Jyotsna Krishnakumar

“In 1951 Dec 20th, Nehru, while campaigning for the first democratic elections in India, took a short break to address a UNESCO symposium in Delhi. Although he believed democracy was the best form of governance, while speaking at the symposium he wondered loud...
the quality of men who are selected by these modern democratic methods of adult franchise gradually deteriorates because of lack of thinking and the noise of propaganda....He[the voter] reacts to sound and to the din, he reacts to repetition and he produces either a dictator or a dumb politician who is insensitive. Such a politician can stand all the din in the world and still remain standing on his two feet and, therefore, he gets selected in the end because the others have collapsed because of the din.
-Quoted from India After Gandhi, page 157.”
― Ramachandra Guha, India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy

“Knowing others is intelligence;
knowing yourself is true wisdom.
Mastering others is strength;
mastering yourself is true power.”
― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come...And so....there is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison.”
― Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

“Remembrance of things past is not necessarily the remembrance of things as they were.”
― Marcel Proust