose. There's no toothpaste, no soap powder, not the basic necessities of life. It was incredible and humiliating to work in such a government.

Democracy must learn to defend itself.

The soviet people want full-blooded and unconditional democracy.

Surely, God on high has not refused to give us enough wisdom to find ways to bring us an improvement in relations between the two great nations on earth.

America must be the teacher of democracy, not the advertiser of the consumer society. It is unrealistic for the rest of the world to reach the American living standard.

We could only solve our problems by cooperating with other countries. It would have been paradoxical not to cooperate. And therefore we needed to put an end to the Iron Curtain, to change the nature of international relations, to rid them of ideological confrontation, and particularly to end the arms race.

I paid too heavy a price for perestroika.

What we need is Star Peace and not Star Wars.

I think the environmental problem will be the number one item on the agenda of the 21st century... This is a problem that cannot be postponed.

Cleanliness is the scourge of art.

You might think that religion was the one area in which professional jealousy would take a back seat. But no: ecclesiastical memoirs are as viperish as any, though their envy tends to cloak itself in piety.

Like the firm handshake and looking people straight in the eye, the blazer had originally been a symbol of trust. Because of this, it had been purloined by the less-than-trustworthy and became their preferred disguise.

We do not judge the people we love.

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

All human actions are equivalent and all are on principle doomed to failure.

The poor don't know that their function in life is to exercise our generosity.

Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.

Fear? If I have gained anything by damning myself, it is that I no longer have anything to fear.

I hate victims who respect their executioners.

One is still what one is going to cease to be and already what one is going to become. One lives one's death, one dies one's life.

Politics is a science. You can demonstrate that you are right and that others are wrong.

I do not believe in God; his existence has been disproved by Science. But in the concentration camp, I learned to believe in men.

Like all dreamers, I mistook disenchantment for truth.

Every age has its own poetry; in every age the circumstances of history choose a nation, a race, a class to take up the torch by creating situations that can be expressed or transcended only through poetry.

Ah! yes, I know: those who see me rarely trust my word: I must look too intelligent to keep it.