To be outspoken is easy when you do not wait to speak the complete truth.
Use itEssay on free speech; bluntness is easy, complete truth demands patience and rigour.
Quotes / Thinkers / Rabindranath Tagore
Thinker · 26 quotes
Rabindranath Tagore quotes for UPSC
26 sourced quotes by Rabindranath Tagore on compassion & empathy, character & virtue, nation, unity & diversity, truth & wisdom, resilience & perseverance, with a use case for each in GS4, Essay and interviews.
✓ Attributions checked against Wikiquote's sourced list
He who is too busy doing good finds no time to be good.
Use itGS4: distinguish performing good deeds from being good; avoid virtue-signalling.
We come nearest to the great when we are great in humility.
Use itGS4 on humility; greatness is approached through humility, not pride.
Men are cruel, but Man is kind.
Use itEssay on human nature; individuals may be cruel but humanity at large is kind.
Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.
Use itEssay on service; life's worth is earned by giving to others.
He who wants to do good knocks at the gate; he who loves finds the gate open.
Use itGS4: love-driven service opens doors that duty-bound do-gooding only knocks on.
Every person is worthy of an infinite wealth of love — the beauty of his soul knows no limit.
— Rabindranath TagoreGlimpses of Bengal (1921)
Use itGS4 on human dignity; every person deserves boundless love and respect.
God seeks comrades and claims love, the Devil seeks slaves and claims obedience.
Use itGS4 on leadership; good leaders seek partners and loyalty, tyrants seek slaves and obedience.
The roots below the earth claim no rewards for making the branches fruitful.
Use itGS4 on anonymity and selfless service; civil servants as roots seeking no reward.
All the great utterances of man have to be judged not by the letter but by the spirit — the spirit which unfolds itself with the growth of life in history.
— Rabindranath TagorePreface
Use itGS2 on Constitution as living document; read great texts by spirit, not letter.
In the world's audience hall, the simple blade of grass sits on the same carpet with the sunbeams, and the stars of midnight.
Use itEssay on equality and dignity; the humblest shares the same carpet as the brightest.
I was born in what was once the metropolis of British India. My own ancestors came floating to Calcutta upon the earliest tide of the fluctuating fortune of the East India Company. The unconventional code of life for our family has been a confluence of three cultures, the Hindu, Mohammedan and British.
Use itGS1 on syncretic Indian culture; Hindu, Mughal and British influences converging.
The idea of the Nation is one of the most powerful anaesthetics that Man has invented. Under the influence of its fumes the whole people can carry out its systematic programme of the most virulent self-seeking without being in the least aware of its moral perversion,-in fact feeling dangerously resentful if it is pointed out.
— Rabindranath Tagore"Nationalism in the West", 1917. Reprinted in Rabindranath Tagore and Mohit K. Ray, Essays (2007, p. 465). Also cited in Parmanand Parashar,
Use itEssay on nationalism vs humanism; aggressive nationalism numbs moral conscience.
If you shut your door to all errors truth will be shut out.
Use itEssay on innovation; fear of error shuts out discovery and truth.
The truth comes as conqueror only because we have lost the art of receiving it as guest.
— Rabindranath TagoreThe Fourfold Way of India (1924); this has become paraphrased as "Truth comes as conqueror only to those who have lost the art of receiving
Use itEssay on openness; truth forces itself on us when we fail to welcome it.
The time has come when badges of honour make our shame glaring in the incongruous context of humiliation, and I for my part, wish to stand, shorn, of all special distinctions, by the side of those of my countrymen who, for their so called insignificance, are liable to suffer degradation not fit for human beings.
— Rabindranath TagoreLetter to Lord Chelmsford, Viceroy of India, renouncing his knighthood in protest of the 1919 Jallianwala Bagh massacre
Use itGS1 on Jallianwala Bagh; Tagore renouncing knighthood in solidarity with countrymen.
India chose her places of pilgrimages on the top of hills and mountains, by the side of the holy rivers, in the heart of forests and by the shores of the ocean, which along with the sky, is our nearest visible symbol of the vast, the boundless, the infinite and the sublime.
— Rabindranath Tagorequoted in Sastri, K. S. Ramaswami Dewan Bahadur Indian Culture and the Modern Age Annamalai University. 1956 p. 32-33, and in Londhe, S. (20
Use itGS1 on Indian culture; pilgrimage sites reflect reverence for nature and the infinite.
You can’t cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water.
— Rabindranath TagoreStray Birds (1916)
Use itLife: goals need action, not just staring at them; start the preparation.
If you shed tears when you miss the sun, you also miss the stars.
Use itLife: don't grieve a lost opportunity so much that you miss new ones.
Light finds her treasure of colours through the antagonism of clouds.
Use itLife: struggles and opposition bring out one's true colours.
The butterfly counts not months but moments, and has time enough.
Use itLife: live in moments, not months; enough time if present.
When old words die out on the tongue, new melodies break forth from the heart; and where the old tracks are lost, new country is revealed with its wonders.
Use itLife/Essay on change; when old paths close, new possibilities open.
Praise shames me, for I secretly beg for it.
Use itLife/GS4: honest self-examination about craving praise and recognition.
We read the world wrong and say that it deceives us.
Use itLife/Essay: we misread reality and then blame the world for deceiving us.
A mind all logic is like a knife all blade. It makes the hand bleed that uses it.
Use itGS4 on emotional intelligence; pure logic without feeling harms its user.
Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of man.
Use itEssay on children/hope; every new child renews faith in humanity's future.