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

“...(It) is to one British colonial policy-maker or another that we owe the Boxer Rebellion, the Mau Mau insurrection, the Boer War, and the Boston Tea Party”

“There is not a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time we have. Perhaps it's where we're meant to be.”

“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.”

“The only possible idea of India is that of a nation greater than the sum of its parts.”

“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.”

“What economic libralisation needs, if it is to succeed , is a general acceptance that reforms are for the general good, that they might seem to help some more than others, but that in the long run everyone will benefit from them. Such attitude is far from being realized”