Where the mind is without fear and the head held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls;
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by Thee into ever-widening thought and action;
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.
-Rabindranath Tagore
Rabindranath Tagore was the first non-European to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1913. He was a poet, mystic, author, playwright, songwriter, artist, educator, freedom fighter, and an intellectual stalwart who shaped the destiny of an entire subcontinent.
You may also like: Give Me Strength!