You have to dream before your dreams can come true

Quotes from Dr. A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

Ø  If a country is to be corruption free and become a nation of beautiful minds, I strongly feel there are three key societal members who can make a difference. They are the father, the mother and the teacher.

Ø  Great dreams of great dreamers are always transcended.

Ø  Look at the sky. We are not alone. The whole universe is friendly to us and conspires only to give the best to those who dream and work.

Ø  You have to dream before your dreams can come true.

Ø  God, our Creator, has stored within our minds and personalities, great potential strength and ability. Prayer helps us tap and develop these powers.

Ø  To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.

Ø  Let us sacrifice our today so that our children can have a better tomorrow.

Ø  Man needs his difficulties because they are necessary to enjoy success.

Ø  My message, especially to young people is to have courage to think differently, courage to invent, to travel the unexplored path, courage to discover the impossible and to conquer the problems and succeed. These are great qualities that they must work towards. This is my message to the young people.

Ø  Excellence is a continuous process and not an accident.

Ø  Life is a difficult game. You can win it only by retaining your birthright to be a person.

Ø  You see, God helps only people who work hard. That principle is very clear.

Ø  Climbing to the top demands strength, whether it is to the top of Mount Everest or to the top of your career.

Ø  One of the very important characteristics of a student is to question. Let the students ask questions.

Ø  Those who cannot work with their hearts achieve but a hollow, half-hearted success that breeds bitterness all around.

Ø  Creativity is the key to success in the future, and primary education is where teachers can bring creativity in children at that level.

Ø  We should not give up and we should not allow the problem to defeat us.

Ø  The bird is powered by its own life and by its motivation.

Ø  If we are not free, no one will respect us.

Ø  Be more dedicated to making solid achievements than in running after swift but synthetic happiness.

Ø  War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

Ø  Poetry comes from the highest happiness or the deepest sorrow.

Ø  As a child of God, I am greater than anything that can happen to me.

Ø  Educationists should build the capacities of the spirit of inquiry, creativity, entrepreneurial and moral leadership among students and become their role model.

Ø  All wars signify the failure of conflict resolution mechanisms, and they need post-war rebuilding of faith, trust and confidence.

Ø  No religion has mandated killing others as a requirement for its sustenance or promotion.

Ø  For 2,500 years, India has never invaded anybody.

Ø  Tell me, why is the media here so negative? Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognise our own strengths, our achievements? We are such a great nation. We have so many amazing success stories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?

Ø  In India we only read about death, sickness, terrorism, crime.

Ø  When we tackle obstacles, we find hidden reserves of courage and resilience we did not know we had. And it is only when we are faced with failure do we realise that these resources were always there within us. We only need to find them and move on with our lives.

Ø  Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

Ø  The government, whether state or central, is elected. That means we have a responsibility to elect the right kind of leaders.

Ø  While children are struggling to be unique, the world around them is trying all means to make them look like everybody else.

Ø  Building capacity dissolves differences. It irons out inequalities.

Ø  Do we not realize that self respect comes with self reliance?

Ø  A teacher should have a creative mind.

Ø  My view is that at a younger age your optimism is more and you have more imagination etc. You have less bias.

Ø  We should remember that there are nations which meet more than 30 to 60% of their power requirements through the nuclear power system.

Ø  For me, there is no such thing as a negative experience.

Ø  India should walk on her own shadow - we must have our own development model.

Ø  Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

Ø  Unless India stands up to the world, no one will respect us. In this world, fear has no place. Only strength respects strength.

Ø  Economy forced me to become a vegetarian, but I finally starting liking it.

Ø  The youth need to be enabled to become job generators from job seekers.

Ø  How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

Ø  Today, India consumes about 682 watts per capita, far lesser than developed nations. As India develops, it will definitely require a lot more energy.

Ø  Developing nations want to become developed nations.

Ø  For me, there are two types of people: the young and the experienced.

Ø  We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

Ø  Every nation has to follow a certain policy: Commercial, trade, various other types of policies.

Ø  My hair grows and grows; you cannot stop it - that fellow grows, it grows wild.

Ø  God is everywhere.

Ø  I was willing to accept what I couldn't change.

Ø  India can live without nuclear weapons. That's our dream, and it should be the dream of the U.S. also.

Ø  No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

Ø  The President's post should not be politicised. Once a president is elected, he is above politics.

Ø  The wealth of information now available at the click of a finger amazes me.

Ø  Today, India is a nuclear weapons state.

Ø  When a nation is surrounded by weaponized nations, she has to equip herself.

Ø  I love the sea.

Ø  I was in high school when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru unfurled India's flag in New Delhi.

Ø  I'm not an expert on the arms race.

Ø  India has to be transformed into a developed nation, a prosperous nation and a healthy nation, with a value system.

Ø  Nations consist of people. And with their effort, a nation can accomplish all it could ever want.

Ø  Rameswaram has, since antiquity, been an important pilgrimage destination.

Ø  Science has revealed that the human body is made up of millions and millions of atoms... For example, I am made up of 5.8x10 27 atoms.

Ø  The Bay of Bengal is hit frequently by cyclones. The months of November and May, in particular, are dangerous in this regard.

Ø  There has to be a global mission of human progress.

Ø  What is politics? Political system is equal to development politics plus political politics.

Ø  English is necessary as at present original works of science are in English. I believe that in two decades times original works of science will start coming out in our languages. Then we can move over like the Japanese.

Ø  We have not invaded anyone. We have not conquered anyone. We have not grabbed their land, their culture, their history and tried to enforce our way of life on them.

Ø  Let me define a leader. He must have vision and passion and not be afraid of any problem. Instead, he should know how to defeat it. Most importantly, he must work with integrity.

Ø  Science is global. Einstein's equation, E=mc2, has to reach everywhere. Science is a beautiful gift to humanity, we should not distort it. Science does not differentiate between multiple races.

Ø  The world has today 546 nuclear plants generating electricity. Their experience is being continuously researched, and feedback should be provided to all. Nuclear scientists have to interact with the people of the nation, and academic institutions continuously update nuclear power generation technology and safety.

Ø  Why are we, as a nation so obsessed with foreign things? Is it a legacy of our colonial years? We want foreign television sets. We want foreign shirts. We want foreign technology. Why this obsession with everything imported?

Ø  An economically peaceful and prosperous Sri Lanka is the dream of youth of the nation. My message for the youth is to collectively work for an inclusively developed Sri Lanka.

Ø  Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

Ø  In a democracy, the well-being, individuality and happiness of every citizen is important for the overall prosperity, peace and happiness of the nation.

Ø  Almost half of the population of the world lives in rural regions and mostly in a state of poverty. Such inequalities in human development have been one of the primary reasons for unrest and, in some parts of the world, even violence.

Ø  It means, people who are in high and responsible positions, if they go against righteousness, righteousness itself will get transformed into a destroyer.

Ø  We will be remembered only if we give to our younger generation a prosperous and safe India, resulting out of economic prosperity coupled with civilizational heritage.

Ø  One lesson that every nation can learn from China is to focus more on creating village-level enterprises, quality health services and educational facilities.

Ø  Measuring nuclear yield depends on multiple parameters - the location and number of instruments, the geology of the area, the location of the seismic station in relation to the test site.

Ø  When grand plans for scientific and defence technologies are made, do the people in power think about the sacrifices the people in the laboratories and fields have to make?