S. Jaishankar

"You used the dichotomy of democracy and autocracy. You want a truthful answer? It is hypocrisy. We have a set of self-appointed custodians of the world who find it very difficult to stomach that somebody in India is not looking for their approval, is not willing to play the game they want to play. So they invent their rules, their parameters, pass their judgments and make it look as if it is some kind of global exercise."

"Europe has to grow out of the mindset that Europe's problems are the world's problems, but the world's problems are not Europe's problems."

"We are not debating just a documentary or a speech that somebody gave in a European city or a newspaper edits somewhere -- we are debating, actually politics, which is being conducted ostensibly as media -- there is a phrase 'war by other means' this is politics by another means -- I mean you will do a hatchet job, you want to do a hatchet job and say this is just another quest for truth which we decided after 20 years to put at this time."

"Look, they (China) are the bigger economy. What am I going to do? As a smaller economy, I am going to pick up a fight with the bigger economy? It is not a question of being reactionary, it’s a question of common sense."

"It is not the West which is flooding Asia and Africa with goods on a massive scale. I think we need to get over the syndrome of the past that the West is the bad guy and on the other side are the developing countries. The world is more complicated, the problems are much more complicated than that."

"If I change the name of your house, does it become my house?"

"If Pakistan vacates PoK, Kashmir issue will be ‘solved’"

"Jaishankar has a deserved reputation for intellectual depth and gravitas to go with this his decades of experience as a career diplomat and then an articulate (but not angry) champion of India’s non-Western (but not anti-Western) perspectives."