Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge... At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom.

The light has gone out of our lives and there is darkness everywhere.

Crises and deadlocks when they occur have at least this advantage, that they force us to think.

Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit.

The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is that it is robbing the human race ... those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it.

-- John Stuart Mill

Democracy has to be born anew every generation, and education is its midwife.

-- John Dewey

Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance.

-- Karl Popper

The public sphere is a social phenomenon just as elementary as action, the actor, the group, or the collective; but it eludes the conventional sociological concepts.

-- Jürgen Habermas

Blow up Mikuni Pass with dynamite and no more snow will fall on Echigo; haul the rock into the Sea of Japan and Sado Island becomes part of the mainland.

-- Kakuei Tanaka

I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and to achieve. But if needs be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die.

-- Nelson Mandela