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“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

“Politics will help you understand the world until you don’t understand it anymore, and then it will get you thrown into a prison camp. Politics and religion both.”
― Heather Morris, The Tattooist of Auschwitz

“I measure the progress of a community by the degree of progress which women have achieved.”
― Bhim Rao Ambedkar

“If I find the constitution being misused, I shall be the first to burn it.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“In the Hindu religion, one can[not] have freedom of speech. A Hindu must surrender his freedom of speech. He must act according to the Vedas. If the Vedas do not support the actions, instructions must be sought from the Smritis, and if the Smritis fail to provide any such instructions, he must follow in the footsteps of the great men.
He is not supposed to reason. Hence, so long as you are in the Hindu religion, you cannot expect to have freedom of thought”
― B.R. Ambedkar

“On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality.
In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value.
In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value.

How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions?
How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life?
If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril. We must remove this contradiction at the earliest possible moment or else those who suffer from inequality will blow up the structure of political democracy which this Assembly has so laboriously built up.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“Unlike a drop of water which loses its identity when it joins the ocean,
man does not lose his being in the society in which he lives.
Man's life is independent.
He is born not for the development of the society alone, but for the development of his self too.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“Constitutional morality is not a natural sentiment. It has to be cultivated. We must realise that our people have yet to learn it. Democracy in India is only a top-dressing on an Indian soil which is essentially undemocratic.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“Though, I was born a Hindu, I solemnly assure you that I will not die as a Hindu”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“It is not enough to be electors only.
It is necessary to be law-makers;
otherwise those who can be law-makers will be the masters of those who can only be electors.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“A historian ought to be exact, sincere and impartial;
free from passion, unbiased by interest, fear, resentment or affection;
and faithful to the truth, which is the mother of history the preserver of great actions, the enemy of oblivion, the witness of the past, the director of the future.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“Political tyranny is nothing compared to the social tyranny and a reformer who defies society is a more courageous man than a politician who defies Government.”
― Bhim Rao Ambedkar

“religion is for man and not man for religion”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“A safe army is better than a safe border”
― Bhim Rao Ambedkar

“My definition of democracy is -
A form and a method of Government whereby revolutionary changes in the social life are brought about without bloodshed.
That is the real test. It is perhaps the severest test. But when you are judging the quality of the material you must put it to the severest test.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“Law and order are the medicine of the politic body and when the politic body gets sick, medicine must be administered.”
― Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar

“Dalit aspirations are a breach of peace. Annihilation of Caste is a breach of peace.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: The Annotated Critical Edition

“There can thus be no manner of doubt that the Muslim Society in India is afflicted by the same social evils as afflict the Hindu Society. Indeed, the Muslims have all the social evils of the Hindus and something more. That something more is the compulsory system of purdah for Muslim women. As a consequence of the purdah system a segregation of the Muslim women is brought about. The”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Pakistan or the Partition of India

“In my opinion, it is only when Hindu society becomes a casteless society that it can hope to have strength enough to defend itself. Without such internal strength, swaraj for Hindus may turn out to be only a step towards slavery.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“You must not only discard the Shastras, you must deny their authority, as did Buddha and Nanak. You must have courage to tell the Hindus that what is wrong with them is their religion—the religion which has produced in them this notion of the sacredness of Caste. Will you show that courage?”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste

“To the 'Untouchables', Hinduism is a veritable chamber of horrors.

Dr. Babasaheb Ambedkar (Writings and Speeches, Volume: 9, pg: 296)”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Writings And Speeches: A Ready Reference Manual

“The saints have never according to my study carried on a campaign against. Caste and Untouchability. They were not concerned with the struggle between men. They were concerned with the relation between man and God. They did not preach that all men were equal. They preached that all men were equal, in the eyes of God a very different and a very innocuous proposition which nobody can find difficult to preach or dangerous to believe in.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Annihilation of Caste: With a Reply to Mahatma Gandhi

“Nothing is infallible. Nothing is binding forever. Everything is subject to inquiry and examination.”
― B.R. Ambedkar, Buddha or Karl Marx

“The Hindus accuse the Muslims of contumacy. The Muslims accuse Hindus of meanness. Both, however, forget that the communal problem exists not because the Muslims are extravagant and insolent in their demands and the Hindus are mean and grudging in their concessions. It exists and will exist wherever a hostile majority is brought face to face against a hostile minority.”
― B.R. Ambedkar

“In the way that scepticism is sometimes applied to issues of public concern, there is a tendency to belittle, to condescend, to ignore the fact that, deluded or not, supporters of superstition and pseudoscience are human beings with real feelings, who, like the sceptics, are trying to figure out how the world works and what our role in it might be. Their motives are in many cases consonant with science. If their culture has not given them all the tools they need to pursue this great quest, let us temper our criticism with kindness. None of us comes fully equipped.”
― Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark

“A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“(i) Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
(ii) Never use a long word where a short one will do.
(iii) If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
(iv) Never use the passive where you can use the active.
(v) Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
(vi) Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.”
― George Orwell, Politics and the English Language

“I can't be a pessimist because I am alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter. So, I am forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive, whatever we must survive.”
― James Baldwin