"The old adage of “opposites attract” doesn’t hold true any more. It’s about being the other half of a “power couple” in which synergy and resonance are important."
Rama Bijapurkar, well-known marketing strategy consultant, on the changing character of marriages (Business Standard, October 16)
"Making good the tear in our republic’s fabric that Ayodhya caused will lie not in the wealth of economics or the principles of law, but in the struggles and inventions of our politics."
Sunil Khilnani in Mint Lounge (October 16)
"The nations that out-educate us today will out-compete us tomorrow."
Jill Biden, US Second Lady, at a White House summit explaining the critical role community colleges play in meeting the nation’s job-training needs (Time, October 18)
"We can’t create that kind of infrastructure (800 universities and 40,000 colleges). And it is not even the government’s job to create that with public funding. Therefore we need the private sector and foreign direct investment to take a pivotal role in moulding the country’s higher education."
Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal speaking at a Higher Education Conclave in Kolkata (October 20)
"Now thanks to Lords Paul and Bhatia and Baroness Uddin, the world might wonder if honesty means the same thing in India as in Europe and America."
Well-known journalist Sunanda K. Datta-Ray on the suspension of three Asian peers from the British House of Lords (Business Standard, October 23)
"Arundhati Roy has become a joke, a publicity fiend. She hops from cause to cause, and just look at the company she’s keeping... the likes of Syed Ali Shah Geelani, an ultimate bigot who wants to keep women in purdah and bring in an Islamic theocracy."
Historian Ramchandra Guha on author-activist Arundhati Roy’s latest comment on Kashmir never having been a part of India (Bangalore Mirror, October 29)
"I am a very playful person, full of life. I love life, I love women."
Italy’s prime minister Silvio Berlusconi (74)