"You were talking about the other ministries I am involved in, but I can tell you that this (the HRD ministry) is my first love and my last love… because there is nothing more important than building India’s future."
Union HRD minister Kapil Sibal, who has recently been given additional charge of the telecom ministry, at a event to felicitate Kendriya Vidyalaya teachers in Delhi (December 13)
"The dragon and the elephant should tango."
Chinese premier Wen Jiabao on the need for India (the elephant) and China (the dragon) to work together (December 16)
"We will never build a nation until we start recognising and respecting the aam admi (common man). We will never build a nation until we build a system in which this man’s progress is not based on who he knows but on what he knows. This is the challenge of our generation."
Rahul Gandhi addressing the Congress plenary session in New Delhi (December 19)
"We as individuals have to stop admiring and glorifying the parasitic billionaires of India. They may not be technically doing anything illegal, but there is definitely nothing cool about using connections to get something that you couldn’t have if there were fair competition. We should not be celebrating money, consumption and power. We should be celebrating innovation and entrepreneurship."
Well-known author Chetan Bhagat on the ‘Great Indian social network’ (Times of India, December 19)
"The government is controlled by thieves and the stolen property can only be recovered by demolishing this government and sending some of its leaders to jail."
Well-known Supreme Court lawyer Ram Jethmalini on the spate of scams hitting the UPA-II government (India Today, December 27)
"He (Julian Assange) is not a journalist… I think he is an anarchist."
P.J. Crowley, US state department spokesperson, on Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks which has published thousands of secret US diplomatic cables