Quotes on India Hinduism

8/8/2019 Quotes on India Hinduism

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Quotes on India

The enigma and charm of India has caught theimagination of endless number of poets, thinkers,scientists, and philosophers. India offered somethingto ponder everyones perspective. Quotes by theeminent people are one interesting way to get aglimpse of India.

This is indeed India!The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealthand fabulous poverty, of splendour and rags, ofpalaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of geniiand giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers andelephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of

hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of athousand religions and two million gods, cradle of thehuman race, birthplace of human speech, mother ofhistory, grandmother of legend, great-grandmotherof traditions, whose yesterday's bear date with themodering antiquities for the rest of nations-the onesole country under the sun that is endowed with animperishable interest for alien prince and alien


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peasant, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, richand poor, bond and free, the one land that all mendesire to see, and having seen once, by even aglimpse, would not give that glimpse for the shows ofall the rest of the world combined.

~~~ Mark Twain

In religion, India is the only millionaire......the Oneland that all men desire to see, and having seenonce, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpsefor all the shows of all the rest of the globecombined.

~~~ Mark Twain (American writer)

We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us howto count, without which no worthwhile scientificdiscovery could have been made.~~~ Albert Einstein (German Physicist)

When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflectabout how God created this universe everything else


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seems so superfluous.~~~ Albert Einstein

Tell me,why is the media here so negative?Why are we in India so embarrassed to recognise ourown strengths, our achievements? We are such agreat nation. We have so many amazing successstories but we refuse to acknowledge them. Why?~~~ Abdul Kalam (President of India)

She (India) has left indelible imprints on onefourth of the human race in the course of a longsuccession of centuries. She has the right toreclaim ... her place amongst the great nationssummarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity.From Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regionsof Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India haspropagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization!~~~ Sylvia Levi

IfI were asked under what sky the human mind hasmost fully developed some of its choicest gifts, hasmost deeply pondered on the greatest problems oflife, and has found solutions, I should point to India.

~~~ Max Mueller (German scholar)

Therehas been no more revolutionary

contribution than the one which the Hindus (Indians)made when they invented zero.~~~ Lancelot Hogben (English mathematician)


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India The land of Vedas, the remarkableworks contain not only religious ideas for a perfectlife, but also facts which science has proved true.

Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all wereknown to the seers who founded the Vedas.~~~ Wheeler Wilcox (American poet)

After the conversations about Indianphilosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physicsthat had seemed so crazy suddenly made much

more sense.~~~ W. Heisenberg (German Physicist)

Our present knowledge of the nervous systemfits in so accurately with the internal description ofthe human body given in the Vedas (5000 yearsago). Then the question arises whether the Vedas arereally religious books or books on anatomy of thenervous system and medicine.~~~ Rele (Jewish writer)

The Indian way of life provides the vision of thenatural, real way of life. We veil ourselves withunnatural masks. On the face of India are the tenderexpressions which carry the mark of the Creator'shand.~~~ George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwrite)


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India conquered and dominated Chinaculturally for 20 centuries without ever having tosend a single soldier across her border!"~~~ Hu Shih (former Ambassador of China to USA)

So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been leftundone, either by man or nature, to make India the

most extraordinary country that the sun visits on hisrounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten,nothing overlooked.~~~ Mark Twain(American writer)

India is the cradle of the human race, thebirthplace of human speech, the mother of history,the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and mostastrictive materials in the history of man aretreasured up in India only!

~~~ Mark Twain(American writer)


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The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquityis of wonderful structure, more perfect than theGreek, more copious than the Latin and moreexquisitely refined than either.

~~~Sir William Jones (English scholar)

You'd have to be brain dead to live in India andnot be affected by Hinduism. It's not like Christianityin America, where you feel it only on Sundaymornings if you go to church at all. Hinduism is anon-going daily procedure. You live it, you breathe it.

Hinduism has a playful aspect which I've notexperienced in any other religion. Its not so righteousor sober as is Christianity, nor is it puritanical. That'sone of the reasons I enjoy India. I wake up in themorning, and I'm very content.~~~ Marcus Leatherdale (Canadian photographer)

After a study of some forty years and more ofthe great religions of the world, I find none so perfect,none so scientific, none so philosophical and no sospiritual that the great religion known by the name ofHinduism. Make no mistake, without Hinduism, Indiahas no future. Hinduism is the soil in to which India'sroots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitablywither as a tree torn out from its place. And if Hindusdo not maintain Hinduism who shall save it? If India'sown children do not cling to her faith who shall guardit? India alone can save India and India and Hinduismare one.~~~Annie Besant (English theosophist)


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To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity isno new discovery, just as the concept of light years isno matter for astonishment to people used tothinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa is

about 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise menof India have not been concerned with technologicalapplications of this knowledge arises from thecircumstance that technology is but one ofinnumerable ways of applying it.~~~ Alan Watts (English philosopher)

India was the motherland of our race, andSanskrit the mother of Europe's languages: she wasthe mother of our philosophy; mother, through theArabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, throughthe Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity;mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy.

Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all.Nothing should more deeply shame the modernstudent than the recency and inadequacy of his

acquaintance with India....This is the India thatpatient scholarship is now opening up like a newintellectual continent to that Western mind whichonly yesterday thought civilization an exclusiveWestern thing.~~~ Will Durant (American philosopher)

Perhaps in return for conquest, arroganceand spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance andgentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content ofthe unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understandingspirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for all livingthings.


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~~~ Will Durant (American philosopher)

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrierIndia has sent to us such unquestionable gifts asgrammar and logic, philosophy and fables,hypnotism and chess, and above all our numeralsand our decimal system. But these are not theessence of her spirit; they are trifles compared towhat we may learn from her in the future.~~~ Will Durant (American philosopher)

Ifthere is one place on the face of earth where allthe dreams of living men have found a home fromthe very earliest days when man began the dream ofexistence, it is India!~~~ Romaine Rolland (French writer)

The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindusbefore some 4500 years vary not even a singleminute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used inthe 19-th century). The Indian tables give the sameannual variation of the moon as the discovered byTycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school ofAlexandria and also to the Arabs who followed thecalculations of the school... "The Hindu systems ofastronomy are by far the oldest and that from whichthe Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jewsderived from the Hindus their knowledge.~~~Jean Sylvain Bailly (French astronomer)


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Civilizations have arisen in other partsof the world. In ancient and modern times, wonderfulideas have been carried forward from one race toanother...But mark you, my friends, it has beenalways with the blast of war trumpets and the marchof embattled cohorts. Each idea had to be soaked ina deluge of blood..... Each word of power had to befollowed by the groans of millions, by the wails oforphans, by the tears of widows. This, many othernations have taught; but India for thousands of yearspeacefully existed. Here activity prevailed when evenGreece did not exist... Even earlier, when history has

no record, and tradition dares not peer into thegloom of that intense past, even from until now,ideas after ideas have marched out from her, butevery word has been spoken with a blessing behind itand peace before it. We, of all nations of the world,have never been a conquering race, and thatblessing is on our head, and therefore we live....!~~~Swami Vivekananda (Indian philosopher)

It is already becoming clear that a chapter whichhad a Western beginning will have to have an Indianending if it is not to end in self-destruction of thehuman race. At this supremely dangerous moment inhuman history , the only way of salvation is theancient Hindu way. Here we have the attitude andspirit that can make it possible for the human race togrow together in to a single family.~~~Arnold Joseph Toynbee (British historian)


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Reporter: Mr. Gandhi, what do you think ofWestern Civilization?Gandhi: I think it would be a good idea.

Well, India is a country of nonsense~~~ Gandhi (India's father of the nation)

Godforbid that India should ever take toindustrialism after the manner of thewest... keeping the world in chains. If our nation tookto similar economicexploitation, it would strip the world bare likelocusts.

~~~ Gandhi

A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in thesoul of its people.

~~~ Gandhi

Now it is not good for the Christian's health tohustle the Hindu brown for the Christian riles and theHindu smiles and weareth the Christian down ; andthe end of the fight is a tombstone while with thename of the late deceased and the epitaph drear , "A fool lies here who tried to hustle the east.


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~~~ Rudyard Kipling (British writer and poet.He toldthis in the context of the missionaries who camehere with the Good News)

I will lay my bones by the Ganges that India mightknow there is one who cares.~~~ Alexander Duff (British missionary)

India is not an underdeveloped country, butrather, in the context of its history and culturalheritage, a highly developed one in an advanced

state of decay~~~ Shashi Tharoor (Indian author . In his TheGreat Indian Novel)

It is not only a country and somethinggeographical, but the home and the youth of thesoul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of alltimes.~~~ Herman Hesse (German poet and novelist)

Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance andspoilation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of themature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm

of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for allliving things.

~~~ Will Durant ( American Historian)

As flowing rivers disappear in the sea, losing their


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name and form, thus a wise man, freed from nameand form, goes to the divine person who is beyondall." Such a theory of life and death will not pleaseWestern man, whose religion is as permeated withindividualism as are his political and economic

institutions. But it has satisfied the philosophicalHindu mind with astonishing continuity.~~~ Will Durant (American philosopher)

The strength of Hinduism lies in its infiniteadaptability to the infinite diversity of humancharacter and human tendencies. It has its highly

spiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher,its practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic andceremonial side attuned to the man of the poeticfeeling and imagination; and its quiescentcontemplative aspect that has its appeal for the manof peace and the lover of seclusion.~~~ Sir Monier Williams (English professor)

Enter Hinduisms myths, her magnificentsymbols, her several hundred images of God, herrituals that keep turning night and day like neverending prayer wheels. It is obtuse to confuseHinduisms images with idolatry, and theirmultiplicity with polytheism. They are 'runways' fromwhich the sense-laden human spirit can rise for its"flight of the alone to the Alone.

Even village priest will frequently open their temple

ceremonies with the following beloved invocation:

O Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my humanlimitations:

Thou art everywhere, but I worship you here;Thou art without form, but I worship you in these


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forms;Thou needest no praise, yet I offer you these prayersand salutations,

Lord, forgive three sins that are due to my human

limitations.~~~ Huston Smith (American professor)

Time, for example, is intimately connected withthe goddess Kali, which partly accounts for herdestructive nature. Energy - in Einstein's equation,E=MC2 is personified in India as Shakti in her variousguises.~~~ Roger Housden (American writer)

India, has accomplished in the field ofspirituality what, in the world of finance, the freemarket (as opposed to a controlled economy) hassucceeded in doing: The individual seeker has beenleft free to explore and develop his own spiritualpotentials. Other scriptures have hinted at thedeeper truths of inward religion. But the priests inevery religion seldom quote those passages, which

they rightly see as threatening to their institutionalpreeminence.~~~ J. Donald Walters (Swami) (Americanphilosopher)


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Where can we look for sages like those whosesystems of philosophy were prototypes of those ofGreece: to whose works Plato, Thales and Pythagoruswere disciples? Where do I find astronomers whoseknowledge of planetary systems yet excites wonderin Europe as well as the architects and sculptorswhose works claim our admiration, and the musicianswho could make the mind oscillate from joy tosorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modesand varied intonation?

~~~Colonel James Todd (American pioneer)

India of the ages is not dead nor has shespoken her last creative word; she lives and has stillsomething to do for herself and the human peoples.And that which must seek now to awake is notanglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the Westand doomed to repeat the cycle of the occident'ssuccess and failure, but still the ancientimmemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self,lifting her head higher towards the supreme sourceof light and strength and turning to discover thecomplete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma.

~~~Shri Aurovindo (Indian philosopher)


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Hinduism has a playful aspect which I'venot experienced in any other religion. Its not sorighteous or sober as is Christianity, nor is itpuritanical. That's one of the reasons I enjoy India. Iwake up in the morning, and I'm very content.

You'd have to be brain dead to live in India and notbe affected by Hinduism. It's not like Christianity inAmerica, where you feel it only on Sundaymornings ? if you go to church at all. Hinduism is anon-going daily procedure. You live it, you breathe it.

~~~Marcus Leatherdale(Canadian photographer)

It will no longer remain to be doubted that thepriests of Egypt and the sages of Greece have drawndirectly from the original well of India, that it is to thebanks of the Ganges and the Indus that our heartsfeel drawn as by some hidden urge.

~~~Friedrich Mejer (English statesman)

Towards the Orient, to the banks of theGanges and the Indus, it is there our hearts feeldrawn by some hidden urge - it is there that all the


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dark presentiments point which lie in the depths ofour heart...In the Orient, the heavens poured forthinto the earth

~~~Friedrich Mejer(English statesman)

I come from an Indian Muslim family, but Iexperience India as a very pleasant country, whereas

in Pakistan I feel ill at ease. You would think it shouldbe the reverse. But in spite of its many defects, Indiais a rich and open society, while Pakistan is culturallyan impoverished and closed society

~~~ Salman Rushdie (Indian novelist)

A kind of India happens everywhere, that's thetruth too; everywhere is terrible and wonder-filledand overwhelming if you open your sense to theactual pulsating beat.

~~~ Salman Rushdie (Indian novelist)


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Bombay was central, had been so from themoment of its creation: the bastard child of aPortuguese-English wedding, and yet the most Indianof Indian cities. In Bombay all Indias met and

merged. In Bombay, too, all-India met what-what-not-India, what came across the black water to flowinto our veins. Everything north of Bombay was NorthIndia, everything south of it was South. To the eastlay Indias east and to the west, the worlds West.Bombay was central; all rivers flowed into its humansea. It was an ocean of stories; we were its narrators,and everybody talked at once.

~~~ Salmon Rushdie (in his novel The Moor's LastSigh)

I like to think that someone will trace how thedeepest thinking of India made its way to Greece andfrom there to the philosophy of our times.

~~~John Archibald Wheeler (American scientist)

Going forward, you have a broad and beautifulstreet, full of rows of fine houses and streets of thesort I have described, and it is to be understood thatthe houses belong to men rich enough to afford such.In this street live many merchants, and there you willfind all sorts of rubies, and diamonds, and emeralds,and pearls, and seed pearls, and cloths, and every


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other sort of thing there is on earth and that you maywish to buy

~~~ Domingos Paes (Portuguese traveler whovisited Hampi during (AD 1520-22) during the reign

of Vijayanagar Empire)

In India I found a race of mortals living upon theEarth. but not adhering to it. Inhabiting cities, but not

being fixed to them, possessing everything butpossessed by nothing.~~~ Apollonius Tyanaeus ( Greek Thinker andTraveler)

Towns and villages have inner gates; thewalls are wide and high; the streets and lanes aretorturous, and the roads winding. The thoroughfaresare are dirty and the stalls arranged on both sides ofthe road with appropriate signs. Butchers, fishers,dancers, executioners and scavengers, and so on,have their abodes without the city. In coming andgoing these persons are bound to keep on the left

side of the road till they arrive at their homes. Theirhouses are surrounded by low walls and form thesuburbs. The earth being soft and muddy, the wallsof the town are mostly built of bricks or tiles. Thedifferent buildings have the same form as those inChina; rusher of dry branches, or tiles or boards areused for covering them. The walls are covered with


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lime and mud, mixed with cow dung for purity. Atdifferent seasons, flowers are scattered about. Suchare some of their different customs.~~~ Huen Tsiang (Chinese traveler visited India629-645 A.D.)

There are some parts of the world that, oncevisited, get into your heart and wont go. For me,India is such a place. When I first visited, I wasstunned by the richness of the land, by its lushbeauty and exotic architecture, by its ability tooverload the senses with the pure, concentratedintensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds. Itwas as if all my life I had been seeing the world inblack and white and, when brought face-to-face withIndia, experienced everything re-rendered in brillianttechnicolor.

~~~ Keith Bellows (Vice-President, NationalGeographic Society)

I am convinced that everything has come down to usfrom the banks of the Ganges, - astronomy,astrology, metempsychosis,.. It is very important to

note that some 2,500 years ago at the leastPythagoras went from Samos to the Ganges to learngeometry...But he would certainly not haveundertaken such a strange journey had thereputation of the Brahmins' science not been longestablished in Europe...


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~~~ Francois Marie Arouet Voltaire (French writerand philosopher)

There is a striking resemblance between theequivalence of mass and energy symbolized byShiva's cosmic dance and the Western theory, firstexpounded by Einstein, which calculates the amountof energy contained in a subatomic particle bymultiplying its mass by the square of the speed of

light : E=MC2 .

~~~ Richard Waterstone (Author & Journelist)

The most elegant and sublime of these is arepresentation of the creation of the universe at the

beginning of each cosmic cycle, a motif known as thecosmic dance of Lord Shiva. The god, called in thismanifestation Nataraja, the Dance King. In the upperright hand is a drum whose sound is the sound ofcreation. In the upper left hand is a tongue of flame,a reminder that the universe, now newly created,with billions of years from now will be utterlydestroyed. These profound and lovely images are, Ilike to imagine, a kind of premonition of modernastronomical ideas.

~~~Dr.Carl Sagan (American astrophysicist)


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It is India that gave us the ingenious method ofexpressing all numbers by ten symbols, eachreceiving a value of position as well as an absolutevalue, a profound and important idea which appears

so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit. Butits very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent toall computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rankof useful inventions, and we shall appreciate thegrandeur of this achievement the more when weremember that it escaped the genius of Archimedesand Appollnius, two of the greatest men produced byantiquity.

~~~ Pierre Simon de Laplace ( Frenchmathematician & philosopher)

According to me, the influence ofSanskrit literature on our time will not be lesser thanwhat was in the 16th century Greece's influence onRenaissance. One day, India's wisdom will flow againon Europe and will totally transform our knowledge

and thought. ~~~Arthur Schopenhauer(Germanphilosopher)

The Sanskrit language, whatever be itsantiquity is of wonderful structure, more perfect thanthe Greek, more copious than the Latin and moreexquisitely refined than either. ~~~Sir ~~~WilliamJones (English scholar)


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I believe that the civilization India has evolved is notto be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal theseeds sown by our ancestry. Rome went; Greeceshared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was

broken; Japan has become westernized; of Chinanothing can be said; but India is still, somehow orother, sound at the foundation.

~~~ Gandhi

India is eternal. Though the beginnings of hernumerous civilizations go so far back in time that

they are lost in the twilight of history, she has the giftof perpetual youth. Her culture is ageless and is asrelevant to this present 20th century as it was to the20th century before Christ.

~~~ Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala ( Indian lawer &philanthropist)

The strength of Hinduism lies in its infiniteadaptability to the infinite diversity of humancharacter and human tendencies. It has its highlyspiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher,its practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic andceremonial side attuned to the man of the poeticfeeling and imagination; and its quiescentcontemplative aspect that has its appeal for the manof peace and the lover of seclusion.

~~~Sir Monier Williams (Indologist)


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How glorious the epoch that then presenteditself to my study and comprehension! I made

tradition speak from the temples recess. I enquiredof monuments and ruins, I questioned the Vedaswhose pages count their existence by thousands ofyears and whence enquiring youth imbibed thescience of life long before Thebes of the hundredgates or Babylon the great had traced our theirfoundations.

~~~ Louis-Franois Jacolliot (French diplomat &author)

Ancient civilizations of Greece, Egypt andRome have all disappeared from this world, but the

elements of our civilization still continue. Althoughworld-events have been inimical to us for centuries,there is something in our civilization which haswithstood these onslaughts.

~~~ Allama Iqbal (Indian philosopher & poet)

We of the Occident (west) are about to arrive atcrossroads that was reached by the thinkers of Indiahundreds of years before Christ.

~~~ Heinrich Zimmer (German historian &Indologist)


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The Portuguese, Dutch and English have beenfor a long time year after year, shipping home thetreasures of India in their big vessels. We Germanshave been all along been left to watch it. Germanywould do likewise, but hers would be treasures ofspiritual knowledge.

~~~ Henrich Heine (German poet)

India is not only the heir of her own religioustraditions; she is also the residuary legatee of theAncient Mediterranean World's religious traditions.Religion cuts far deeper, and, at the religious level,India has not been a recipient; she has been a giver.About half the total number of the living higher

religions are of Indian origin.

~~~Arnold Joseph Toynbee (British historian)

It is true that even across the Himalayan barrierIndia has sent to us such unquestionable gifts asgrammar and logic, philosophy and fables,hypnotism and chess, and above all our numeralsand our decimal system. But these are not theessence of her spirit; they are trifles compared towhat we may learn from her in the future.



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Ifthere is one place on the face of earth where allthe dreams of living men have found a home fromthe very earliest days when man began the dream ofexistence, it is India!

~~~Romaine Rolland (French writer)

Our sublimest delusion is that India is backward.This predicates, of course, that we are progressive. Ifbackwardness and progress depend on the rate atwhich one can gobble up vanities perhaps India doesnot need our aid.....India's devotion to being goodrather than being clever comes nearer the heart of atrue civilization. Cleverness dies on the tongue like asocial pleasantry, goodness echoes round theuniverse in an un extinguishable reality. We in theWest are too busy to see that science without soul islike words without meaning. India's greatness is inher humility; her weakness is her strength. She is

both wiser and more effective than the West, for shedoes not declare that reform is not a new shirt onSunday morning but a clean heart at the Throne ofGrace. Justice without spirit of justice is as much ofan achievement as a river without its water. She isgrave and old and stupendous. Her accents are forthe calm and gracious. Her temples are laden withsymbolism....and internal beauties. It is true, thatIndia is royal...India has been royal at heart from hervery foundations of her memory.

~~~ W. J. Grant

India indeed has a preciousness which amaterialistic age is in danger of missing. Some day


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the fragrance of her thought will win the hearts ofmen. This grim chase after our own tails which marksthe present age cannot continue for ever. The futurecontains a new human urge towards the real beautyand holiness of life. When it comes India will be

searched by loving eyes and defended by knightlyhands.

~~~ W. J. Grant

Hinduism is a living organism liable togrowth and decay subject to the laws of Nature. Oneand indivisible at the root, it has grown into a vasttree with innumerable branches. The changes in theseason affect it. It has its autumn and its summer, itswinter and its spring. It is, and is not, based onscriptures. It does not derive its authority from onebook.

~~~ Gandhi

Civilizations have arisen in other partsof the world. In ancient and modern times, wonderfulideas have been carried forward from one race toanother...But mark you, my friends, it has beenalways with the blast of war trumpets and the marchof embattled cohorts. Each idea had to be soaked ina deluge of blood..... Each word of power had to be

followed by the groans of millions, by the wails oforphans, by the tears of widows. This, many othernations have taught; but India for thousands of yearspeacefully existed. Here activity prevailed when evenGreece did not exist... Even earlier, when history hasno record, and tradition dares not peer into thegloom of that intense past, even from until now,ideas after ideas have marched out from her, but


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every word has been spoken with a blessing behind itand peace before it. We, of all nations of the world,have never been a conquering race, and thatblessing is on our head, and therefore we live....!

~~~Swami Vivekananda (Indian philosopher)

And then India appears to me in all the livingpower of her originality I traced her progress in the

expansion of her enlightenment over the world Isaw her giving her laws, her customs, her morale,her religion to Egypt, to Persia, to Greece and Rome I saw Jaiminy and Veda Vyasa precede Socratesand Plato, and Krishna, the son of the Virgin Devajaniprecede the son of the Virgin of Bethelehem.

~~~ Louis Francois Jacolliot (French diplomat &author)

India is a vast network of sacred places. Theentire country is a sacred land. The sacrality of theland of India, is what, still today, gives a sense ofunity to this country of so many religions, cultures,races and factions.

~~~ Roger Housden

You live in time, we live in space. Youre always onthe move; were always at rest. Religion is our firstlove; we revel in metaphysics. Science is your


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passion; you delight in physics. You believe infreedom of speech; you strive for articulation. Webelieve in freedom of silence; we lapse intomeditation.

~~~Prof. Hari Dam (Indian Professor of Philosophy )

In the literature of Asia is a great poetry. There isalso profound wisdom and some very difficult

metaphysics...Long ago I studied the ancient Indianlanguages, and while I was chiefly interested at thattime in philosophy, I read little poetry too; and I knowthat my own poetry shows the influence of Indianthought and sensibility.

~~~ Thomas Stearns Eliot (American poet &playwright)

During the early life of a Nation, religion isan essential for the binding together of theindividuals who make the nation. India was born, asit were, in the womb of Hinduism, and her body wasfor long shaped by that religion. Religion is a bindingforce, and India has had a longer binding together by

religion than any other Nation in the world, as she isthe oldest of the living Nations.

~~~Annie Besant (English theologiest)


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Perhaps in return for conquest, arroganceand spoliation, India will teach us the tolerance andgentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content ofthe unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding

spirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for all livingthings.


The Indian way of life provides the vision of thenatural, real way of life. We veil ourselves withunnatural masks. On the face of India are the tenderexpressions which carry the mark of the Creatorshand.

~~~ George Bernard Shaw (Irish playwrite)

Modern India will find her identity and themodern Indian will regain his soul when our peoplebegin to have some understanding of our pricelessheritage. A nation which has had a great past canlook forward with confidence to a great future. Itwould be restorative to national self-confidence toknow that many discoveries of today are really re-discoveries and represent knowledge which ancientIndia had at her command. World thinkers havestood in marvel at the sublimity of our scriptures.

~~~ Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala ( Indian lawyer &philanthropist)


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India had the start of the whole world in thebeginning of things. She had the first civilization; shehad the first accumulation of material wealth; shewas populous with deep thinkers and subtle

intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitfulsoul.

~~~ Mark Twain (American playwrite)

To the philosophers of India, however, Relativity isno new discovery, just as the concept of light years isno matter for astonishment to people used tothinking of time in millions of kalpas, (A kalpa isabout 4,320,000 years). The fact that the wise menof India have not been concerned with technologicalapplications of this knowledge arises from thecircumstance that technology is but one ofinnumerable ways of applying it. It is, indeed, aremarkable circumstance that when Westerncivilization discovers Relativity it applies it to themanufacture of atom-bombs, whereas Oriental

civilization applies it to the development of newstates of consciousness.

~~~ Alan Watts (English philosopher)

In Hinduism, there can be as many spiritual pathsas there are spiritual aspirants & similarly there canreally be as many Gods as there are devotees to suitthe moods, feelings, emotions & social background ofthe devotees.


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truths and teachings of the philosophers to themasses. In this symbolic form the ideas do not haveto be watered down to be popularized. The vivid,perfectly appropriate pictorial script preserves thedoctrines without the slightest damage to their

sense.

~~~ Heinrich Zimmer (German Indologist)

In religion, India is the only millionaire......the Oneland that all men desire to see, and having seenonce, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpsefor all the shows of all the rest of the globecombined.

~~~ Mark Twain (American playwrite)

It is important to appreciate that the historicalachievements in India in critical reasoning, publicdeliberation and analytical scrutiny as well as inscience and mathematics, architecture, medicine,painting and music, are products of Indian society involving both the Hindus and non-Hindus, andincluding the skeptical as well as the religious.

~~~ Amartya Sen (Indian economist)

By what strange social alchemy has India subduedher conquerors, transforming them to her very selfand substance..... ? Why is it that her conquerors


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have not been able to impose on her their language,their thoughts and customs, except in superficialways?

~~~ Sir Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (Indian

philosopher & scholar)

Peaceful Indians,... did the rumor of yourriches have to penetrate a clime in which artificialneeds know no bounds? Soon, new foreignersreached your shores; inconvenient guests,

everything they touched belonged to them.... If theBritish ...neglect any longer to enrich Europe'sscholars with the Sanskrit scriptures...they will bearthe shame of having sacrificed honor, probity, andhumanity to the vile love for gold and money,without human knowledge having derived the leastlustre, the least growth from their conquests.

~~~ Anquetil Duperron (French Orientalist)

It has been my long-standing conviction that Indiais like a donkey carrying a sack of gold - the donkeydoes not know what it is carrying but is content to goalong with the load on its back. The load of gold isthe fantastic treasure - in arts, literature, culture, and

some sciences like Ayurvedic medicine - which wehave inherited from the days of the splendor thatwas India.

~~~ Nani Ardeshir Palkhiwala ( Indian lawyer &philanthropist)


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In India I found a race of mortals living upon theEarth. but not adhering to it. Inhabiting cities, but not

being fixed to them, possessing everything butpossessed by nothing.

~~~ Apollonius Tyanaeus ( Greek Thinker andTraveler)

The strength of Hinduism lies in its infiniteadaptability to the infinite diversity of humancharacter and human tendencies. It has its highlyspiritual and abstract side suited to the philosopher,its practical to the man of the world, its aesthetic andceremonial side attuned to the man of the poeticfeeling and imagination; and its quiescentcontemplative aspect that has its appeal for the manof peace and the lover of seclusion. ~~~ Sir MonierMonier-Williams (Indologist) The Hindu religion is theonly one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the

idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense,indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. Itis the only religion in which the time scalescorrespond, to those of modern scientific cosmology.Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to aday and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long.Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun andabout half the time since the Big Bang. And there aremuch longer time scales still.

~~~ Dr.Carl Sagan (astrophysicist)


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Our present knowledge of the nervous systemfits in so accurately with the internal description ofthe human body given in the Vedas (5000 yearsago). Then the question arises whether the Vedas are

really religious books or books on anatomy of thenervous system and medicine.

~~~ Rele (Jewish writer)

Vedanta is the most impressivemetaphysics the human mind has conceived.

~~~ Alfred North Whitehead ( Britishmathematician)

It is not only a country and somethinggeographical, but the home and the youth of thesoul, the everywhere and nowhere, the oneness of alltimes.

~~~ Herman Hesse (German poet and novelist)

When Confucius and the Indian Scriptureswere made known, no claim to monopoly of ethicalwisdom could be thought of. It is only within thiscentury (in the 1800s) that England and Americadiscovered that their nursery tales were old Germanand Scandinavian stories; and now it appears thatthey came from India, and are therefore the propertyof all the nations.


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~~~ Emerson (American philosopher)

The Hindu genius is a love for abstraction and, atthe same time, a passion for the concrete image. Attimes it is rich, at others prolix. It has created themost lucid and the most instinctive art. It is abstractand realistic, sexual and intellectual, pedantic andsublime. It lives between extremes, it embraces theextremes, rooted in the earth and drawn to aninvisible beyond.

~~~ Octovio Paz (Mexican Nobel Prize laureate inLiterature)

A special charm of studying Indian philosophytoday is that it is more truly Western, in the modern,scientific sense, than any system of philosophy that

the West has produced. Whereas Westernrationalism has broken down under the impact ofscientific discoveries, Indian thought cheerfully ridesthe crest of the wave, and is only pushed higher byevery new scientific finding.

~~~J. Donald Walters ( singer & composer)

India The land of Vedas, the remarkableworks contain not only religious ideas for a perfectlife, but also facts which science has proved true.Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all wereknown to the seers who founded the Vedas. ~~~


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Wheeler Wilcox (American poet) Precious stones ordurable materials - gold, silver, bronze, marble, onyxor granite - have been used by ancient people in anattempt to immortalize themselves. Not so howeverthe ancient Vedic Aryans (Indians). They turned to

what may seem the most volatile and insubstantialmaterial of all - the spoken word ...The pyramidshave been eroded by the desert wind, the marblebroken by earthquakes, and the gold stolen byrobbers, while the Veda is recited daily by anunbroken chain of generations, traveling like a greatwave through the living substance of mind...

~~~ Dr.Jean LeMee (French author)

India has all along been trying experiments inevolving a social unity within which all the differentpeoples could be held together, while fully enjoyingthe freedom of maintaining their differences. The tiehas been as loose as possible, yet as close as

circumstances permitted. This has producedsomething like a United States of a social federation,whose common name is Hinduism.

~~~ Rabindranath Tagore (Indian poet &philosopher)

Yoga, as a science of achieving thistransformation of finite man into the infinite One, hasto be recognized as something intrinsically Indian or,as 'a specific dimension of the Indian mind. Yogaconstitutes a characteristic dimension of the Indian


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mind, to such a point that whatever Indian religionand culture have made their way, we also find amore or less pure form of Yoga. In India, Yoga wasadopted and valorized by all religious movements,whether Hinduist or 'heretical. The various Christian

or syncretistic Yogas of modern India constitutesanother proof that Indian religious experience findsthe yogic methods of 'meditation' and 'concentration'a necessity.

~~~ Mircea Eliade (Romanin philospoher,author)

It is certainly true that Hinduism has provided thebroad cultural and religious framework that has heldIndia together despite its astonishing linguistic,ethnic and political diversity and divisions. Hinduismis as essential for an understanding of Indian cultureand civilization.

~~~ Dr.Karan Singh (Indian Diplomat & politician)

India, has accomplished in the field ofspirituality what, in the world of finance, the freemarket (as opposed to a controlled economy) hassucceeded in doing:The individual seeker has beenleft free to explore and develop his own spiritual

potentials. Other scriptures have hinted at thedeeper truths of inward religion. But the priests inevery religion seldom quote those passages, whichthey rightly see as threatening to their institutionalpreeminence.

~~~ J. Donald Walters


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Indeed, if I may be allowed the anachronism,the Hindus were Spinozites more than two thousandyears before the existence of Spinoza; andDarwinians may centuries before Darwin; andevolutionists many centuries before the doctrine ofevolution had been accepted by the scientists of ourtime, and before any word like 'evolution' existed inany language of the world.

~~~ Sir Monier Monier-Williams (British Indologist)

The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindusbefore some 4500 years vary not even a single

minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used inthe 19-th century). The Indian tables give the sameannual variation of the moon as the discovered byTycho Brahe - a variation unknown to the school ofAlexandria and also to the Arabs who followed thecalculations of the school... The Hindu systems ofastronomy are by far the oldest and that from whichthe Egyptians, Greek, Romans and - even the Jewsderived from the Hindus their knowledge.

~~~Jean Sylvain Bailly (French astronomer)


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Mother India is in many ways the mother ofus all. Nothing should more deeply shame themodern student than the recency and inadequacy ofhis acquaintance with India....This is the India that

patient scholarship is now opening up like a newintellectual continent to that Western mind whichonly yesterday thought civilization an exclusiveWestern thing.


We find among the Indians the vestiges of themost remote antiquity....We know that all peoplescame there to draw the elements of theirknowledge ... India, in her splendor, gave religionsand laws to all the other peoples; Egypt and Greeceowed to her both their fables and their wisdom.

~~~ Pierre Sonnerat (French naturalist & author)

She (India) has left indelible imprints on onefourth of the human race in the course of a longsuccession of centuries. She has the right toreclaim ... her place amongst the great nationssummarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity.From Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regionsof Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India haspropagated her beliefs, her tales, and her civilization!

~~~ Sylvia Levi


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Almost all the theories, religious,philosophical, and mathematical, taught by the

Pythagoreans were known in India in the sixthcentury B.C.

~~~ H. G. Rawlinson (English Historian)

The Entire Cosmos is all pervaded by the samedivine power. there is no ultimate duality in humanexistence or in consciousness. This is a truth which inthe West is only recently being under stood afterEinstein and Heisenberg and quantum mechanics.The Newtonian-Cartesian-Marxist paradigm of amaterialistic universe has now been finally abolished,it has collapsed in the face of the new physics. Ourancient seers had a deeper insights into the nature ofreality than people had even until very recently.


I like to think that someone will trace how thedeepest thinking of India made its way to Greece andfrom there to the philosophy of our times.

~~~John Archibald Wheeler (American scientist)


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Towns and villages have inner gates; thewalls are wide and high; the streets and lanes aretorturous, and the roads winding. The thoroughfaresare are dirty and the stalls arranged on both sides ofthe road with appropriate signs. Butchers, fishers,dancers, executioners and scavengers, and so on,have their abodes without the city. In coming andgoing these persons are bound to keep on the leftside of the road till they arrive at their homes. Theirhouses are surrounded by low walls and form thesuburbs. The earth being soft and muddy, the walls

of the town are mostly built of bricks or tiles. Thedifferent buildings have the same form as those inChina; rusher of dry branches, or tiles or boards areused for covering them. The walls are covered withlime and mud, mixed with cow dung for purity. Atdifferent seasons, flowers are scattered about. Suchare some of their different customs.

~~~ Huen Tsiang (Chinese traveler visited India

629-645 A.D.)

Besides the discoverers of geometry andalgebra, the constructors of human speech, theparents of philosophy, the primal expounders ofreligion, the adepts in psychological and physical

science, how even the greatest of our biological andtheologians seem dwarfed! Name of us any moderndiscovery, and we venture to say that Indian historyneed not long be searched before the prototype willbe found on record. Here we are with the transit ofscience half accomplished, and all our Vedic ideas inprocess of readjustment to the theories of forcecorrelation, natural selection, atomic polarity and


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evolution. And here, to mock our conceit, ourapprehension, and our despair, we may read whatManu said, perhaps 10,000 years before the birth ofChrist: The first germ of life was developed by waterand heat. Water ascends towards the sky in vapors;

from the sun it descends in rain, from the rains areborn the plants, and from the plants, animals.

~~~ Louis Francois Jacolliot (French diplomat &author)

There has been no more revolutionarycontribution than the one which the Hindus (Indians)made when they invented zero.

~~~ Lancelot Hogben (English mathematician)

It is impossible not to be astonished by India.Nowhere on Earth does humanity present itself insuch a dizzying, creative burst of cultures andreligions, races and tongues. Enriched by successivewaves of migration and marauders from distantlands, every one of them left an indelible imprintwhich was absorbed into the Indian way of life. Everyaspect of the country presents itself on a massive,exaggerated scale, worthy in comparison only to the

superlative mountains that overshadow it. It is thisvariety which provides a breathtaking ensemble forexperiences that is uniquely Indian. Perhaps the onlything more difficult than to be indifferent to Indiawould be to describe or understand India completely.There are perhaps very few nations in the world withthe enormous variety that India has to offer. Modernday India represents the largest democracy in the


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world with a seamless picture of unity in diversityunparalleled anywhere else.

~~~A Rough Guide to India (Travel guide book)

A nation's culture resides in the hearts and in thesoul of its people.

~~~ Gandhi

At its starting point in India, the birthplace ofraces and religions, the womb of the world. ~~~Jules Michelet ( French writer)

Compared to Islam and Christianity,Hinduisms doctrines are extraordinarily fluid, andmultiform. India deals in images and metaphors.Restless, subtle and argumentative as Hindu thoughtis, it is less prone than European theology to the viceof distorting transcendental ideas by too stringentdefinition. It adumbrates the indescribable bymetaphors and figures. It is not afraid ofinconsistencies which may illustrate different aspectsof the infinite, but it rarely tries to cramp the divinewithin the limits of a logical phrase.

~~~Sir Charles Eliot ( British diplomat )


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The Hindu understanding of the universe hasoften been misunderstood as bizarre and primitive.The Hindu imagery is in fact a sophisticatediconography conveying universal religious truths onlynow beginning to be understood in the West.

~~~ Alistair Shearer (English spritual teacher)

India is the land of dreams. India had alwaysdreamt - more of the bliss that is man's final goal.And this has helped India to be more creative inhistory than any other nation. Hence theeffervescence of myths and legends, religious andphilosophies, music, and dances and the differentstyles of architecture.

~~~ Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (German

philosopher)

Where can we look for sages like those whosesystems of philosophy were prototypes of those ofGreece: to whose works Plato, Thales and Pythagoruswere disciples? Where do I find astronomers whoseknowledge of planetary systems yet excites wonderin Europe as well as the architects and sculptorswhose works claim our admiration, and the musicianswho could make the mind oscillate from joy tosorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modesand varied intonation?


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~~~Colonel James Todd (American pioneer)

This is the ancient land, where wisdom made itshome before it went into any other country Here isthe same India whose soil has been trodden by thefeet of the greatest sages that ever lived Lookback, therefore, as far as you can, drink deep of the

eternal fountains that are behind, and after that lookforward, march forward, and make India brighter,greater, much higher, than she ever was.

~~~ Swami Vivekananda (Indian philosopher)

Another important Vedantic concept is thatall human beings, because of their sharedspirituality, are members of a single family. TheUpanishads have an extraordinary phrase for thehuman race, Amritasya putrah (Children ofimmortality), because we carry within ourconsciousness the light and the power of theBrahman regardless of race, colour, creed, sex, casteor nationality. That is the basis of the concept ofhuman beings as an extended family Vasudhaivakutumbakam which is engraved on the first gate

into our Parliament House.



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I shall now speak of the knowledge of theHindus...of their subtle discoveries even moreingenious than those of the Greeks and Babylonians -of their rational system of mathematics or of theirmethod of calculation which no word can praisestrongly enough - I mean the system using the ninesymbols. If these things were known by the peoplewho think that they alone have mastered thesciences because they speak Greek, they wouldperhaps be convinced that every folk, not onlyGreeks, but men of a different tongues, know

something as well as they.

~~~ Severus Sebokbt (Bishop ,Syrian astronomer)

Precious stones or durable materials - gold,silver, bronze, marble, onyx or granite - have beenused by ancient people in an attempt to immortalizethemselves. Not so however the ancient VedicAryans (Indians). They turned to what may seem themost volatile and insubstantial material of all - thespoken word ...The pyramids have been eroded bythe desert wind, the marble broken by earthquakes,and the gold stolen by robbers, while the Veda is

recited daily by an unbroken chain of generations,traveling like a great wave through the livingsubstance of mind...

~~~ Dr.Jean LeMee (French author)


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We, on the contrary, now send to the BrahmansEnglish clergymen and evangelical linen-weavers, in

order out of sympathy to put them right, and to pointout to them that they are created out of nothing, andthat they ought to be grateful and pleased about it.But it is just the same as if we fired a bullet at a cliff.In India, our religions will never at any time take root;the ancient wisdom of the human race will not besupplanted by the events in Galilee. On the contrary,Indian wisdom flows back to Europe, and will producea fundamental change in our knowledge and thought

~~~ Arthur Schopenhauer(German philosopher)

With one foot grounded in time-honoredtraditions and the other fervently striding into theentrepreneurial e-age, India embraces diversitypassionately as few other countries on earth could.

~~~ Lonely Planet (Travel guide book)

No other country has lived with so complicated apast so equably, assimilating everything that hashappened to it, obliterating naught, so that not eventhe intricate histories of European states haveproduced such a rich pattern as that bequeathed by


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the Mauryas, the Ashokas, the Pahlavas, the Guptas,the Chalykyas, the Hoysalas, the Pandyas, theCholas, the Mughals, and the British - to identify afew of the people that have shaped India'sinheritance. Religion, flourishes here as it does

nowhere else. Other lands may surrender themselvestotally to a particular faith, but in India most creedsare deeply rooted and acknowledged fervently.Virtually the whole population practices some form ofdevotion. The Indian without the slightest feeling forthe divine, without a spiritual dimension to his life, isexceedingly rare. Incomparable and inimitable she is,India is also our great paradigm.

~~~ Geoffrey Moorhouse (English historian &author)

All history points to India as the mother of scienceand art,This country was anciently so renowned forknowledge and wisdom that the philosophers ofGreece did not disdain to travel thither for theirimprovement.

~~~William Macintosh

Documents

Quotes on India Hinduism