From ‘The art of Effective Giving’ by R.M.Lala

‘The wealth of a person becomes meaningless if it is not distributed and utilized’

-          Rig Veda

……..i was surprised to hear from a Japanese lady that they had no notion of philanthropy, and it was only after the World War II that they got the concept from the Americans.

Jamsetji Tata …..said: ‘What advances a nation or a community is not so much to prop up the weakest and the most helpless people but to lift up the best and gifted so as to make them of the greatest service to the country.’

‘The longer I live the more I am convinced that the one thing worth living for and dying for is the privilege of making someone more happy and more useful. No man who ever does anything to life his fellow men ever makes a sacrifice.’

-          Booker T. Washington

….Leo Tolstoy: ‘Men think that there are circumstances when they can treat their fellow being without love, but no such circumstances exist. Inanimate objects can be dealt with without love but human beings cannot be treated without love … If you feel no love for men – leave them alone. Occupy yourself with things, with your own self, with anything you please, but not with men.’

Before the wedding of Bill and Melinda Gates, Bill’s mother Mary, who was suffering from cancer, wrote a letter to her daughter-in-law to be. She ended with the words: ‘From those to whom much is given much is expected.’

…..Warren Buffet….. ‘I believe in the philosophy that a very rich peson should leave his kids enough to do everything but not enough to do nothing.’

Andrew ….Carnegie gave away $350,675,653. What was left was a $30 million which he wrote away in his will. This was less than one-tenth of his fortune – which means he had managed, before his death, to dispose of most of his fortune.

‘The power of money is to give it away.’

-          N.R. Narayana Murthy

…Jamsetji Tata …..At his memorial meeting Sir Lawrence Jenkins, chief justice of Bombay, said: ‘Wealth came to him in full measure, but he remained to the last what he was by nature, a simple, modest gentleman, seeking neither title nor place, and loving with a love that knew no bounds the country that gave him birth.’

‘No person was ever honoured for what he received. Honour has been the reward for what he gave.’

-          Calvin Coolidge

‘Think of giving not as a duty but as a privilege’

-          John D. Rockefeller Jr

‘No act of kindness, no matter how small, is ever wasted.’

-          Aesop

‘We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give.’

-          Winston Churchill