Quotes on India

QUOTES ON INDIA

Albert Einstein: "We owe a lot to India and the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made!"

Mark Twain: "India is the cradle of human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legends and the great grand mother of all world traditions. So far as I am able to judge, nothing has been left undone, either by man or nature, to make India the most extraordinary country that the sun visits on his rounds. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked. India has many gods in all forms and all religions on this earth. In religion, all other countries are paupers. The one land that all humans desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of the rest of the globe combined."

Will Durant, Late American Historian: “It is true that even across the Himalayan barrier India has sent to the west, such gifts as grammar and logic, philosophy and fables, hypnotism and chess, and above all numerical and the decimal system. India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings. India is the motherland of our human race and Sanskrit is the mother of all Indo-European languages. She is the mother of our philosophy, of our mathematics, mother of ideals embodied in Christianity and mother of our democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all."

Henry David Thoreau, American Thinker: "Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night"

William James, American Author: "From the Vedas, we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopaedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology and meteorology."

Max Muller, German Scholar: "If I were to look over the whole world to find out a country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow - in some part a very paradise on earth - I should point to India. There is no book in the world that is soul stirring and inspiring as the Vedas and Upanishads."
Romain Rolland, French Scholar: "If there is one place on the face of the earth where all dreams of living humans have found a home from the very earliest days when we began the dream of existence, it is India".

Apollonius Tyanaeus, Ancient Greek Traveller: "In India, I found a race of mortals living upon the earth, but not adhering to it, inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything, but possessed by nothing."

Dr.Arnold Toynbee, British Historian: “It is already becoming clear that a chapter which had a Western beginning will have to have an Indian ending if it is not to end in the self-destruction of the human race. At this supremely dangerous moment in history, the only way of salvation for the mankind is the simple Indian way.”

Hu Shih, Former Chinese Ambassador to USA: "India conquered and dominated China for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across its border."

Swami Vivekananda, Indian Philosopher: "Civilizations have arisen in other parts of the world. In ancient and modern times, wonderful ideas have been carried forward from one race to another...But, my friends, it has been always with the blast of war trumpets and the march of embattled cohorts. Each idea had to be soaked in a deluge of the blood. Each word of power had to be followed by the groans of millions, by the wails of orphans, by the tears of widows. This, many other nations have taught; but India for thousands of years has peacefully existed. Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist. Even earlier, when history has no record, and the tradition dares not peer into the gloom of that intense past, even from until now, ideas after ideas have marched out from her, but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it and peace before it. We, of all nations of the world, have never been a conquering race, and that blessing is on our head, and therefore we live!"

Sri Aurobindo, Indian Philosopher: Indian "India of the ages is not dead nor has she spoken her last creative word; she lives and has still something to do for herself and the people. And that which must seek now to awake is not anglicised oriental people, docile pupil of the West and doomed to repeat the cycle of occident’s success and failure, but still the ancient immemorable Shakti recovering her deepest self, lifting her head higher towards the supreme source of light and strength and turning to discover the complete meaning and a vaster form of her Dharma."

Sir William Jones, British Orientalist: "The Sanskrit language, whatever be its antiquity is of wonderful structure, more perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin and more exquisitely refined than either."

Keith Bellows, VP, National Geographic Society: "There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won’t go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds. I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant colour."

Grant Duff, British Historian of India: "Many of the developments in the science and technology that we consider today to have been made in Europe were in fact made in India centuries ago".

P.Johnstone: "Gravitation was known to the Indians before the birth of Newton. The system of blood circulation was discovered by them centuries before Harvey".

Emmelin Plunret: "They were very advanced Indian astronomers in 6000 BC. Vedas contain an account of the dimension of Earth, Sun, Moon, Planets and Galaxies."

Sylvia Levi: "India has left indelible imprints on the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. India has the right to claim the top place amongst the great nations summarizing and symbolizing the spirit of humanity. From Persia to the Chinese sea, from the icy regions of Siberia to Islands of Java and Borneo, India has propagated her beliefs, her tales, her traditions, her faith and her civilization!"

Colonel James Todd: "If not India, where else I can find philosophies and philosophers, to whose works Plato, Thales and Pythagorus were disciples? Where do I find astronomers whose knowledge of planetary systems yet excites? Where do I find architects and sculptors whose works claim admiration? and the musicians who could make the mind oscillate from joy to sorrow, from tears to smile with the change of modes and intonation?"

Lancelot Hogben, Mathematician: "There has been no revolutionary mathematical contribution than the one which the Indians made when they invented ‘ZERO’."

Wheeler Wilcox: "India - The land of Vedas, the remarkable works contain not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts, which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, airship, all were known to the seers who founded the Vedas."

W.Heisenberg, German Physicist: "After the conversations and discussions about the Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of recent Quantum Physics theories that had seemed so crazy to me suddenly made much more sense and understandable."

Sir W.Hunter, British Surgeon: "The surgical methods of ancient Indian physicians were very skilful and advanced at that time than anywhere else. A special branch of surgery was dedicated to rhinoplasty or operations for improving deformed ears, noses and forming new ones, which European surgeons have now borrowed."

Sir John Woodroffe: "An examination of Indian Vedic doctrines shows that it was well advanced than the most philosophical thought of the West at that time."

B.G.Rele: "Our present knowledge of the nervous system fits in so accurately with the internal description of the human body given in the Vedas (5000 years ago). Then the question arises whether the Vedas are really religious books or books on science, medicine, and philosophy".

A Rough Guide to India: "It is impossible not to be astonished by India. Nowhere on Earth does humanity present itself in such a dizzying, creative burst of cultures, traditions, religions, races, faiths and languages. Enriched by successive waves of human migration from distant lands, every one of them made an indelible imprint, which was absorbed into the Indian way of life. Every aspect of the country presents itself on a massive, exaggerated scale, worthy in comparison only to the superlative mountains that overshadow it. It is this variety, which provides a breathtaking ensemble for experiences that is uniquely very Indian. Perhaps the only thing more difficult than to be indifferent to India would be to describe or understand India completely. There are perhaps very few nations in the world with the enormous variety that India has to offer. Modern day India represents the largest democracy in the world with a seamless picture of unity in diversity unparalleled anywhere else."

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