Nayantara Sahgal famous quotes

Last updated: Sep 5, 2024

choice in any sphere is a peril, the basic division of peoples is of those who believe in choice and those who mistrust it.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Believe #Choices #Division
Civilization itself is housed in the human being.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Civilization #Humans
what was the right level of prosperity, the level that banished dire need but did not satiate, the level that did not threaten the artist in the individual? And how did one stop when one arrived at it?
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Artist #Needs #Levels
Formal education in British India was remarkable for its lack of connection with its Indian environment. Like the African persuaded to cover his nakedness with a Mother Hubbard, we wore mental Mother Hubbards, and they were often a sad fit. Our textbooks had been compiled by Englishmen for English children, of whom there were none in my school and few in any school in India.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Mother #Children #School
In the end countries, like people, are alone, and the real things that must be done have to be done without help.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Country #Real #People
In India the human being is a symphonic theme. 'The people' is not a compact, close-knit concept, but a sprawling one, flowing not only into different walks of life, but into the intricately woven multi-layers of privilege, wealth, and education. 'The people' created by Gandhi is a young concept.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#People #Different #Woven
passion of any sort is seldom governed by the rules of etiquette.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Passion #Etiquette
[Race] had no substance, like a shadowy shape that terrifies in the dark but vanishes by the light of day.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Dark #Light #Race
Race was a word that bred arrogance, danger and violence. When had incitement to race served a peaceful purpose? Race was a fuel and it needed only a match to light it. Any match - my hostility, your ambition, a third person's advantage.
-- Nayantara Sahgal

#Ambition #Race #Light

Baseball has the largest library of law and love and custom and ritual, and therefore, in a nation that fundamentally believes it is a nation under law, well, baseball is America's most privileged version of the level field.
I'm still agnostic. But in the words of Elton Richards, I'm now a reverant agnostic. Which isn't an oxymoron, I swear. I now believe that whether or not there's a God, there is such a thing as sacredness. Life is sacred. The Sabbath can be a sacred day. Prayer can be a sacred ritual. There is something transcendent, beyond the everyday. It's possible that humans created this sacredness ourselves, but that doesn't take away from its power or importance.
I believe that whatever comes at a particular time is a blessing from God.
Once upon a time, a historian told me that the most important choice a new historian could make was of his or her specialist subject. Most of the good stuff was far too overcrowded, so you had to pick about in the exotic and extinct. His recommendations were the Picts or the Minoans, because hardly anything was known about them and you could spend a happy lifetime of speculation.
The ground for taking ignorance to be restrictive of freedom is that it causes people to make choices which they would not have made if they had seen what the realization of their choices involved.
I think the British audience might be more open-minded with some of my imagery and weird choices.
You are free to choose. You are not free not to choose. No choice is a choice. You are free to choose but you are not free to choose the consequences of that choice.
Most human beings spend their lives battling with opposing inner forces: what they think they should do versus what they are doing; how they feel about themselves versus how they are; whether they think theyâ€™re right and worthy or wrong and unworthy. The separate self is just the conglomeration of these opposing forces. When the self drops away, inner division drops away with it.
Of the irrational part of the soul again one division appears to be common to all living things, and of a vegetative nature.
Perhaps the most important principle on which the economy of a manufacture depends, is the division of labour amongst the persons who perform the work.

Nayantara Sahgal famous quotes

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