Inspiring! Dr Manmohan Singh

Gems of wisdom from Dr Manmohan Singh, who passed into the ages on December 26, 2024.

Dr Manmohan Singh was a quiet man, a man of few words.

But when he spoke, the world listened.

While, as an economist, he was a gutsy soul who steered in India onto the path of economic progress, he was also inspiring when it came to everyday life.

Here are some quotes from an extraordinary prime minister that we can apply to our daily lives.

Assessing his decade as prime minister on January 3, 2014, Dr Singh said, 'I would be the last person to say there is no scope of doing more.'

Isn't this applicable to all of us, every day?

On the same occasion, he also said. 'I have never felt like resigning at any time. I have enjoyed doing my work. I have tried to do my work with all honesty, with all sense of integrity, without regard, or fear, or favour.'

The next time things get hard, personally or professionally, or you feel like takin the easy way out, do come back to this article and read this quote.

Sharing his views about Indian politics in 1999, he quoted Abraham Lincoln, 'You can fool some people for all time, all people for some time, but not all people for all time.'

A truer word never said, so why walk down that road?

Concluding his first Budget speech -- this was the Budget that opened the door for economic reforms and changed India forever -- Dr Singh said, 'I do not minimise the difficulties that lie ahead on the long and arduous journey on which we have embarked. But as Victor Hugo once said, 'No power on earth can stop an idea whose time has come.' I suggest to this august House that the emergence of India as a major economic power in the world happens to be one such idea. Let the whole world hear it loud and clear. India is now wide awake. We shall prevail. We shall overcome.'

'A loser is one who has given up on his dreams; so long as you are trying, you haven't lost yet,' Dr Singh mentioned in that same speech.

At the end of every dark tunnel, there is light. To reach there, all you need to do is put in the hard work and not give up.

At an event organised by the Centre For Research In Rural And Industrial Development in 2019, he said, 'When the world is breaking up into fragments, and fragments clash with fragments, surrendering all sense and purpose of living for the larger humanity, it is the humanity which seeks transcendence from narrow limits and boundaries.'

'More than any other period of human history, the need for unity of thought and action today is the most urgent.'

Why do we allow ourselves to clash with each other on the basis of how we are different instead of celebrating how we are similar?