A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

For success of any mission, it is necessary to have creative leadership. Creative leadership is vital for government, non-governmental organisations as well as for industries.

Over the years, I had nurtured the hope to be able to fly; to handle a machine as it rose higher and higher in the stratosphere was my dearest dream.

It's when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that's the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.

We must think and act like a nation of a billion people and not like that of a million people. Dream, dream, dream!

Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is harmony in the house; when there is harmony in the house, there is order in the nation; when there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.

My 2020 Vision for India is to transform it into a developed nation. That cannot be abstract; it is a lifeline.

If four things are followed - having a great aim, acquiring knowledge, hard work, and perseverance - then anything can be achieved.

Real education enhances the dignity of a human being and increases his or her self-respect. If only the real sense of education could be realized by each individual and carried forward in every field of human activity, the world will be so much a better place to live in.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

To become 'unique,' the challenge is to fight the hardest battle which anyone can imagine until you reach your destination.

No sanction can stand against ignited minds.

How accurately can the law fix the crime? There has to be a mechanism for very fast action. The law is like this: catch them and punish them.

War is never a lasting solution for any problem.

Writing is my love. If you love something, you find a lot of time. I write for two hours a day, usually starting at midnight; at times, I start at 11.

Smart habitation is an integrated area of villages and a city working in harmony and where the rural and urban divide has reduced to thin line.

I have met 18 million youth, and each wants to be unique.

I firmly believe that unless one has tasted the bitter pill of failure, one cannot aspire enough for success.

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman.

Nations consist of people. And with their effort, a nation can accomplish all it could ever want.

One of the more difficult tasks for me as president was to decide on the issue of confirming capital punishment awarded by courts... to my surprise... almost all cases which were pending had a social and economic bias.