Quotes from Shashi Tharoor

the Hindu did not think in terms of good and evil. 'Evil has reference to the distance which good has to traverse. Ugliness is halfway to beauty. Error is a stage on the road to truth.

Error is a stage on the road to truth.

had exported an average of £13,000,000 worth of goods to Britain each year from 1835 to 1872 with no corresponding return of money; in fact, payments to people residing in Britain, whether profits to Company shareholders, dividends to railway investors or pensions to retired officials, made up a loss of £30 million a year.

To accept people as one finds them, to allow them to be and become what they choose, and to encourage them to do whatever they like (so long as it does not harm others) is my natural instinct.

Agricultural taxes amounted at a minimum to half the gross produce and often more, leaving the cultivator less food than he needed to support himself and his family; British estimates conceded that taxation was two or three times higher than it had ever been under non-British rule, and unarguably higher than in any other country in the world.

The extensive and detailed calculations of William Digby, the British writer, pointed to the diminishing prosperity of the Indian people and the systematic expropriation of India's wealth by Britain—including the telling fact that the salary of the Secretary of State for India in 1901, paid for by Indian taxes, was equivalent to the average annual income of 90,000 Indians.

the Bengali intellectual and author of the bestselling Autobiography of an Unknown Indian (1951), with its cringe-worthy dedication to the British empire in India: To

At Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, his own favorite, Lance would pray for our connecting flights to be delayed so that he could have even longer in the arcade, shooting down monsters and dragons with no regard for jet lag. How wonderful it is to have your monsters and dragons on a screen in front of you, to be destroyed by the press of a button, and not inside your heart as mine are, hammering away at your soul.

ruled Pakistan directly for a majority of the years of its existence

I don't go by my caste, creed or religion. My works speak for me.

Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America.

I believe in an India of pluralism and diversity, not of religious bigotry and caste politics. I believe in an India that is secure in itself and confident of its place in the world, an India that is a proud example of tolerance, freedom and hope for the downtrodden.

Among the many international consequences of Barack Obama's stunning victory in the United States is worldwide introspection about whether such a breakthrough could happen elsewhere. Could a person of color win power in other white-majority countries?

The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.

India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.

India shaped my mind, anchored my identity, influenced my beliefs, and made me who I am. ... India matters to me and I would like to matter to India.

There is not a thing as the wrong place, or the wrong time. We are where we are at the only time we have. Perhaps it's where we're meant to be.

The sun never set on the British empire, an Indian nationalist later sardonically commented, because even God couldn't trust the Englishman in the dark

On Gandhi: Don't ever forget, that we were not lead by a saint with his head in clouds, but by a master tactician with his feet on the ground.

In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.

Hindu fundamentalism is a contradiction in terms, since Hinduism is a religion without fundamentals; there is no such thing as a Hindu heresy. How dare a bunch of goondas shrink the soaring majesty of the Vedas and the Upanishads to the petty bigotry of their brand of identity politics?

Everything is recycled in India, even dreams.

The British are the only people in history crass enough to have made revolutionaries out of Americans.

Western dictionaries define secularism as absence of religion but Indian secularism does not mean irreligiousness.It means profusion of religions.