Quotes about sentiment
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Thomas Paine photo

“It was the cause of America that made me an author. The force with which it struck my mind and the dangerous condition the country appeared to me in, by courting an impossible and an unnatural reconciliation with those who were determined to reduce her, instead of striking out into the only line that could cement and save her, A Declaration Of Independence, made it impossible for me, feeling as I did, to be silent: and if, in the course of more than seven years, I have rendered her any service, I have likewise added something to the reputation of literature, by freely and disinterestedly employing it in the great cause of mankind, and showing that there may be genius without prostitution. Independence always appeared to me practicable and probable, provided the sentiment of the country could be formed and held to the object: and there is no instance in the world, where a people so extended, and wedded to former habits of thinking, and under such a variety of circumstances, were so instantly and effectually pervaded, by a turn in politics, as in the case of independence; and who supported their opinion, undiminished, through such a succession of good and ill fortune, till they crowned it with success. But as the scenes of war are closed, and every man preparing for home and happier times, I therefore take my leave of the subject. I have most sincerely followed it from beginning to end, and through all its turns and windings: and whatever country I may hereafter be in, I shall always feel an honest pride at the part I have taken and acted, and a gratitude to nature and providence for putting it in my power to be of some use to mankind.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

The Crisis No. XIII
1770s, The American Crisis (1776–1783)

Thomas Paine photo

“Perhaps the sentiments contained in the following pages, are not YET sufficiently fashionable to procure them general favour; a long habit of not thinking a thing WRONG, gives it a superficial appearance of being RIGHT, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”

Thomas Paine (1737–1809) English and American political activist

A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. Explanation: Paine explained the need to speak out against a tyrannical power, notably Britain and King George III, because not doing so could be a dangerous action on its own. A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. This first part actually has two sections on its own. In the first half, Paine says it’s important to note the “wrongs” that occur when injustices are clear — not doing so gives them the “appearance of being right.” In the second half, he notes that people’s first reactions to those complaints are always to side on the side of “custom” — that is, to oppose attacks against institutions.
But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason. Explanation: Most Americans are not in favor of impeachment at this moment. It’s a reaction against a guarded institution — and citizens are going to behave in ways that make it seem they’re against the idea, by giving a “defense of custom,” as Paine put it. It should be noted, however, that the same held true for a different president — Richard Nixon. At the onset of investigations, a majority of Americans felt it was a waste of time. As they learned more about his actions as president, the public (including a significant number of Republicans) became more supportive of his ouster.
1770s, Common Sense (1776)
Source: Chris Walker (September 25, 2019): A Look Back At Thomas Paine, And Why Impeachment Makes ‘Common’ Sense (Even If You Think It’s A Losing Cause) [Opinion]. In: HillReporter.com. Archived https://web.archive.org/web/20190929202745/https://hillreporter.com/a-look-back-paine-and-why-impeachment-makes-sense-even-if-you-think-its-a-losing-cause-opinion-46555 from the original https://hillreporter.com/a-look-back-paine-and-why-impeachment-makes-sense-even-if-you-think-its-a-losing-cause-opinion-46555 on September 29, 2019.

Joseph Goebbels photo
Premchand photo

“If ever anyone did something which might provoke communal sentiments, Premchand not only put down the incident but endeavoured to eradicate the very basis of such differences. Considerations of high and low, Hindu and Muslim, and untouchability were all anathema to him.”

Premchand (1880–1936) Hindi writer

When he was superintendent of the schools boarding house of the National School quoted in "Munshi Premchand: The Voice of Truth", page =1915.

Teal Swan photo
Joseph Goebbels photo
Ioannis Kapodistrias photo

“Victory shall be ours, but has to be in our hearts only the Greek sentiment. Anyone ready to listen servily to the foreign [powers] is a traitor.”

Ioannis Kapodistrias (1776–1831) Greek politician and diplomat, first Governor of the modern Greek state

On a conversation with Georgakis Mavromichalis after his arrival (1828), during the Greek War of Independence.

In Georgios Tertsetis, "Kolokotronis' Memoirs", Apologa about Capodistrias

Norman Mailer photo

“Sentimentality is the emotional promiscuity of those who have no sentiment.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

Review of the book My Hope for America (1964) by Lyndon B. Johnson
Cannibals and Christians (1966)

Gore Vidal photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
James Russell Lowell photo

“Every man feels instinctively that all the beautiful sentiments in the world weigh less than a single lovely action.”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

Literary Essays, vol. II (1870–1890), Rousseau and the Sentimentalists

Milan Kundera photo
David Nicholls photo
Louisa May Alcott photo
Ralph Waldo Emerson photo

“Some people will tell you there is a great deal of poetry and fine sentiment in a chest of tea.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Source: Letters and Social Aims

Adrienne Rich photo
Margaret Mitchell photo
Martin Luther King, Jr. photo

“What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? (1967)
Context: Power properly understood is nothing but the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political and economic change. … Now a lot of us are preachers, and all of us have our moral convictions and concerns, and so often have problems with power. There is nothing wrong with power if power is used correctly. You see, what happened is that some of our philosophers got off base. And one of the great problems of history is that the concepts of love and power have usually been contrasted as opposites — polar opposites — so that love is identified with a resignation of power, and power with a denial of love.
It was this misinterpretation that caused Nietzsche, who was a philosopher of the will to power, to reject the Christian concept of love. It was this same misinterpretation which induced Christian theologians to reject the Nietzschean philosophy of the will to power in the name of the Christian idea of love. Now, we've got to get this thing right. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive, and love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love. And this is what we must see as we move on. What has happened is that we have had it wrong and confused in our own country, and this has led Negro Americans in the past to seek their goals through power devoid of love and conscience.
This is leading a few extremists today to advocate for Negroes the same destructive and conscienceless power that they have justly abhorred in whites. It is precisely this collision of immoral power with powerless morality which constitutes the major crisis of our times.

Rebecca West photo

“I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.”

Rebecca West (1892–1983) British feminist and author

"Mr. Chesterton in Hysterics," in The Clarion, (14 November 1913), re-published in The Young Rebecca: Writings of Rebecca West, 1911-17 (1982), p. 219.
Variant: I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.
Source: Young Rebecca: Writings, 1911-1917

Cassandra Clare photo
Flannery O’Connor photo
John Irving photo
Lorrie Moore photo
Philip Gourevitch photo
Charles Bukowski photo
Christopher Isherwood photo
Sherrilyn Kenyon photo
David Nicholls photo
Georgette Heyer photo
F. Scott Fitzgerald photo
Maya Angelou photo
Michel De Montaigne photo

“Stupidity and wisdom meet in the same centre of sentiment and resolution, in the suffering of human accidents.”

Michel De Montaigne (1533–1592) (1533-1592) French-Occitan author, humanistic philosopher, statesman

Source: The Complete Essays

Richelle Mead photo
Gabriel García Márquez photo
Cheryl Strayed photo
David Foster Wallace photo
L. Frank Baum photo

“And remember, my sentimental friend, that a heart is not judged by how much you love, but by how much you are loved by others.”

this is a line spoken by Frank Morgan's depiction of the Wizard of Oz in the 1939 film, which debuted 20 years after Baum's death. It did not actually appear in the "Wonderful Wizard of Oz". The ending of "Steam Engines of Oz" wrongly attributes this phrase to Baum when it would've originated from the 1939 adaptation script writers Langley/Ryerson/Woolf.
Misattributed
Variant: A heart is not judged by how much you love; but by how much you are loved by others
Source: The Wonderful Wizard of Oz

D.H. Lawrence photo
Rob Sheffield photo
Nick Hornby photo
Yasunari Kawabata photo

“Sentiment without action is the ruin of the soul.”

Edward Abbey (1927–1989) American author and essayist

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (Vox Clamantis in Deserto) (1990)

Ernest Hemingway photo
Charlotte Brontë photo
Lyndon B. Johnson photo
Vincent Massey photo

“History is the necessary food of good and noble sentiments. It ought to give us at once humility and confidence in the face of greatness.”

Vincent Massey (1887–1967) Governor General of Canada

Address to the Women's Canadian Club, Montreal, Quebec, March 26, 1958
Speaking Of Canada - (1959)

Vilfredo Pareto photo
Ramakrishna photo

“Honour both spirit and form, the sentiment within as well as the symbol without.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 308

Jean Metzinger photo

“So, music does not attempt to imitate Nature's sounds, but it does interpet and embody emotions awakened by Nature through a convention of its own, in a way to be aesthetically pleasing. In some such way, we, taking our hint from Nature, construct decoratively pleasing harmonies and symphonies of color expression of our sentiments.”

Jean Metzinger (1883–1956) French painter

Quote of Metzinger in 'The Wild Men of Paris', by Gelett Burgess https://monoskop.org/images/f/f3/Burgess_Gelett_1910_The_Wild_Men_of_Paris.pdf, in 'The Architectural Record, Vol XXVII, May 1910, p. 414

William Dean Howells photo

“The wrecks of slavery are fast growing a fungus crop of sentiment.”

William Dean Howells (1837–1920) author, critic and playwright from the United States

Their Wedding Journey http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3365/3365.txt (1872)

John Martin photo
Colum McCann photo
Vanna Bonta photo
Christopher Isherwood photo

“Let's face it, minorities are people who probably look and act and think differently from us and have faults we don't have. We may dislike the way they look and act, and we may hate their faults. And it’s better if we admit to disliking and hating them, than if we try to smear over our feelings with pseudo-liberal sentimentality. If we’re frank about our feelings, we have a safety valve; and if we have a safety-valve, we’re actually less likely to start persecuting.... I know that theory is unfashionable nowadays. We all keep trying to believe that, if we ignore something long enough, it’ll just vanish––
‘Where was I? Oh yes... Well, now, suppose this minority does get persecuted – never mind why – political, economic, psychological reasons – there always is a reason, no matter how wrong it is – that’s my point. And, of course, persecution itself is always wrong; I’m sure we all agree there. But, the worst of it is, we now run into another liberal heresy. Because the persecuting majority is vile, says the liberal, therefore the persecuted minority must be stainlessly pure. Can’t you see what nonsense that is? What’s to prevent the bad from being persecuted by the worse? Did all the Christian victims in the arena have to be saints?’
‘And I’ll tell you something else. A minority has its own kind of aggression. It absolutely dares the majority to attack it. It hates the majority — not without a cause, I grant you. It even hates the other minorities – because all minorities are in competition: each one proclaims that its sufferings are the worst and its wrongs are the blackest. And the more they all hate, and the more they're all persecuted, the nastier they become! Do you think it makes people nasty to be loved? You know it doesn’t! Then why should it make them nice to be loathed?”

pps. 53-54
A Single Man (1964)

Philip Roth photo

“You rebel against the tribal and look for the individual, for your own voice as against the stereotypical voice of the tribe or the tribe's stereotype of itself. You have to establish yourself against your predecessor, and doing so can well involve what they like to call self-hatred. I happen to think that—all those protestations notwithstanding—your self hatred was real and a positive force in its very destructiveness. Since to build something new often requires that something else be destroyed, self-hatred is valuable for a young person. What should he or she have instead—self-approval, self-satisfaction, self-praise? It's not so bad to hate the norms that keep a society from moving on, especially when the norms are dictated by fear as much as by anything else and especially when that fear is of the enemy forces of the overwhelming majority. But you seem now to be so strongly motivated by a need for reconciliation with the tribe that you aren't even willing to acknowledge how disapproving of its platitudinous demands you were back then, however ineluctably Jewish you may also have felt. The prodigal son who once upset the tribal balance—and perhaps even invigorated the tribe's health—may well, in his old age, have a sentimental urge to go back home, but isn't this a bit premature in you, aren't you really too young to have it so fully developed?”

Nathan Zuckerman to Philip Roth
The Facts: A Novelist's Autobiography (1988)

Steven Pressfield photo
Camille Paglia photo
John Dalton photo
Carlos Drummond de Andrade photo

“When I was born, one of those twisted
angels who live in the shadows said:
"Carlos, get ready to be a misfit in life!"
(…)
My God, why have you forsaken me
if you knew that I wasn't God,
if you knew that I was weak.
World so large, world so wide,
if my name were Clyde,
it would be a rhyme but not an answer.
World so wide, world so large,
my heart's even larger.
I shouldn't tell you,
but this moon
but this brandy
make me sentimental as hell.”

Carlos Drummond de Andrade (1902–1987) Brazilian poet

Quando nasci, um anjo torto
Desses que vivem na sombra
Disse: Vai Carlos! Ser gauche na vida.
(...)
Meu Deus, por que me abandonastes
se sabias que eu não era Deus,
se sabias que eu era fraco.
Mundo mundo vasto mundo,
se eu me chamasse Raimundo
seria uma rima, não seria uma solução.
Mundo mundo vasto mundo,
mais vasto é meu coração.
Eu não devia te dizer
mas essa lua
mas esse conhaque
botam a gente comovido como o diabo.
"Poema de sete faces" ["Seven-sided Poem"]
Alguma Poesia [Some Poetry] (1930)

Leopoldo Galtieri photo
Honoré de Balzac photo

“Girls are apt to imagine noble and enchanting and totally imaginary figures in their own minds; they have fanciful extravagant ideas about men, and sentiment, and life; and then they innocently endow somebody or other with all the perfections for their daydreams, and put their trust in him.”

Les jeunes filles se créent souvent de nobles, de ravissantes images, des figures tout idéales, et se forgent des idées chimériques sur les hommes, sur les sentiments, sur le monde; puis elles attribuent innocemment à un caractère les perfections qu'elles ont rêvées, et s'y confient.
Source: A Woman of Thirty (1842), Ch. I: Early Mistakes.

Eugene V. Debs photo

“Solidarity is not a matter of sentiment but a fact, cold and impassive as the granite foundations of a skyscraper. If the basic elements, identity of interest, clarity of vision, honesty of intent, and oneness of purpose, or any of these is lacking, all sentimental pleas for solidarity, and all other efforts to achieve it will be barren of results.”

Eugene V. Debs (1855–1926) American labor and political leader

"A Plea for Solidarity," The International Socialist Review VOL XIV No. 9 (March 1914) https://books.google.com/books?id=olFIAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA534&ots=GTTSOWeGxG&dq=eugene%20v.%20debs%20%22a%20plea%20for%20solidarity&pg=PA534#v=onepage&q&f=false

Letitia Elizabeth Landon photo
Norman Mailer photo

“He had a personality that was hopeless. He had a profound distrust of people's possibilities, and it came out in his personality. … There was an almost indecent pleasure he took in being sentimental about all the worst things.”

Norman Mailer (1923–2007) American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film maker, actor and political candidate

On Richard Nixon
Interview for French TV (1998)

William Godwin photo
Eric Foner photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Samuel Johnson photo

“The Churchyard abounds with images which find a mirror in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

The Life of Gray
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)

Charles Sumner photo

“The Senator from South Carolina has read many books of chivalry, and believes himself a chivalrous knight, with sentiments of honor and courage. Of course he has chosen a mistress to whom he has made his vows, and who, though ugly to others, is always lovely to him; though polluted in the sight of the world, is chaste in his sight I mean the harlot, Slavery. For her, his tongue is always profuse in words.”

Charles Sumner (1811–1874) American abolitionist and politician

"The Crime against Kansas," speech in the Senate (May 18, 1856). The claims made against Senator Andrew Butler of South Carolina so angered Butler's cousin, Democrat Representative Preston Brooks, that Brooks assaulted Sumner with a cane in the Senate chamber a few weeks later

Theo van Doesburg photo

“Only a radical cleaning of social and artistic life as, in the domain of art, is already done by Dada, which is anti-sentimental and healthy to the core, since it is anti-art. Only unscrupulously striking down any systematically bred amateurism in any field, can prepare civilization for the 'New Vision's happiness which is greatly and purely alive in a dew people.”

Theo van Doesburg (1883–1931) Dutch architect, painter, draughtsman and writer

Quote from Van Doesburg's article: 'Is a Universal Plastic Notion Possible Today?', as cited in 'Bouwkundig weekblad' [a Dutch architectural magazine], XLI 39, 1920, pp. 230–231
this quote of Theo van Doesburg is one of his earliest Dada expressions
1920 – 1926

Ramsay MacDonald photo

“Might and spirit will win and incalculable political and social consequences will follow upon victory. Victory must therefore be ours. England is not played out. Her mission is not accomplished. She can, if she would, take the place of esteemed honour among the democracies of the world, and if peace is to come with healing on her wings the democracies of Europe must be her guardians…History, will, in due time, apportion the praise and the blame, but the young men of the country must, for the moment, settle the immediate issue of victory. Let them do it in the spirit of the brave men who have crowned our country with honour in times that have gone. Whoever may be in the wrong, men so inspired will be in the right. The quarrel was not of the people, but the end of it will be the lives and liberties of the people. Should an opportunity arise to enable me to appeal to the pure love of country - which I know is a precious sentiment in all our hearts, keeping it clear of thought which I believe to be alien to real patriotism - I shall gladly take that opportunity. If need be I shall make it for myself. I wish the serious men of the Trade Union, the Brotherhood and similar movements to face their duty. To such it is enough to say 'England has need of you'; to say it in the right way. They will gather to her aid. They will protect her when the war is over, they will see to it that the policies and conditions that make it will go like the mists of a plague and shadows of a pestilence.”

Ramsay MacDonald (1866–1937) British statesman; prime minister of the United Kingdom

Letter to the Mayor of Leicester, declining to speak at a recruitment meeting (September 1914), quoted in David Marquand, Ramsay MacDonald (Metro, 1997), p. 175
1910s

Sinclair Lewis photo
Stephen Harper photo

“I think there is a dangerous rise in defeatist sentiment in this country. I have said that repeatedly, and I mean it and I believe it.”

Stephen Harper (1959) 22nd Prime Minister of Canada

Ottawa Citizen, June 3, 2002: About Canada
2002

Brian W. Aldiss photo

“You are like all cruel men, sentimental; you are like all sentimental men; squeamish.”

Brian W. Aldiss (1925–2017) British science fiction author

“Poor Little Warrior!” p. 80
Short fiction, Who Can Replace a Man? (1965)

Amartya Sen photo
William Lisle Bowles photo

“Poetic trifles from solitary rambles whilst chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy.. now written from memory, confined to fourteen lines, this seemed best adapted to the unity of sentiment, the verse flowed in unpremeditated harmony as my ear directed but are far from being mere elegiac couplets.”

William Lisle Bowles (1762–1850) English priest, poet and critic

From Preface to The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. 1 - With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan (1855) Ballantyne & Co , Edinburgh , kindle ebook edition ASIN B0082VAFKO.

Archibald Primrose, 5th Earl of Rosebery photo
William S. Burroughs photo

“In deep sadness there is no place for sentimentality. It is as final as the mountains: a fact. There it is. When you realize it you cannot complain.”

William S. Burroughs (1914–1997) American novelist, short story writer, essayist, painter, and spoken word performer

Queer: A Novel (1985)

Edmund Burke photo
Helen Rowland photo
Jerome David Salinger photo
Calvin Coolidge photo
Benjamin Franklin photo
Lysander Spooner photo

“Children learn the fundamental principles of natural law at a very early age. Thus they very early understand that one child must not, without just cause, strike or otherwise hurt, another; that one child must not assume any arbitrary control or domination over another; that one child must not, either by force, deceit, or stealth, obtain possession of anything that belongs to another; that if one child commits any of these wrongs against another, it is not only the right of the injured child to resist, and, if need be, punish the wrongdoer, and compel him to make reparation, but that it is also the right, and the moral duty, of all other children, and all other persons, to assist the injured party in defending his rights, and redressing his wrongs. These are fundamental principles of natural law, which govern the most important transactions of man with man. Yet children learn them earlier than they learn that three and three are six, or five and five ten. Their childish plays, even, could not be carried on without a constant regard to them; and it is equally impossible for persons of any age to live together in peace on any other conditions.

It would be no extravagance to say that, in most cases, if not in all, mankind at large, young and old, learn this natural law long before they have learned the meanings of the words by which we describe it. In truth, it would be impossible to make them understand the real meanings of the words, if they did not understand the nature of the thing itself. To make them understand the meanings of the words justice and injustice before knowing the nature of the things themselves, would be as impossible as it would be to make them understand the meanings of the words heat and cold, wet and dry, light and darkness, white and black, one and two, before knowing the nature of the things themselves. Men necessarily must know sentiments and ideas, no less than material things, before they can know the meanings of the words by which we describe them.”

Lysander Spooner (1808–1887) Anarchist, Entrepreneur, Abolitionist

Section IV, p. 9–10
Natural Law; or The Science of Justice (1882), Chapter I. The Science of Justice.

Robert Williams Buchanan photo

“Their hearts and sentiments were free, their appetites were hearty.”

Robert Williams Buchanan (1841–1901) Scottish poet, novelist and dramatist

City of the Saints.

Richard Rodríguez photo
Isaac Asimov photo
Thomas Eakins photo
Vincent Van Gogh photo
Richard Holbrooke photo

“Months later, Roger Cohen would write in The New York Time that preventing an attack on Banja Luka was "an acto of consummate Realpolitik" on our part, since letting the Federation [of Bosnia-Herzegovina] take the city would have "derailed" the peace process. Cohen, one of the most knowledgeable journalists to cover the was, misunderstood our motives in opposing an attack on Banja Luka. A true practitioner of Realpolitik would have encouraged the attack regardless of its human consequences. In fact, humanitarian concerns decided the case for me. Given the harsh behavior of Federation troops during the offensive, it seemed certain that the fall of Banja Luka would lead to forced evictions and random murders. I did not think the United States should contribute to the creation of new refugees and more human suffering in order to take a city that would have to be returned later. Revenge might be a central part of the ethos of the Balkans, but American policy could not be party of it. Our responsibility was to implement the American national interest, as best as we could determine it. But I am no longer certain we were right to oppose an attack on Banja Luka. Had we known then that the Bosnian Serbs would have been able to defy or ignore so many of the key political provisions of the peace agreement in 1996 and 1997, the negotiating team might not have opposed such an attack. However, even with American encouragement, it is by no means certain that an attack would have taken palce - or, if it had, that it would have been successful. Tuđman would have had to carry the burden of the attack, and the Serb lines were already stiffening. The Croatian Army had just taken heavy casualties on the Sarva. Furthermore, if it fell, Banja Luka would either have gone to the Muslims or been returned later to the Serbs, thus making it of dubious value to Tuđman. There was another intriguing factor in the equation - one of the few things that Milošević and Izetbegović had agreed on. Banja Luka, they both said, was the center of moderate, anti-Pale sentiment within the Bosnian Serb community, and should be built up in importance as a center of opposition to Pale. Izetbegovic himself was ambivalent about taking the city, and feared that if it fell, it would only add to Croat-Bosnian tensions.”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p. 166-167

Rajiv Gandhi photo