"India has a medieval and authoritarian structure of society and the tradition of science is not yet strong. The power of government officials is increasing as an inescapable result of the pervasive anthoritarian character of lndian society."

"The transformation of the advanced countries to their present stage has been brought about by the acceptance of a scientiﬁc and rational view of life and nature. The scientiﬁc view has already permeated in a large measure the administrative organizations of the advanced countries. The scientiﬁc revolution, the social revolution and the industrial revolution are three aspects of the modernization of every society; these three aspects may be distinguished but cannot be separated. The rate of economic growth in every country is determined both directly and indirectly by the rate of progress of science and technology; directly through the utilization of the results of research and development, and indirectly through institutional changes brought about by the increasing inﬂuence of the scientiﬁc out-look and tradition."

"some evidence is available to indicate that, in India, an increase in the income of the poorer people leads to an increase in the size of the family; and also that this tapers off after a certain critical level of income is attained, and is followed by a reduction in the size of the family at higher levels of living When a sufﬁcient number of people reach the critical income, there would be a gradual decrease in the average birth rate with further increase in income."

"Population in India is widely differentiated in ethnic composition, geographical and climatic conditions, social and cultural stratiﬁcation, as well as by differences in economic status. Differential fertility therefore assumes a far more complex picture in India than anywhere in the world. Ethnic. geographical. socio-cultural and economic dilferences give a four-fold patterning with many complicated interactions. It is essential therefore to study different population groups separately."

"Because demography is concerned with human affairs and human populatlons it is possible, in principle, to consider demography as a sub-ﬁeld of many other subjects. It provided the scope of any particular subject-ﬁeld like anthropology, genetics, ecology, economics, sociology, etc., and is deﬁned in a sufﬁciently comprehensive manner. While not denying the possibility of considering demography as a sub-ﬁeld of one or another subject, at least for certain special purposes, it is suggested that demography should be logically viewed as the totality of convergent and inter-related factors and topics which (although these could be, spearately, the concern of many diﬂ'erent subjects like genetics and anthropology, sociology, education, psychology. economics, social and political affairs etc.) jointly, together with their mutual inter-actions, form the determinants as well as the consequences of growth (or decline), changes in composition, territorial movements, and social mobility of population in different geographical regions or in the world as a whole, at any given period of time, or over diﬂ'erent periods of time. Such a view would supply an aggregative, inter-related, and mutually interacting system of all those factors which have any inﬂuence over, or are inﬂuenced by, demographic or population changes over space and time."

"He sometimes spoke of "zero" as the symbol of the absolute (Nirguna Brahman) of the extreme monistic school of Hindu philosophy, that is, the reality to which no qualities can be attributed, which cannot be defined or described by words and which is completely beyond the reach of the human mind. According to Ramanujan the appropriate symbol was the number "zero" which is the absolute negation of all attributes."

"Your "conscious life" is an elaborate after-the-fact rationalization of things you really do for other reasons."

"Here is this mass of jelly - three pound mass of jelly - that you can hold in the palm of your hand, and it can contemplate the vastness of interstellar space, it can contemplate the meaning of infinity, and it can contemplate itself contemplating the meaning of infinity."

"Whether a country is to be called 'civilised' or not, depends not on how affluent the upper 10 per cent are, but how well they treat the lower 10 per cent."

"Any ape can reach for a banana, but only a human can reach for the stars or even know what that means."

"Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don't feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence."

"What neurology tells us is that the self consists of many components, and the notion of one unitary self may well be an illusion."