Atal Bihari Vajpayee's 97th birth anniversary today: Inspiring quotes by BJP stalwart

New Delhi, Dec 25: Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Home Minister Amit Shah and several other leaders and ministers paid homage to former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on his 97th birth anniversary.

"Remembering Atal Ji on his Jayanti. We are inspired by his rich service to the nation. He devoted his life towards making India strong and developed. His development initiatives positively impacted millions of Indians, " PM Modi tweeted.

Bharat Ratna and former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee's birthday is being celebrated as Good Governance Day across the country today. Several programmes are being organised to mark the occasion.

Born in Gwalior in 1924, Vajpayee was the face of the BJP for decades and was the first non-Congress prime minister to have served a full term in office.

Vajpayee was the first non-Congress leader to complete a 5-year term as India's Prime Minister. He was also the first Indian to address the United Nations in Hindi. Besides Jawaharlal Nehru and Indira Gandhi, Vajpayee is the only Indian leader to take the Prime Minister's oath on three occasions. His political career aside, Vajpayee is remembered as a captivating orator and an empathetic poet.

• If India is not secular, then India is not India at all.
• Politics is a game of compromise. You can change friends but not neighbours.
• Terrorism has become a festering wound. It is an enemy of humanity.
• No guns only brotherhood can resolve the problems.
• It is easy to win elections by raising the slogan of 'garibi hatao' but slogans do not remove poverty.
• My poetry is a declaration of war, not an exordium to defeat.
• It is not the defeated soldiers' drumbeat of despair, but the fighting warrior's will to win.
• Our aim may be as high as the endless sky, but we should have a resolve in our minds to walk ahead, hand-in-hand, for victory will be ours.
• My poet's heart gives me the strength to face political problems, particularly those which have a bearing on my conscience.
• We are unnecessarily wasting our precious resources in wars... if we must wage war, we have to do it on unemployment, disease, poverty, and backwardness.