So important to all of us, that if he did not exist — as Voltaire said of God — he would have to be invented. ... One of the most difficult men with whom I have ever had to deal.

Dean Acheson in a memorandum of a meeting with Nehru (12 October 1949) as quoted in "Indo-American Relations, 1947-50 : A Missed Opportunity in Asia" by Dennis Merrill, in Diplomatic History Vol. 11 No. 3 (July 1987); also in Nehru The Making of India (1989) by M. J. Akbar, and "Books of The Times; Biography of Nehru From a New Point of View" in The New York Times (16 May 1989)