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" A witticism in an airport security line is like a Swiss tap - turn it on, and you instantly find yourself in hot water. "
Shashi Tharoor
Water
Hot
Yourself
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" A weak, insecure nation needs sporting heroes, players larger than life on the cricketing field, who can transcend the limitations of their country and team. "
Shashi Tharoor
Life
Team
Country
" Five decades ago, as India's first prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, began visibly ailing, the nation and the world were consumed by the question: 'After Nehru, who?' The inexpressible fear lay in the subtext to the question: 'After Nehru, what?' "
Shashi Tharoor
World
Question
Nation
" India's national elections are really an aggregate of thirty different state elections, each influenced by its own local considerations, regional political currents, and different patterns of political incumbency. "
Shashi Tharoor
India
Thirty
Political
" I have been a frequent air traveler since I was a few months shy of my sixth birthday, when my parents packed me off to boarding school two plane rides away from home. Those days of being willingly handed from air hostess to air hostess as an 'unaccompanied minor' made me blase about the rigors of air travel. "
Shashi Tharoor
Home
School
Parents
" I am proud to represent the capital of Kerala, a state that in so many ways is a trailblazer for India's progress, though in other respects it seems to have been left behind in the race for 21st century development. "
Shashi Tharoor
I Am
Proud
Progress
" Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America. "
Shashi Tharoor
Government
Love
Music
" The roots of India's soft power run deep. India's is a civilization that, over millennia, has offered refuge and, more importantly, religious and cultural freedom, to Jews, Parsis, several varieties of Christians, and Muslims. "
Shashi Tharoor
Freedom
India
Power
" Though the euphoria surrounding Barack Obama's election last week as President-elect has not yet begun to subside, it is already time to recognise that the most important challenge facing the next U.S. president is to restore America's standing in the eyes of the world. "
Shashi Tharoor
Election
World
Challenge
" The United Nations is the preeminent institution of multilateralism. It provides a forum where sovereign states can come together to share burdens, address common problems, and seize common opportunities. The U.N. helps establish the norms that many countries - including the United States - would like everyone to live by. "
Shashi Tharoor
Together
Problems
Opportunities
" Going abroad to study as a teenager, and joining the United Nations at 22, confirmed my ease with the world of the frequent flyer. I saw the average airport terminal as a familiar haven, like a friend's sitting room. But 9/11 changed all that. "
Shashi Tharoor
Friend
Sitting
Study
" Indian democracy has often been likened to the stately progress of the elephant - ponderous in its gait and reluctant to change course, but not easily swayed from its new path when it does. "
Shashi Tharoor
Change
New
Path
" I returned to India after long years of international service, because I had always cherished the desire to make a difference in my own country. "
Shashi Tharoor
Long
Make A Difference
Service
" The abrupt and sudden death of my wife has taken a severe emotional and psychic toll on me. On top of that, some people have stooped so low that they have tried to use my personal tragedy for their personal benefit. "
Shashi Tharoor
Me
Death
People
" I returned to India because I believe in an India of honesty and hard work, not of corruption and crookedness. I believe in an India of openness and straightforwardness, not of hypocrisy and double-dealing. I believe in an India where opportunities are available to all, and not just to a chosen few. "
Shashi Tharoor
Work
Opportunities
Honesty
" Many of the people who are most considered anti-American would love to partake of the American dream: the unspoken slogan of many protesters outside U.S. embassies abroad is really: 'Yankee go home, but take me with you.' "
Shashi Tharoor
Me
American Dream
Home
" As an Indian, and now as a politician and a government minister, I've become rather concerned about the hype we're hearing about our own country, all this talk about India becoming a world leader, even the next superpower. "
Shashi Tharoor
Country
Leader
Talk
" I believe in an India of pluralism and diversity, not of religious bigotry and caste politics. I believe in an India that is secure in itself and confident of its place in the world, an India that is a proud example of tolerance, freedom and hope for the downtrodden. "
Shashi Tharoor
Hope
Freedom
Diversity
" Because so many voters happen to be illiterate, India invented the party symbol, so that voters who could not read the name of their candidate could vote for him or her anyway by recognizing the symbol under which they campaigned. "
Shashi Tharoor
Him
Her
Vote
" Malaysians talk with Mauritians, Arabs with Australians, South Africans with Sri Lankans, and Iranians with Indonesians. The Indian Ocean serves as both a sea separating them and a bridge linking them together. "
Shashi Tharoor
Them
Talk
Bridge
" The Chinese, as befits a Communist autocracy, approached the task of dominating the Olympics with top-down military discipline. "
Shashi Tharoor
Task
Communist
Discipline
" I don't go by my caste, creed or religion. My works speak for me. "
Shashi Tharoor
Caste
Speak
Religion
" Above all, Danny Boyle's 'Slumdog Millionaire' is the work of an artist at the peak of his powers. India is his palette, and Mumbai - that teeming 'maximum city', with 19 million strivers on the make, jostling, scheming, struggling and killing for success - is his brush. "
Shashi Tharoor
Artist
City
Work
" The Internet is emblematic of an era in which what happens in Southeast Asia or southern Africa - from democratic advances to deforestation to the fight against aids - can affect Americans. As has been observed about water pollution, we all live downstream now. "
Shashi Tharoor
Internet
Pollution
Live
" If China wants to build a new six-lane expressway, it can bulldoze its way past any number of villages in its path; in India, if you want to widen a two-lane road, you could be tied up in court for a dozen years over compensation entitlements. "
Shashi Tharoor
Path
Build
India
" Global challenges also require global solutions, and few indeed are the situations in which the United States or any other country can act completely alone. "
Shashi Tharoor
Solutions
Challenges
Alone
" The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians. "
Shashi Tharoor
Power
Reflection
America
" The episode of the 'shoe bomber,' Richard Reid, has suddenly meant more feet being bared at airports than at the average Hindu temple. My solution has been to replace my customary lace-up Oxfords with a pair of slip-on loafers when I fly. Generals are always fighting the last war, and security screeners are the same. "
Shashi Tharoor
War
Shoe
Fighting
" In China, national priorities are established by the Government and then funded by the state; in India, priorities emerge from seemingly endless discussions and arguments amongst myriad interests, and funds have to be found where they might. "
Shashi Tharoor
India
China
Priorities
" The Beijing Olympics were an exercise in Chinese soft power. Americans have the 'Voice of America' and the Fulbright scholarships. But, the fact is, in fact, that probably Hollywood and MTV and McDonalds have done more for American soft power around the world than any specifically government activity. "
Shashi Tharoor
America
Power
World
" The closest Indian analogy to the position of black Americans is that of the Dalits - formerly called 'Untouchables,' the outcastes who for millennia suffered humiliating discrimination and oppression. "
Shashi Tharoor
Oppression
Discrimination
Black