Rajkumar Hirani Quotes

Sohan Singh Bhakna, Gurdit Singh, Teja Singh Sutantar, Banta Singh Sanghwal... they are my fathers. Those who gave their lives for freedom are my fathers.

We are in a strange period of history in which a revolutionary has to be a patriot and a patriot has to be a revolutionary.

Anybody intelligent enough to realize what America is, is not going to sit around and do nothing about it. They're going to be the same way that I am. They're going to be the same way our fans are. They're going to be pissed.

I was only a working-class boy from a Nationalist ghetto. But it is repression that creates the revolutionary spirit of freedom.

September 11 either made me love this country or it made me realize how much I already did. I think it's the latter. Seeing "Fahrenheit 9/11" made me think deeply about love of country - how it molds us, drives and emboldens us and how it can sometimes make us so angry, we want to shout out to the world: 'No, this is wrong.'

I saw courage both in the Vietnam War and in the struggle to stop it. I learned that patriotism includes protest, not just military service.

They call them terrorists, I call them freedom fighters.

Punk was more based on social change than on music, so it didn't bother me too much. It wasn't really a musical threat.

When Dr. [Samuel] Johnson called patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, he forgot the possibilities contained in the word Reform.

Patriots have been incapable of removing one brick from this structure by “working within the system.” … There are two paths open to those who love the great America of their forefathers.

This is what separates us from you: We made demands. You were satisfied to serve the power of your nation, and we dreamed of giving ours her truth.

All the efforts of Lafayette, Kosciuszko and Garibaldi, and all the faith of Mazzini, Mickiewicz and Michelet, were defeated by the fundamental truth that the people they sought to liberate and make happy were simply not interested.

Remember that those who fought and bled for your liberties were in their time considered as being against the law, as dangerous disturbers and trouble-makers. They not only preached violence, but they carried out their ideas …. They said that "Resistance to tyranny is obedience to God." They wrote a dangerous document called the Declaration of Independence. A document which continues to be dangerous to this day, and for the circulation of which a young man was sentenced to ninety days prison in a New York Court, only the other day. They were the Anarchists of their time--they were never within the law.

It is no longer possible to satirize this state of affairs. Every satire risks becoming a bible for yet another national liberation front. Every satirist risks becoming the founder of a new religion, a Buddha, Zarathustra, Jesus, Muhammad or Marx. Every exposure of the ravages of the dominant system, every critique of the system's functioning, becomes fodder for the horses of liberators, welding materials for builders of armies

When Garibaldi passed through a village you would not have said he was a general, but the head of a new religion followed by a crowd of fanatics.

My countrymen, the currents of destiny flow through the hearts of the people. Who will check them ? Who will divert them? Who will stop them?

I admit that there was a mistake. But I had my ideology. I wanted to free my country.

Books are for adults; revolution is for the young.

Our entire family is replete with sentiments of patriotism. Uncle Swarna Singh left for his heavenly abode in jail in 1910, two or three years after my birth. Uncle Ajit Singh is leading the life of an exile in foreign countries.

I think of those giants who made the Indian National Congress. Seldom has the world seen a nobler galaxy of women and men, so selfless in their devotion to the cause of freedom, so exalted in thought, so brave in action, so pure in spirit.

The United States was born in revolution and nurtured by struggle. Throughout our history, the American people have befriended and supported all those who seek independence and a better way of life.

It is people like Chandrashekhar Azad and Bhagat Singh who should be the ideals.

We need punk now; we need it more than ever. We need rebellion by youth.

'Mother India' is a classic that I love.

When I heard Edward Snowden's story, it reminded me of my mother in a strange way. She was in the French resistance from early on, 1941. At that time, the Resistance were considered troublemakers - even traitors - in France.