Nayantara Sahgal Quotes

• “A philosopher I admire wrote that a coward is not a coward “on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum … he is like that because he has made himself into a coward by his actions … A coward is defined by the deed he has done.” I would wake up sweating, throw off my sheet, and stare into the hot, empty darkness. What if there was a collective will to cowardice, when men and women in their millions, a whole nationful, did cowardly deeds? Was there a way out of that? And how naive the cast-iron idealism I had been brought up with, believing we were moderate, tolerant people, steeped in civilized ways. I should have been differently taught, told how casual we are about cruelty, depravity. I had grown to adulthood nourished on monumental lies.”

  Nayantara Sahgal

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• “Over the weekend I have fallen in love with you again. I do not know why. Because it was wholly unnecessary.”

  Nayantara Sahgal

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• “truth is strong medicine. It should be prescribed with great care,”

  Nayantara Sahgal

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• “for societies are built as much on what people choose to forget as what they remember,”

  Nayantara Sahgal

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• “You never know whether this is a form of instinctive blackmail, and therefore, to be resisted, or whether it is real illness brought on in the other person by what you live by and believe in.”

  Nayantara Sahgal

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