"I want education for the sons and daughters of the Taliban and all the terrorists and extremists."
Malala Yousafzai, Pakistani teenage education activist, addressing UN Youth Assembly (July 13)
"Modi says we “hide behind the burqa of secul-arism”. Preferable, surely, to the khaki shorts of intol-erance and hatred that he now tries to hide?"
Shashi Tharoor, Union HRD minister, commenting on Gujarat chief minister Narendra Modi’s remarks on Congress secularism (July 15)
"You know, when Trayvon Martin was first shot I said that this could have been my son. Another way of saying that is: Trayvon Martin could have been me 35 years ago."
US President Barack Obama reacting to the acquittal of George Zimmerman for shooting Trayvon Martinan, an unarmed African-American teenager (July 20)
"It is an illusion that English is the only means to progress. It’s not true. The maximum cases of corruption and irregularities are committed by such educated people."
Mohan Bhagwat, RSS chief, defending BJP chief Rajnath Singh’s comment that the English language has caused great loss to the country (Deccan Chronicle, July 27)
"Growth is really vitally important and I’ve never wavered from that.. I have been a great believer in economic growth but not as an end in itself, but as a means to enhancing human lives."
Nobel laureate Amartya Sen on the growth vs. development debate (Financial Express, July 26)
"I am for redistribution (spending revenue for the poor), but unlike Mr. Sen I do not pretend somehow money will materialise by our wishing for it, as in some of our mythological tales."
Well-known economist Jagdish Bhagwati responding to Amartya Sen (Business Standard, July 27)
"When I used to do my social work, I visited a remote village in Orissa that didn’t have enough food to eat, but had expired Fair and Lovely tubes."
Nandita Das, actress-director, on starring in and endorsing The Dark is Beautiful national advertising campaign (Mint Lounge, July 27)