Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar Quotes

Freedom of mind is the real freedom. A person whose mind is not free though he may not be in chains, is a slave, not a free man. One whose mind is not free, though he may not be in prison, is a prisoner and not a free man. One whose mind is not free though alive, is no better than dead. Freedom of mind is the proof of one's existence.

If I find the constitution being misused, I shall be the first to burn it.

Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.

Life should be great rather than long.

Indifferentism is the worst kind of disease that can affect people.

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.

Lost rights are never regained by appeals to the conscience of the usurpers, but by relentless struggle.... Goats are used for sacrificial offerings and not lions.

I like the religion that teaches liberty, equality and fraternity.

Equality may be a fiction but nonetheless one must accept it as a governing principle.

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.

So long as you do not achieve social liberty, whatever freedom is provided by the law is of no avail to you.

Constitution is not a mere lawyers document, it is a vehicle of Life, and its spirit is always the spirit of Age.

A bitter thing cannot be made sweet. The taste of anything can be changed. But poison cannot be changed into nectar.

Slavery does not merely mean a legalised form of subjection. It means a state of society in which some men are forced to accept from others the purposes which control their conduct.

Every man who repeats the dogma of Mill that one country is no fit to rule another country must admit that one class is not fit to rule another class.

I do not want that our loyalty as Indians should be in the slightest way affected by any competitive loyalty whether that loyalty arises out of our religion, out of our culture or out of our language. I want all people to be Indians first, Indian last and nothing else but Indians.

Every man must have a philosophy of life, for everyone must have a standard by which to measure his conduct. And philosophy is nothing but a standard by which to measure.

religion is for man and not man for religion

The teachings of Buddha are eternal, but even then Buddha did not proclaim them to be infallible. The religion of Buddha has the capacity to change according to times, a quality which no other religion can claim to have... Now what is the basis of Buddhism? If you study carefully, you will see that Buddhism is based on reason. There is an element of flexibility inherent in it, which is not found in any other religion.

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.

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.

The basic idea underlying religion is to create an atmosphere for the spiritual development of the individual.

Justice has always evoked ideas of equality, of proportion of compensation. Equity signifies equality. Rules and regulations, right and righteousness are concerned with equality in value. If all men are equal, then all men are of the same essence, and the common essence entitles them of the same fundamental rights and equal liberty... In short justice is another name of liberty, equality and fraternity.

One cannot have any respect or regard for men who take the position of the reformer and then refuse to see the logical consequences of that position, let alone following them out in action.

If you ask me, my ideal would be the society based on liberty, equality and fraternity. An ideal society should be mobile and full of channels of conveying a change taking place in one part to other parts.

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.

Reading Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar bridges the gap between what most Indians are schooled to believe in and the reality we experience every day of our lives.

Why does a human body become deceased? The reason is that as long as the human body is not free from suffering, mind cannot be happy. If a man lacks enthusiasm, either his body or mind is in a deceased condition.... Now what saps the enthusiasm in man? If there is no enthusiasm, life becomes drudgery - a mere burden to be dragged. Nothing can be achieved if there is no enthusiasm. The main reason for this lack of enthusiasm on the part of a man is that an individual looses the hope of getting an opportunity to elevate himself. Hopelessness leads to lack of enthusiasm. The mind in such cases becomes deceased.... When is enthusiasm created? When one breaths an atmosphere where one is sure of getting the legitimate reward for one's labor, only then one feels enriched by enthusiasm and inspiration.

Law and order are the medicine of the politic body and when the politic body gets sick, medicine must be administered.

Seligman described Ambedkar as ‘an excellent student and a nice fellow, moderate, broad, and able’.

Fond of Shakespeare, Ambedkar would later cite apt lines from various plays to fit the circumstances.

One he was especially attracted to was Brutus’s words in Julius Caesar: ‘There is a tide in the affairs of men. Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune.

As Seligman would write ten years later in the preface to Ambedkar’s published PhD, ‘The value of Mr. Ambedkar’s contribution to this discussion lies in the objective recitation of the facts and the impartial analysis …’9

Ambedkar boldly asserted that the essence of caste was the control of women’s sexuality—foremost, the practice of endogamy.

What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?