Top 100 Quotes & Sayings by Rohini Nilekani - Page 2

Climate change and air pollution know no borders, and antibiotics resistance respects no boundaries. Bacteria from Africa can make people in America sick. The burning of Indonesian forests can keep Asia gasping for breath.

It is one thing to obey a government order. It is quite another to succumb to resurrected irrational fears, especially of 'the other.'

We have to get smarter about our cities. Especially when it comes to the most basic of public services - water supply.

If the privileged in society can use that privilege to privilege others, then the consequences can be tremendous.

We all require equal access to the justice system.

India is criss-crossed with the most elegant wells that tap into the shallow aquifer.

One size doesn't fit all, and I don't have a monopoly over good ideas.

I came from a seedha-saadha middle class family in Mumbai. The Infosys story changed our life drastically but we have remained the same.

I believe that any society that allows the creation of legitimate wealth expects that the wealth be used for its benefit.

Everything does not have to be a commodity.

Indian philanthropy doesn't take enough risk.

My mission is to put a book in every child's hand.

We all need good laws, and an independent, impartial, and efficient judiciary to verify the constitutionality of those laws.

I felt very uncomfortable when I became wealthy. One of my ways of dealing with it was to give it forward right away.

Any societal platform needs a bold steward, willing to hold the moral compass and risk failure. A system steward must persist as a positive catalyst that continuously creates opportunities and sustains the grammar of the intent.

Frontiersman ideas of individualism stand exposed as we realise just how much our actions impact others.

I have a philanthropy advisor, Hari Menon, who was earlier at the Gates Foundation.

India's water challenges are intractable, messy and perennial.

We must overcome our cultural barriers that giving should be a private and silent activity.

As we celebrate a culture of giving, however, we must also sharpen the question of how extreme wealth generation happens in the first place. And we must recognize that just societies cannot be realized merely by the willful distribution of surplus wealth.

I have never hesitated to say that all philanthropists do have their politics. All of us have a political point of view; some of us articulate it, some of us don't.

When 9/11 happened, it changed things overnight, giving the biggest shock treatment to individual agency. People in the U.S., the absolute stronghold of individualism and libertarianism, had to give up many cherished freedoms and privacies in exchange for the promise of public safety.

No doubt there are dangers involved in letting children go online unsupervised.

What role can such philanthropy play in a society like ours? For one, philanthropic capital can go where markets will not go and where states often cannot go.

As a philanthropist, I fund a lot of NGOs.

Having our own children in good schools does not inure us from the ill-effect of others having theirs in poor schools. Having great roads within our gated homes and offices does not help when our fancy cars spill out on to poor public roads.

What works at scale may be different from scaling what works. Pilots often succeed, while scale-up often fails when the context changes.

Governments do have the duty to protect national interest. But we should not be afraid of foreign funding of Indian CSOs, unless malintent can be proved.

I was never the feisty kind of activist.

It was only in 2001 that I set up a foundation, Arghyam. That was pretty much to learn the ropes of how to give, what to do.

India is a groundwater civilization. Almost all Indians use groundwater, directly or indirectly, each day.

You cannot say that I get water to people. I don't physically do that. Through Araghyam, we support several NGOs across the country which are tackling the problem on a day to day basis.

India has a long tradition of giving that cuts across all sections of society. It is a living legacy that we can all be proud of.

The Giving Pledge is not meant to be prescriptive or restrictive.

When a government is in fear of dissent from its own citizens, and when its reaction is to shut out that dissent, we should all worry.

Children's ability to learn is infinite when they are engaged.

It is not easy to calculate the cost of land to build individual or community toilet systems. But we need to account for it when we total up the true cost of sanitation.

No single institution or effort can effectively create solutions for societal problems.

I was always clear that I didn't want to just do pure charity. My thinking was definitely about looking at the levers in society that will change the system of inequity, not one person's misfortune.

Depending on which of the many hydrogeological zones of India you tap into, the water can either be easy to reach or incredibly difficult to suck out.