Source: 1980s, Mind Without Measure (1984), p. 105
Context: First, we must be very clear that you and the speaker are treating life not as a problem but as a tremendous movement. If your brain is trained to solve problems, then you will treat this movement as a problem to be solved. Is it possible to look at life with all its questions, with all its issues, which is tremendously complex, to look at it not as a problem, but to observe it clearly, without bias, without coming to some conclusion which will then dictate your observation? You have to observe this vast movement of life, not only your own particular life, but the life of all humanity, the life of the earth, the life of the trees, the life of the whole world — look at it, observe it, move with it, but if you treat it as a problem, then you will create more problems.
1870s, Speech in the House of Representatives (1871)
Legislative Assembly, February 9, 1865
Context: I will content myself, Mr. Speaker, with those principal motives to union; first, that we are in the rapids and must go on; next that our neighbours will not, on their side, let us rest supinely, even if we could do so from other causes; and thirdly, that by making the united colonies more valuable as an ally to Great Britain, we shall strengthen rather than weaken the imperial connection. (Cheers.)
3rd Public Talk, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (24 May 1967)
1960s
Climate, Welfare..., Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 15 October, 2018 http://www.abc.net.au/tv/qanda/txt/s4892252.htm
Context: ... It’s a tremendous blow to decency, to stability, it is a reason why then you have mass movements of refugees.... If we don’t hold together a multilateral system, we won’t hold together in the world. And when Trump goes to the UN – I was there when he gave the speech last month – and said, “I’m a patriot. Nobody’s going to tell the United States what to do,” it’s just horrifying, this kind of thinking, this bullying talk, this idea that one of the richest counties in the world, and in aggregate richer than any high-income country has ever been in history, has such distain for helping people in desperation. I barely recognise my country from what has happened over the last 30 years.
“All the great speakers were bad speakers at first.”
Power
1860s, The Conduct of Life (1860)
Vol. XI, p. 62
Posthumous publications, The Collected Works
Context: I think we must see this very clearly right at the beginning — that if one would solve the everyday problems of existence, whatever they may be, one must first see the wider issues and then come to the detail. After all, the great painter, the great poet is one who sees the whole — who sees all the heavens, the blue skies, the radiant sunset, the tree, the fleeting bird — all at one glance; with one sweep he sees the whole thing. With the artist, the poet, there is an immediate, a direct communion with this whole marvellous world of beauty. Then he begins to paint, to write, to sculpt; he works it out in detail. If you and I could do the same, then we should be able to approach our problems — however contradictory, however conflicting, however disturbing — much more liberally, more wisely, with greater depth and colour, feeling. This is not mere romantic verbalization but actually it is so, and that is what I would like to talk about now and every time we get together. We must capture the whole and not be carried away by the detail, however pressing, immediate, anxious it may be. I think that is where the revolution begins.
In P. 29
Quote, Memorable Quotes from Rajiv Gandhi and on Rajiv Gandhi
1850s, For Self-Examination (1851), It Is the Spirit Who Gives Life
