Chanakya

Acharya Chanakya, also known as Kautilya or Vishnu Gupta, was an Indian scholar, political advisor, economist, philosopher and teacher. Under his mentorship, Chandragupta Maurya, a commoner by birth, became the emperor of the Mauryan Empire. His popular works are Arthashastra and Neeti Shastra. These principles written by him between 370 BCE to 283 BCE hold true even today. While every era has witnessed some kind of transformation, Chanakya’s teachings have stood the test of time. Even today, his principles are taught to management students and business professionals as Chanakya Neeti.

Some of these famous quotes are:

• It is the mind of ma alone that is the cause of his bondage or freedom.
• Education is the best friend. An educated person is respected everywhere. Education beats beauty and the youth.
• A person who cannot decide his goal, simply cannot win.
• “Negative thinking is like a disease which will kill all your dreams and positive thinking is like a booster which will bridge the gap between you and your goals.”
• The fragrance of flowers spreads only in the directions of the wind. But, the goodness of a person spreads in all direction.
• We should not fret for what is past, nor should we be anxious about the future, men of discernment deal only with the present moment.
• Learn from the mistakes of others, you can’t live long enough to make them all.
• Never make friends with people who are above or below you in status. Such friendships will never give you any happiness.
• The one excellent thing that can be learned from a lion is that whatever a man intends doing should be done by him with a whole- hearten and strenuous effort.
• Purity of speech, of the mind, of the senses and of a compassionate heart are needed by one who desires to rise to the divine platform.
• Even if a gem be placed on the foot and a mirror on the head, still the gem will not lose its value.
• He who is prepared for future and he who deals cleverly with any situation that may arise are both happy, but fatalistic man who wholly depends on luck is ruined.
• Excess of everything is bad.
• There are two ways to deal with thorns and wicked people. One is to crush them and the other is to stay away from them.
• Skills are called hidden treasure as they save like a mother in a foreign country.

Some of the motivational speeches by