Jawaharlal Nehru Quotes

I'm not any kind of social reformer.

Much can and must be done by governments, but they cannot of themselves change lives.

Probably people always feel that they are living in a time of transition, but we can hardly be mistaken perhaps in thinking that this is an era of particularly momentous change, rapid and proceeding at an ever quickening rate.

The typical journalist's typical lead for the typical Canadian story nowadays is along this line: that Canadians are hard at work trying to gain a reputation as a nation of rapid social change.

There's a battle outside raging It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls for the times they are a-changing.

Human society can only adapt to social change at a certain rate.

You can't find your way to social reform through the forces that made social reform necessary.

The power of a movement lies in the fact that it can indeed change the habits of people. This change is not the result of force but of dedication, of moral persuasion.

Man is as the Lord made him. But we can change our institutions.

I want to be known as a catalyst for change.

Time only and long experience can bring remedies to defects in the customs of a state whose form is already determined.

Courts should ... follow, rather than lead, changes taking place elsewhere in society.

The wind of change is blowing through the continent. Whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact.

[T]he great social changes are impossible without the feminine ferment.

Great economic and social forces flow with a tidal sweep over communities that are only half conscious of them. Wise statesmen are those who foresee what time is thus bringing, and endeavor to shape institutions and to mold men's thought and purpose in accordance with the change that is silently surrounding them.

The country is called to the practice of new customs. The walls and surfaces must be cleaned. But minds too must be cleansed, for that is where the error was born.

Reform is born of need, not pity. No vital movement of the people has worked down, for good or evil; fermented, instead, it carried up the heaving, cloggy mass.

… science is the great instrument of social change, all the greater because its object is not change but knowledge, and its silent appropriation of this dominant function, amid the din of political and religious strife, is the most vital of all the revolutions which have marked the development of modern civilization.

The goal in the end is not to win elections. The goal is to change society.

Cultural views often don't move at all for a very long time, but when they move they can move very fast.

Most governments and people want reform. It’s the prospect of change that makes reform rare.

The period of radical reform is finished.

Every movement takes a century to make its mark. The women’s movement is only 40 some years old.

We live in a scientific revolution. In such an epoch of revolutionary change, those who identity laissez-faire with liberty are enemies, however unwitting, of democracy

Since the war [WWII], the world has been rushing forward at an unprecedented and exhilarating speed … Yet Britain lags behind, lacking the will or the plan which can bring this future within the reach of us all.