147 Quotes by Shashi Tharoor

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.

The Mahabharata declares, 'What is here is nowhere else; what is not here, is nowhere.

The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.

They say every dog has its day, Ganapathi, but for this terrier twilight came before tea-time.

On election days, the burdens of poverty and corruption and of a creaky economic system are put aside, and India celebrates. Many voters dress especially for the occasion... None quite voice the thought, but those who came in a steady stream to vote seemed to be saying that India may have fallen far behind its neighbors in the struggle for prosperity, but as long as it can choose its governments, it can hope for better in the future.

On Gandhi: Don’t ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground.

When a marauder destroys your house and takes away your cash and jewellery , his responsibility for his actions far exceeds that of the servant who opened door to him, whether out of fear, cupidity or because he simply he didn't know any better.