Vinod Mehta > Quotes

“Radicalism,like stamp collecting,has its time and place.Perhaps,it is useful in one's youth,but you have to move on.”
― Vinod Mehta, Lucknow Boy: A Memoir

“It is a cliché to assert that you only make friends in your youth; as you get older you can at best make acquaintances, cronies, associates—but seldom friends. Perhaps I don’t have the gift for friendship, that wonderful knack of striking up fraternal bonds of trust and affection.”
― Vinod Mehta, Lucknow Boy: A Memoir

“After the disastrous 1962 China war, a patriot wrote this graffiti on a wall, ‘Krishna Menon is a fool.’ He was hauled up in court and sentenced to fifteen years of imprisonment—one year for defacing public property and fourteen years for letting out state secrets!”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Abuse can be laced with humour and made less toxic, almost acceptable. When Winston Churchill heard his long-term rival Clement Attlee had collapsed and been rushed to hospital, he said, ‘Nothing trivial, I hope.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Adlai Stevenson, ‘It is easier to fight for principles than to live up to them.”
― Vinod Mehta, Lucknow Boy: A Memoir

“American writer F. Scott Fitzgerald: ‘Show me a hero,’ he said, ‘and I will write you a tragedy.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Quality loners are comfortable in crowds, it is the one-to-one relationship they recoil from.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Happiness is as elusive as a butterfly, and you must never pursue it. If you stay very still, it might come and settle on your hand. But only briefly. Savour those precious moments, for they will not come your way very often.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Pleasure in the job puts perfection to work.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Patience is a minor form of despair, disguised as a virtue.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“no more than six ‘original’ jokes exist. The rest are variations on a theme. You just change the time, place, country, characters and you have a contemporary version.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“My forty-plus years as an editor give me the confidence to declare India as the leakiest democracy in the free world.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Jaise Jaagi Hui Aankhon Mein Chubhen Kaanch Ke Khwab, Raat Is Tarah Deewanon Ki Basar Hoti Hai’ (The way dreams made out of glass prick wide-awake eyes, that is how some people spend the night).”
― Vinod Mehta, Meena Kumari

“David Frost’s wife, when asked if her husband was religious, said, ‘Oh, yes, he thinks he is God.’)”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”
― Vinod Mehta, Lucknow Boy: A Memoir

“For himself, Sanjay wasn’t too certain what the election was all about. In a press conference on 25 January 1977 he seemed in characteristic verbal form: Q.: Mr Gandhi, earlier you were against having elections. Are you personally in favour of them now? A.: All in all, seeing things as they are now, it’s okay. If you’d asked me six months ago I would have said no. Q.: What has improved? A.: Nothing. Six months ago I would have thought to wait longer would have been better—which now I do not think. Q.: Would you expect the fact of the Emergency to be the principal issue in the campaign? A.: What do you mean by that? Q.: Well, recently the Janata party has been talking about the Emergency itself as a campaign issue. A.: I don’t think that would be much of a poll issue. Because most of it has happened. It would be a poll issue if it was going to happen. Q.: What about family planning? Do you think that will be a major issue? A.: I don’t think so. Q.: What would you expect would be the major issue? A.: I am not quite sure. BY THE TIME SANJAY arrived in Amethi, he seemed to have shed his earlier fuzziness. He had by then perceived the issues. In speeches he would stress the ‘package’ of progress made during the previous nineteen months, the transformation awaiting Amethi on his election (275 km of hard roads, 1200 km of kutcha roads, a multi-crore textile mill), the disparate nature of the opposition (which usually included an attack on Charan Singh). And then he would come to the programme closest to his heart: family planning via nasbandi. ‘As soon as Sanjay mentioned the words "parivar niyojan" and "nasbandi" the audience would get incensed. We could see the anger seething in their faces. Many of those listening had suffered personally and many more had heard the experiences of friends and neighbours. Congress workers would hang their heads down when Sanjay spoke about those things. They did not dare look the people in the face. By his speeches, Sanjay, instead of making people happy, was making them more and more angry,’ a Block Development Officer from Jagdishpur told me.”
― Vinod Mehta, The Sanjay Story: From Anand Bhavan To Amethi

“he wakes up at 4.30 a.m. and ‘personally accesses his mail, surfs and checks Google alerts’.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“One must never forget that journalists are among the most insecure people on earth with egos as big as footballs. And for some curious reason, the approval they hunger for is not from their peers or eminent ambassadors or high-ranking bureaucrats; the approbation they crave most highly is the one that comes from netas—who, as a tribe, they profess to despise.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The eloquent man is he who is no beautiful speaker, but who is insanely and desperately drunk with a certain belief.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“most have feet of clay. Yet, they demand nothing less than total and absolute obeisance.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“(Here it is important to emphasize that public interest is not the same as what is interesting for the public. Pornography may be interesting for the public but it is definitely not in the public interest.)”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Sar zamin-e-hind par aqwaam-e-aalam ke firaaq Kaafile baste gaye, Hindustan bantaa gayaa”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“Comedy thrives on anxiety,’ says social historian David Crossland.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me

“The principal reason for our channels overdoing the debate and discussion component in their evening schedule is its low cost.”
― Vinod Mehta, Editor Unplugged: Media, Magnates, Netas and Me