Quotes by Shashi Tharoor

“At bottom, the purpose of summit is to rekindle the ideals that animated the founding of the United Nations 60 years ago in San Francisco.”

“That means international cooperation to resolve problems without passports, that no one country or one group of countries can solve on their own -- human rights, terrorism, climate change.”

“If there werent a United Nations, it would have taken the U.S. decades to reach agreements with 191 countries to do that.”

“A U.N. that sees itself as a check on the sole superpower is doomed to fail. We would rather be a vehicle through which the U.S. works with the rest of the world.”

“This weeks summit will be the single largest gathering of world leaders in human history. If world leaders rise to their responsibilities, the rebirth and renewal of the UN will be at hand. With its renewal, we will also renew our hope for a fairer and safer world.”

“It had no impact,”

“Thats all they need to know to deal with him, ... Hes being treated with respect in that regard.”

“The General Assembly has chosen Tunisia and we are all looking forward to a productive meeting there,”

“We need to scale up what exists in Africa, in various parts of Asia. There has been remarkable progress in China and thats a reflection of the booming economy there, theres been less of that progress elsewhere.”

“In the modern globalizing world, information sows the seeds of prosperity, and those who are without access to information are at a distinct disadvantage when it comes to building a better future for themselves and for their children.”

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 knowledge is transient linked to the world around it and subject to change as the world changes, whereas wisdom, true wisdom is eternal immutable. To be philosophical one must love wisdom for its own sake, accept its permanent validity and yet its perpetual irrelevance. It is the fate of the wise to understand the process of history and yet never to shape it.

Why does man need bread? To survive. But why survive if it is only to eat more bread? To live is more than just to sustain life - it is to enrich, and be enriched by, life.

flaunting the Kohinoor on the Queen Mother’s crown in the Tower of London is a powerful reminder of the injustices perpetrated by the former imperial power. Until it is returned—at least as a symbolic gesture of expiation—it will remain evidence of the loot, plunder and misappropriation that colonialism was really all about. Perhaps that is the best argument for leaving the Kohinoor where it emphatically does not belong—in British hands.

Sometimes a rut can be a comfortable place to be, but ours was full of too many differences and resentments to be wholly comfortable. I had always had my own way in the marriage — about what we’d do, where we’d do it, when, how. Katharine had always argued, and always given in. In the process she’d become more resentful, I guess, except that I was too busy with my own work to notice. But in turn she was less and less appealing to me. She’s a couple of years older than me, I guess you know that, but that wasn’t all. Those stolid American middle-class values, her sensible clothes, her sense of responsibility, her moderation in all things — frankly, they bored me. We made love less and less, and she didn’t even seem to miss it. I did.

Truth is elusive, subtle, manysided. You know, Priscilla, there’s an old Hindu story about Truth. It seems a brash young warrior sought the hand of a beautiful princess. Her father, the king, thought he was a bit too cocksure and callow. He decreed that the warrior could only marry the princess after he had found Truth. So the warrior set out into the world on a quest for Truth. He went to temples and monasteries, to mountaintops where sages meditated, to remote forests where ascetics scourged themselves, but nowhere could he find Truth. Despairing one day and seeking shelter from a thunderstorm, he took refuge in a musty cave. There was an old crone there, a hag with matted hair and warts on her face, the skin hanging loose from her bony limbs, her teeth yellow and rotting, her breath malodorous. But as he spoke to her, with each question she answered, he realized he had come to the end of his journey: she was Truth. They spoke all night, and when the storm cleared, the warrior told her he had fulfilled his quest. ‘Now that I have found Truth,’ he said, ‘what shall I tell them at the palace about you?’ The wizened old creature smiled. ‘Tell them,’ she said, ‘tell them that I am young and beautiful.

What the hell does this say about India? Appearances are more important than truths. Gossip is more potent than facts. Loyalty is all one way, from the woman to the man. And when society stacks up all the odds against a woman, she’d better not count on the man’s support. She has no way out other than to end her own life. And I’m in love with an Indian. I must be crazy.

How do I pray? Not in any organized form, really; I go to temples sometimes with my family, but they leave me cold. I think of prayer as something intensely personal, a way of reaching my hands out towards my maker. I recite some mantras my parents taught me as a child; there is something reassuring about those ancient words, hallowed by use and repetition over thousands of years.

Human beings, to me, are rather like electrical appliances that need to be charged regularly, and prayer is a way of plugging into that charge.

Mahatma Gandhi was as devout a Rambhakt as you can get — he died from a Hindu assassin’s bullet with the words “Hé Ram” on his lips — but he always said that for him, Ram and Rahim were the same deity, and that if Hinduism ever taught hatred of Islam or of non-Hindus, “it is doomed to destruction.

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 one in an advanced state of decay.