So important to all of us, that if he did not exist — as Voltaire said of God — he would have to be invented. ... One of the most difficult men with whom I have ever had to deal.
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Dean Acheson in a memorandum of a meeting with Nehru (12 October 1949) as quoted in "Indo-American Relations, 1947-50 : A Missed Opportunity in Asia" by Dennis Merrill, in Diplomatic History Vol. 11 No. 3 (July 1987); also in Nehru The Making of India (1989) by M. J. Akbar, and "Books of The Times; Biography of Nehru From a New Point of View" in The New York Times (16 May 1989)Jawaharlal Nehru
» Jawaharlal Nehru - all quotes »
Not a day goes by without our using the word optimism, coined by Voltaire against Leibniz, who had demonstrated (in spite of the Ecclesiastes and with the approval of the Church) that we live in the best of possible worlds. Voltaire, very reasonably, denied that exorbitant opinion... Leibniz could have replied that a world which has given us Voltaire has some right to be considered the best.
Voltaire
Regarding Bible-printing in Voltaire's homes, Theodore Besterman (former director of the "Institut et Muse Voltaire" in Geneva) stated, "None of Voltaire's homes is or ever has been connected in any way with any Bible Society. This applies to all Voltaire's homes, whether in France, Germany, Switzerland, or anywhere else".
Voltaire
What is required of us is that we love the difficult and learn to deal with it. In the difficult are the friendly forces, the hands that work on us. Right in the difficult we must have our joys, our happiness, our dreams: there against the depth of this background, they stand out, there for the first time we see how beautiful they are.
Rainer Maria Rilke
Class is the most difficult subject for American writers to deal with as it is the most difficult for the English to avoid.
Gore Vidal
The whole question of recognizing the right of a state to exist was invented solely for Israel. People, on the other hand, have a right to exist. So the people who live on the land - Israelis and Palestinians - have a right to live in security and peace.
Noam Chomsky
Nehru, Jawaharlal
Nechayev, Sergey
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