Children’s Day 2025: Jawaharlal Nehru’s powerful words that still inspire generations

Children’s Day 2025: India celebrates the birth anniversary of Jawaharlal Nehru annually on November 14 as Children’s Day. This day has been celebrated as Children’s Day since 1959. Earlier, it was celebrated on 20th November, but following the death of Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, it was decided to celebrate Nehru's birth anniversary as Children's Day.

He established several organisations and institutions in terms of education and medicine as a part of his progressive policies that supported industrialisation, scientific research, and education. He also laid the foundation stone of the Five-Year Plans, which focused on land reforms and economic growth to uplift the rural poor and marginalised sections of society.

Here are the top inspirational quotes by Jawaharlal Nehru on life, success and education:

1. "We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm, and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."

2. "The policy of being too cautious is the greatest risk of all."

3. "Evil unchecked grows, evil tolerated poisons the whole system."

4. "Culture is the widening of the mind and of the spirit."

5. "The forces in a capitalist society, if left unchecked, tend to make the rich richer and the poor poorer."

6. "Politics and religion are obsolete. The time has come for science and spirituality."

7. "Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognised, ultimately bears fruit."

8. "Time is not measured by the passing of years but by what one does, what one feels, and what one achieves."

9. "A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance."

10. "Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes."

11. "There is nothing more horrifying than stupidity in action."

12. "Only through the right education can a better order of society be built up."

13. "A university stands for humanism, for tolerance, for reason, for the adventure of ideas and for the search for truth."

14. "Life is like a game of cards. The hand that is dealt you is determinism; the way you play it is free will."

15. "India has known the innocence and insouciance of childhood, the passion and abandon of youth, and the ripe wisdom of maturity that comes from long experience of pain and pleasure; and over and over again she has renewed her childhood and youth and age."

16. "Without that passion and urge, there is a gradual oozing out of hope and vitality, a settling down on lower levels of existence, a slow merging into non-existence."

17. "If any person raises his hand to strike down another on the ground of religion, I shall fight him till the last breath of my life, both as the head of the government and from the outside."

18. "Failure comes only when we forget our ideals and objectives and principles."

19. "The only way to reform children is to win them over with love."

20. "The children of today will make the India of tomorrow."

21. "There is no end to the adventures that we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open."

22. "Nationalism is essentially a group memory of past achievements, traditions, and experiences."

23. "What we really are matters more than what other people think of us."

24. "Without peace, all other dreams vanish and are reduced to ashes."

25. "The art of a people is a true mirror to their minds."

26. "The best and noblest gifts of humanity cannot be the monopoly of a particular race or country."

27. "Facts are facts and will not disappear on account of your likes."

28. "Loyal and efficient work in a great cause, even though it may not be immediately recognised, ultimately bears fruit."

29. "The object of education was to produce a desire to serve the community as a whole and to apply the knowledge gained not only for personal but for public welfare."

30. "A language is something infinitely greater than grammar and philology. It is the poetic testament of the genius of a race and culture and the living embodiment of the thoughts and fancies that have molded them."