The White Tiger Quotes

“In fact, each time when great men like you visit our country I say it… In my way, sir, I consider myself one of your kind.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“I’m a man of action and change.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“I am tomorrow.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“I am a self-taught entrepreneur.

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Ambition

“Indian entrepreneurs have to be straight and crooked, mocking and believing, sly and sincere, at the same time.

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Corruption; Ambition

“He’s half-baked. The country is full of people like him… And we entrust our glorious parliamentary democracy-to characters like these. That’s the whole tragedy of this country.

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Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

“Entrepreneurs are made from half-baked clay.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“They’ve got no time to name me.

Identity and Transformation

“If that’s what he wants then we’ll call you that.

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Identity and Transformation

“I am in the Light now, but I was born and raised in the Darkness.

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Poverty and Inequality; Identity and Transformation

“

...whose grip traps everything that is planted in it, suffocating and choking and shunting it.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“

... sly old Kusum.

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Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

“She had grimed her way into control of the house; every son and daughter-in-law lived in fear of her.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Poverty and Inequality

“I would drive them wherever they wanted, as faithfully as the servant-god, Hanuman, carried about his master and mistress, Ram and Sita.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

“She was the dictator of the house.

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Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

“He was a man of honour and courage. I wouldn’t be under this chandelier, if not for his guidance.

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Identity and Transformation

“I survived the city, but I couldn’t survive the women in my home.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“The story of a poor man’s life is written on his body, in a sharp pen.

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Poverty and Inequality

But my father was a man with a plan.

Poverty and Inequality; Ambition

“My whole life I have been treated like a donkey. All I want is that one son of mine- at least one- should live like a man.

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Poverty and Inequality; Ambition

What is meant to live like a man was a mystery. I thought it meant being like Vijay, the bus conductor.

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Identity and Transformation; Ambition

“Everything about him said: he had made it in life… I wanted to be like Vijay.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“Any boy in any village can grow up to become the prime minister of India.

Poverty and Inequality; Ambition

“That’s what you are in this jungle.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“One infallible law in the Darkness is that good news becomes bad news.

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Poverty and Inequality

“I am the man people call when they have a crisis.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“They remain slaves because they can’t see what is beautiful in this world.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Poverty and Inequality

“I was destined not to stay a slave.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Ambition

“My little Laxmangarh…

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Identity and Transformation

“I could gloat that I am not just any murderer, but one who killed his own employer.

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Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

“

... who is a kind of second father.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

“My ex.

Identity and Transformation

“It was such a handsome face that sometimes I couldn’t take my eyes off it.

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Identity and Transformation

“

... murder a man and you feel responsible for his life- possessive, even.

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Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

“You won’t find me saying one bad thing about him… I protected his good name when I was

his servant, and now that I am (in a sense) his master, I won’t stop protecting his good

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name.

Corruption; Identity and Transformation

“I owe him so much.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

“I am not an original thinker- but I am an original listener.

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Identity and Transformation; Ambition

“I’ve always been a big believer in education- especially my own.

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Ambition

“They know they won’t get any job today. They’ve given up the fight.

Poverty and Inequality

“I dipped into a Ganga of black- and a driver came out.

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Identity and Transformation

“The road is a jungle… a good driver must roar to get ahead of it.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“What is he doing in Dhanbad? Why isn’t he back home, screwing poor fishermen out of their money and humping their daughters?”

Corruption; Ambition

“There’s no reward for entrepreneurship in India.

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Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

“And I knew that my future depended on the answer to this question.

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Ambition; Identity and Transformation

“

...cages had been let open, and the animals had attacked and ripped each other apart.

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Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

“Jungle law replaced Zoo law.

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Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

...anyone with a belly could rise up… My father had not had the belly to fight back.:

Poverty and Inequality; Ambition

“Men with Big Bellies,and Men with Small Bellies. And only two destinies: eat- or get eaten.

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Poverty and Inequality; Corruption

“That’s the amazing thing about entrepreneurs. We are like sponges- we absorb and grow.

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Ambition

“They expect it from us Ashok. Remember that- they respect us for it.

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Corruption

“Is there any hatred on earth like the hatred of the number two servant for the number one.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Poverty and Inequality

“Don’t pull the chain so hard! They’re worth more than you are.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“And so I saw the room with his eyes; smelled it with his nose; poked it with his fingers- I had already begun to digest my master.

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Identity and Transformation

“The family was larger. The needs were more. I was being chastised by all for not sending money each month.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“You’ll do what we want.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Corruption

“They were eating him alive in there! They would do the same thing to him- that they did to Father- scoop him out from the inside and leave him weak and helpless.

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Poverty and Inequality

“Yes, I feel that way too! I’m never going back there!”

Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

“There are so many more things I could do here than in New York now.

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Ambition

We call him a servant, but he’s part of the family.

Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

“I’m just a murderer!”

Identity and Transformation

“There was an election coming up, and the tea shop owner had already sold us. He had sold our fingerprints.

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Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

“

... but the mud of Mother Ganga had sucked him in.

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Poverty and Inequality

“That was the thing about Vijay; each time you saw him he had done better for himself. He was a born politician.

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Corruption; Ambition

“Whatever was being done, was being done for our own good.

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Corruption

“He had declared himself free of the Darkness: he had made his Benaras that day.

Identity and Transformation; Freedom vs. Servitude

“I am India’s most faithful voter, and I still have not seen the inside of a voting booth.

Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

... a landlord bowing down before a pigherd’s son! The marvels of democracy!”

Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

“He humiliated all our masters- that’s why we kept voting him back in.

Corruption; Poverty and Inequality

“I was servant number one from now on in this household.

Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

“Part of me wanted to get up and apologise to him right there.

Identity and Transformation

“It’s just like our mother always said. She knew you were going to make it.

Ambition

“I’ve got no family anymore. All I’ve got is chandeliers.

Poverty and Inequality; Identity and Transformation

“Free people don’t know the value of freedom, that’s the problem.

Freedom vs. Servitude

“A man in hiding yet he’s surrounded by chandeliers!”

Identity and Transformation; Corruption

“I’m revealing the secret to a successful escape. The police searched for me in the Darkness, but I hid myself in the Light. In Bangalore!”

Freedom vs. Servitude; Identity and Transformation

Just because drivers and cooks in Delhi are reading Murder Weekly, it doesn’t mean that they are all about to slit their masters’ necks. Of course, they’d like to.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Corruption

“My master doesn’t do these things. He’s a good man.

Freedom vs. Servitude

“Servants need to abuse other servants. It’s been bred into us. We attack anyone who’s familiar.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Poverty and Inequality

“Maybe everyone who lives in the city gets to be slow and stupid like this.

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Identity and Transformation

“Balram is here too! Balram is here too!”

Identity and Transformation

“We were like two separate cities- inside and outside the dark egg. I knew I was in the right city.

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Identity and Transformation; Freedom vs. Servitude

“So I was in some way out of the car too, even while I was driving it.

Identity and Transformation

“Mr. Ashok was a first-gear man. He liked to start things, but nothing held his attention for long.

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Identity and Transformation

“

... completely unprotected by the usual instincts that run in the blood of a landlord… If you were back in Laxmangarh, we would have called you the lamb.

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Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“Good, Balram. Good. Family is a good thing.

Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

“He’s raw from the village, still pure. Let city life corrupt him first.

Identity and Transformation; Corruption

“Am I not a human being too?”

Poverty and Inequality; Freedom vs. Servitude

“If one of us were like that, we’d rule India, and they would be polishing our boots.

Ambition; Poverty and Inequality

“Why had he raised me to live like an animal? Why do all the poor live amid such filth, such ugliness?... If only a man could spit out his past so easily.

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Poverty and Inequality

“It was my first taste of the fugitive’s life.

Identity and Transformation; Freedom vs. Servitude

“O-lamb-that-was-born-from-the-loins-of-a-landlord.

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Identity and Transformation

“But this man, as I’ve told you, was different- he was capable of becoming someone better than his father.

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Identity and Transformation; Ambition

“People are always taking advantage of him. If it were just me and him in the car, nothing bad would ever have happened to either of us.

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Freedom vs. Servitude

... wrinkle of worry for my fate on his forehead… hand reach across and steady the steering

wheel so that the car wouldn’t hit me? … I’d like to think so.

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Identity and Transformation

“You’re part of the family.

Corruption; Freedom vs. Servitude

“We have left the villages, but the masters still own us, body, soul and arse… we all live in the world’s greatest democracy here.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Poverty and Inequality; Corruption

“It’s because 99.9 percent of us are caught in the Rooster Coop just like those poor guys in the poultry market.

Freedom vs. Servitude; Poverty and Inequality

... yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.

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Freedom vs. Servitude

“He’s no Ghandi, he’s human… but he’s in the Rooster Coop… The Great Indian Rooster Coop.

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Freedom vs. Servitude; Corruption

“

... a servitude so strong that you can put the key of his emancipation in a man’s hands and he will throw it back at you with a curse.

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Freedom vs. Servitude