Nani Palkhivala – Quotes

"The survival of our democracy and the unity and integrity of the nation depend upon the realisation that constitutional morality is no less essential than constitutional legality. Dharma lives in the hearts of public men; when it dies there, no Constitution, no law, no amendment, can save it"
“A democracy without discipline is a democracy without a future”


“Ours is a noble Constitution, worked in an ignoble spirit.”
“Enlightened citizens cannot be produced in the factory – it has to come through education. Thus teachers are the torch-bearers of change, change for the whole nation, change for the whole world.”
“Education is at the heart of the matter. Literacy is not enough. It is good to have a population which can read, but infinitely better to have people able to distinguish what is worth reading.”
“We have not inherited this earth from our forefathers; we have borrowed it from our children’.”
“Perhaps there is no other country on earth which has in such ample measure all enterprise and skills needed to create national wealth, and which takes such deliberate and endless pains to restrict and hamper its creation.”
“The constitution is not a jellyfish; it is a highly evolved organism. It has an identity and integrity of its own, the evocative Preamble being its identity card. It cannot be made to lose its identity in the process of amendment.”
“We have too much government and too little administration; too many public servants and too little public service; too many controls and too little welfare; too many laws and too little justice.”
“A nation progresses gloriously when knowledge and power are combined in the same individual. It faces a grave crisis when some have knowledge and others have power”
“We must get away from the fallacy of-the legal solubility of all problems.”
“The Constitution was meant to impart such a momentum to the living spirit of the rule of law that democracy and civil liberty may survive in India beyond our own times and in the days when our place will know us no more.”
“The Constitution is a part of the great heritage of every Indian. Its founding fathers wanted to ensure that even while India remained poor in per capita income, it should be rich in individual freedom.”
“The nagging question which will not go away is – is India a collection of communities or is it a nation? In other words, is India a state without a nation? Unfortunately, the most pronounced trait of the Indian politician is to put himself first, his own party second, and his country figures nowhere in his calculations.”
“A nation’s strength lies not so much in its wealth as in its character. A nation with a future has to be a nation with character. It is when character saps that you have the phenomenon of widespread evasion.”

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