Source: Lord of the Silver Bow
“What course of action do you favor?”
“Me? Why, none. Mary, if there is any one thing I have learned in the past couple of centuries, it’s this: These things pass. Wars and depressions and Prophets and Covenants—they pass. The trick is to stay alive through them.”
Methuselah’s Children (p. 539)
Short fiction, The Past Through Tomorrow (1967)
Statement of 1951, in Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru Vol. 5 (1987), p. 321
Context: I want to go rapidly towards my objective. But fundamentally even the results of action do not worry me so much. Action itself, so long as I am convinced that it is right action, gives me satisfaction. In my general outlook on life I am a socialist and it is a socialist order that I should like to see established in India and the world.
Source: Speech to the Police Federation conference in Eastbourne (18 May 1976) regarding the Federation's campaign on law and order, quoted in The Times (19 May 1976), p. 5
Source: Queen's Gambit Declined (1989), Chapter 2 (p. 25)
Source: Haunted (2005), Chapter 4
Context: "It's not a matter of right and wrong," Mr. Whittier would say. Really, there is no wrong. Not in our minds. Our own reality. You can never set off to do the wrong thing. You can never say the wrong thing. In your own mind, you are always right. Every action you take--what you do or say or how you choose to appear--is automatically right the moment you act.
Morarji Desai speaks about life and celibacy
Utopia and Violence (1947)
Context: There are many difficulties impeding the rapid spread of reasonableness. One of the main difficulties is that it always takes two to make a discussion reasonable. Each of the parties must be ready to learn from the other. You cannot have a rational discussion with a man who prefers shooting you to being convinced by you.
Alec and Magnus, pg. 406
The Mortal Instruments, City of Ashes (2008)
