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Quotes Compilation For UPSC Mains Essay

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100 Quotes Covering Different Topics

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 EDUCATION AND VALUES

True education must correspond to the surrounding circumstances or it is

not a healthy growth. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

Education without values, as useful as it is, seems rather to make man a

more clever devil. ​(C.S. Lewis​)

Knowledge is power. Information is liberating. Education is the premise of

progress, in every society, in every family. ​(Kofi Annan)

Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere.

Education beats the beauty and the youth. ​(Chanakya)

It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without

accepting it. ​(Aristotle)

Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or
her self- respect.​ ​(A.P. J. Abdul Kalam)

To educate a man in mind and not in morals is to educate a menace to

society. ​(Theodore Roosevelt​)

Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind.

(Ralph Waldo Emerson)

ENVIRONMENT AND CLIMATE CHANGE

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 Saving our planet, lifting people out of poverty, advancing economic
growth... these are one and the same fight. ​(Ban Ki-moon)

We are the first generation to feel the sting of climate change, and we are
the last generation that can do something about it.​ ​(Jay Inslee)

Climate change is the single biggest thing that humans have ever done on
this planet.​ ​(Bill McKibben)

Our desire to ensure energy for all must not lead to the undesired effect of
a spiral of extreme climate changes due to a catastrophic rise in global
temperatures, harsher environments and increased levels of poverty.
(Pope Francis)

The choices that we make today will define our collective future. Let us all
join together to beat plastic pollution and make this planet a better place to
live. ​(Narendra Modi)

We are in danger of destroying ourselves by our greed and stupidity. We

cannot remain looking inwards at ourselves on a small and increasingly
polluted and overcrowded planet. ​(Stephen Hawking)

The greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it.
(Robert Swan)

WOMEN EMPOWERMENT

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Feminism isn’t about making women stronger. Women are already strong,
it’s about changing the way the world perceives that strength.
(G.D. Anderson)

Women’s freedom is the sign of social freedom. ​(Rosa Luxemburg)

The education and empowerment of women throughout the world cannot

fail to result in a more caring, tolerant, just and peaceful life for all.
(Aung San Suu Kyi)

We cannot all succeed when half of us are held back. We call upon our
sisters around the world to be brave – to embrace the strength within
themselves and realize their full potential. ​(Malala Yousafzai)

To call woman the weaker sex is a libel; it is man’s injustice to woman. If by

strength is meant moral power, then woman is immeasurably superior
man’s superior. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which

women have achieved. ​(B.R. Ambedkar)

Gender equality is more than a goal in itself. It is a precondition for meeting

the challenge of reducing poverty, promoting sustainable development and
building good governance. ​(Kofi Annan)

RELIGION

There is no higher religion than human service. To work for the common
good is the greatest creed. ​(Woodrow Wilson)

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 This is my simple religion. There is no need for temples; no need for
complicated philosophy. Our own brain, our own heart is our temple; the
philosophy is kindness. ​(Dalai Lama)

The truths of religion are never so well understood as by those who have
lost the power of reason. ​(Voltaire)

Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided
missiles and misguided men. ​(Martin Luther King)

Caste is not just a division of labour, it is a division of labourers.

(B. R. Ambedkar)

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY

Science knows no country, because knowledge belongs to humanity, and

is the torch which illuminates the world. ​(Louis Pasteur)

Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. ​(Brian Greene)

We have guided missiles and misguided men. ​(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

What we are finding out now is that there are not only limits to growth but
also to technology and that we cannot allow technology to go on without
public consent. ​ (​ David R. Brower)

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 People are the quintessential element in all technology... Once we
recognize the inescapable human nexus of all technology our attitude
toward the reliability problem is fundamentally changed. ​(Garett Hardin)

DEMOCRACY

I understand democracy as something that gives the weak the same

chance as the strong. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social
democracy. ​(B. R. Ambedkar)

Democracy arises out of the notion that those who are equal in any respect
are equal in all respects; because men are equally free, they claim to be
absolutely equal. ​(Aristotle)

Democracy is not just a question of having a vote. It consists of

strengthening each citizen’s possibility and capacity to participate in the
deliberations involved in life in society. ​(Fernando Cardoso)

Democracy is not the law of the majority but the protection of the minority.
(Albert Camus)

I do not agree with what you have to say, but I’ll defend to the death your
right to say it. ​(Voltaire)

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 POVERTY

There is a solitude in poverty, but a solitude which restores to each thing its
value. ​(Albert Camus)

Poverty is the worst form of violence. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

POLITICS

Righteousness is the foundation stone of peace and good governance.

(Confucius)

In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are
political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred
and schizophrenia. ​(George Orwell)

Greatness will come by looking forward - untethered from the politics of the
past and anchored by our shared values - and by changing our nation’s
future. ​(Pete Buttigieg)

Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it.
(Leo Tolstoy)

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 MATERIALISM/CONSUMERISM

A fellow who is ashamed merely of shabby clothing or modest meals is not

even worth conversing with. ​(Confucius)

To live fully, we must use things and love people, not love things and use
people. ​(Powell John)

The world has enough for everyone’s need but not enough for everyone’s
greed. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there

would be peace. ​(John Lennon)

TRUTH

If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything. (Mark Twain)

The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it,
but in the end, there it is. ​(Winston Churchill)

Honesty is more than not lying. It is truth telling, truth speaking, truth living,
and truth loving. ​(James E. Faust)

If there were only one truth, you couldn’t paint a hundred canvases on the
same theme. ​(Pablo Picasso)

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 PHYSICAL AND MENTAL HEALTH

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, and more
unashamed conversation. ​(Glenn Close)

Mental health is a continuum, and people may fall anywhere on the

spectrum. ​(Amy Morin)

Well-being, or wholeness, implies integrity and harmony between all

existing elements, providing freedom for the whole. ​(Darrell Calkins)

SOCIAL WELFARE AND JUSTICE

Justice that is not rooted in equity, in social welfare, and in community is

not justice at all. ​(DeRay Mckesson)

In matters of truth and justice, there is no difference between large and

small problems, for issues concerning the treatment of people are all the
same. ​(Albert Einstein)

There is a higher court than courts of justice and that is the court of
conscience. It supersedes all other courts. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

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 Power has only one duty - to secure the social welfare of the People.
(Benjamin Disraeli)

GLOBALISATION

It has been said that arguing against globalization is like arguing against
the laws of gravity. ​(Kofi Annan)

We are dealing with the greater challenges of globalisation. It is generating,

in many cases, an increase in the levels of inequality in societies... that is
undesirable. ​(Jose Angel Gurria)

One of the fundamental questions of today’s world is undoubtedly the

question of equitable globalisation. ​(Janez Drnovsek)

WAR AND PEACE

When diplomacy ends, War begins. ​(Adolf Hitler)

Bringing countries together above their conflicts require great minds and
great hearts. ​(Amit Ray)

It isn’t enough to talk about peace. One must believe in it. And it isn’t
enough to believe in it. One must work at it. ​(Eleanor Roosevelt)

All war represents a failure of diplomacy. ​(Tony Benn)

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INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS, FOREIGN
POLICY AND DIPLOMACY

Foreign policy is a matter of costs and benefits, not theology.

(Fareed Zakaria)

International politics, like all politics, is a struggle for power.

(Hans J. Morgenthau)

A great deal of world politics is a fundamental struggle, but it is also a

struggle that has to be waged intelligently. ​(Zbigniew Brzezinski)

International peace negotiations need more value creation than value

claiming.​ ​(Amit Ray​)

The world must learn to work together, or finally it will not work at all.
(Dwight Eisenhower)

JUDICIARY

All the rights secured to the citizens under the Constitution are worth
nothing, and a mere bubble, except guaranteed to them by an independent
and virtuous Judiciary. ​(Andrew Jackson)

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The judiciary must not take on the coloration of whatever may be popular at
the moment. We are guardian of rights, and we have to tell people things
they often do not like to hear.​ ​(Rose Bird)

NATIONALISM

Nationalism is a tool increasingly used by leaders to bolster their authority,

especially amid difficult economic and political conditions.
(Richard N. Haass)

Neither the colourless vagueness of cosmopolitanism, nor the fierce

self-idolatry of nation-worship, is the goal of human history.
(Rabindranath Tagore)

A good nationalism has to depend on a principle of the common people, on

myths of a struggling commonality. ​(Andrew O’Hagan)

This thing called nationalism is a treasure that a country uses to try to

develop and a nationality uses to try to survive. ​(Sun Yat-sen)

DIVERSITY AND INCLUSIVITY

An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow
confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all
humanity. ​(Martin Luther King, Jr.)

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 Diversity and inclusion, which are the real grounds for creativity, must
remain at the centre of what we do. ​(Marco Bizzarri)

The fact that societies are becoming increasingly multi-ethnic, multicultural,

and multi-religious is good. Diversity is a strength, not a weakness.
(Antonio Guterres)

Diversity: the art of thinking independently together. ​(Malcolm Forbes)

PRIVACY AND LIBERTY

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety
deserve neither liberty nor safety. ​(Benjamin Franklin)

Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.
(Bob Marley)

Those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves.

(Abraham Lincoln)

“For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way
that respects and enhances the freedom of others. ​(Nelson Mandela)

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any
price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any
foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty. ​(John F. Kennedy)

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 Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men,
undergo the fatigues of supporting it. ​(Thomas Paine)

DIGITALIZATION

When digital transformation is done right, it’s like a caterpillar turning into a
butterfly, but when done wrong, all you have is a really fast caterpillar.
(George Westerman)

Our movements and feelings are constantly monitored, because

surveillance is the business model of the digital age.​ (Katharine Viner)

The pace at which people are taking to digital technology defies our
stereotypes of age, education, language and income. ​(Narendra Modi)

In a digital world, there are numerous technologies that we are attached to

that create infinite interruption.​ (Tim Ferriss)

SOCIAL MEDIA

The more social media we have, the more we think we’re connecting, yet
we are really disconnecting from each other. ​(J.K. Rowling)

Social media is reducing social barriers. It connects people on the strength

of human values, not identities. ​(Narendra Modi)

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 There are a lot of pros and cons about social media; it’s just how you
choose to handle it and how you have to be prepared for the negatives as
well. ​(Aubrey Peeples)

What is interesting is the power and the impact of social media... So we

must try to use social media in a good way. ​(Malala Yousafzai)

Social media isn’t a one-way broadcast; it’s a multiway opportunity for

dialogue. ​(Clara Shih)

MISCELLANEOUS

The difference between what we do and what we are capable of doing

would suffice to solve most of the world’s problems. ​(Mahatma Gandhi)

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard
work you already did. ​(Newt Gingrich)

No legacy is so rich as honesty. ​(William Shakespeare)

In matter of conscience, the law of majority has no place.

(Martin Luther king)

It is vain to talk of the interest of the community, without understanding

what the interest of the individual is.​ ​(Jeremy Bentham)

The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others.
(Mahatma Gandhi)

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