Arun Shourie > Quotes

“Another life-lesson: until our minds are emptied, how will we receive?”
― Arun Shourie, Does He Know A Mothers Heart: How Suffering Refutes Religion

“To derive joy from simple things; to derive joy from beautiful, giving persons; to give back, indeed to give away; to be thankful, as we are so often told we must be, for small mercies.”
― Arun Shourie, Does He Know A Mothers Heart: How Suffering Refutes Religion

“No cosmic purpose is served by our suffering or that of those dear to us—just as no cosmic purpose is served by our being born or by our dying; and that for the simple reason that there is no ‘cosmic purpose’.”
― Arun Shourie, Does He Know A Mothers Heart: How Suffering Refutes Religion

“Suffering is real. To urge anything that dismisses it as ‘unreal’ is to mock the pain of another.”
― Arun Shourie, Does He Know A Mothers Heart: How Suffering Refutes Religion

“lesson in that for us in the media: if, instead of, or in addition to focusing so much on lofty constitutional issues being debated in the Supreme Court, we were to depute our correspondents once a month on a randomly selected day to a randomly selected local court, and report what happened in that court during that day—that would give readers and viewers a so much truer picture of the state of justice in our country. And may even spur some improvements.”
― Arun Shourie, Anita Gets Bail: What Are Our Courts Doing? What Should We Do About Them?

“Rulings – or laws – are so far ahead of reality; or if Courts, having decreed a remedy, do not follow up to ensure that it is being adhered to...”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“The courts, and, of course, the support of our readers, were our only dykes.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“The bail had barely been granted and a faction of the Republican Party of India organized a function in the same hall to felicitate and honour the assailants for having successfully attacked me – a fact that, being merely in the public domain, was obviously not something the court would take note of!”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Where one stands on an issue depends on where one sits”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Why is it that those convicted in the US do not go on filing appeals? One part of the answer is simple: because they run the real prospect that, if their appeal is found to be without foundation, the sentence will be severely enhanced. Why is it that lawyers and litigants do not deploy these devices in the UK? Again, one part of the answer is simple: because very high costs are imposed on those who are found to be using the proceedings in court to escape or even delay justice. Moreover, in the US, while deciding the extent to which the sentence shall be enhanced and, in the UK, while deciding the quantum of costs that a party shall have to pay, the judge considers the conduct of the litigant before as well as during the trial. In the UK, each individual application during trial or appeal may invite a separate order as to costs.”
― Arun Shourie, Anita Gets Bail: What Are Our Courts Doing? What Should We Do About Them?

“That axiom applies to judgments as much as to the laws themselves.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“The ‘law in books’ v. the ‘law in action”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Outside the state structure there is just about as much fear of the courts as there is of income tax among our non-salaried class”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Leaders of the new, independent India were clear and determined: caste must be eliminated from official policies and institutions. At the first census conference after Independence, Sardar Patel, with his usual directness, told the delegates and census officials, ‘Formerly there used to be elaborate caste tables which were required in India partly to satisfy the theory that it was a caste-ridden country, and partly to meet the needs of administrative measures dependent upon caste division. In the forthcoming Census this will no longer be a prominent feature,’ and instead the census would focus on basic economic data.6”
― Arun Shourie, Falling Over Backwards: An Essay Against Reservation And Against Judicial Populism

“ADM Jabalpur remains a monument to cowardice dressed up in legalisms.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Ram Swarup, now in his seventies, is a scholar of the first rank. In the 1950s when our intellectuals were singing paeans to Marxism, and to Mao in particular, he wrote critiques of communism and of the actual- that is, dismal performance of communist governments. He showed that the 'sacrifices' which the people were being compelled to make had nothing to do with building a new society in which at some future date they would be heirs to milk and honey...He showed that the claims to efficiency and productivity, to equitable distribution and to high morale which were being made by these governments, and even more so by their apologists in countries such as India, were wholly unsustainable, that in fact they were fabrications. Today, anyone reading those critiques would characterise them as prophetic. But thirty years ago, so noxious was the intellectual climate in India that all he got was abuse, and ostracism.”
― Arun Shourie, Indian Controversies

“The third set of facts that has an immediate bearing on the question at hand is documented beyond doubt by now. And that is the plasticity of the brain. While it used to be believed till even a few decades ago that the human brain stops ‘growing’ once one reaches adulthood, it is a commonplace now that the brain keeps changing, and can be made to change literally till we die. Nor is it just the way the brain functions that changes, the very structure of the brain changes. The interconnections between its components, the ‘cubic space’ devoted to particular functions, the ability of components to take over the functions of other parts—for instance, the areas devoted to receiving and processing visual inputs taking over the function of ‘hearing’—in each of these and many other ways, the brain remains plastic.8”
― Arun Shourie, Does He Know A Mothers Heart: How Suffering Refutes Religion

“he air we breathe in Delhi this winter is much cleaner than it was two or three winters ago; fewer pollutants are being dumped into the Yamuna. Each of these turnarounds is traceable solely to the directions that the Supreme Court gave.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“The air we breathe in Delhi this winter is much cleaner than it was two or three winters ago; fewer pollutants are being dumped into the Yamuna. Each of these turnarounds is traceable solely to the directions that the Supreme Court gave.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Can we keep up at this pace?”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“Consider a device she has used so skilfully in the past: identify

the weakness of a man, exploit it. True, the device works and
for a long time. But in the end, and the end has come-I don't
mean chronologically, of course, but in terms of effectivenessthe ability to manipulate the weaknesses of others does not suffice.
You must reckon with your own weaknesses and with how they
incapacitate you in dealing with the cruel march of time, of
events”
― Arun Shourie, Mrs. Gandhis second reign

“Before parting, we place on record our deep anguish …”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“How statutory bodies waste public money in fruitless litigation to satisfy misplaced ego is demonstrated by this petition.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“The state structure is marked by – that should perhaps be, ‘marred by’ – kargozari, by the show of work, not work. There is at all times much activity, but at most little movement.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“So, the courts are our protectors. But on occasion we have to strain to comprehend why they keep looking the other way.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“In fact, it is a good enough reason to change one’s chairs from time to time – not just one’s job, one’s profession itself. We then get to see things that have become so familiar as to seem stale, from unaccustomed, refreshing angles.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“That is dangerous forgetting, for that judgment deserves as much to be burnt into our consciousness as ADM Jabalpur.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“But it is also true that sometimes I have had to watch helplessly as the courts could not be persuaded to do what seemed clearly within their power...”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences

“once the habit of questioning his word got afoot in this sphere— and that too a sphere so vast as to encompass ‘affairs of the world’—what was there to stop it from taking apart and examining what the Prophet had said on affairs of things other than the world? Where would that leave the religion? The anxieties could be kept at bay in one way and one way alone—by ensuring that nothing but nothing was examined. Accordingly, this has been the hallmark of faith.”
― Arun Shourie, The World of Fatwas Or The Sharia in Action

“Where one stands on an issue depends on where one sits.”
― Arun Shourie, Courts and their Judgements: Premises, Prerequisites, Consequences