Thoughts of great thinkers on Indian philosophy

Thoughts of great thinkers on Indian philosophy

If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow, in some parts a very paradise on earth I should point to India.

If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has solutions of some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India.

And if I were ask myself from what literature we, herein Europe, we who have been nurtured at most exclusively on the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans and of the Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more comprehensive, more universal, in fact more truly human a life, not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life, again I should point to India.. . . . . . Max Muller

An examination of Indian Vedic doctrines shows that it is in tune with the most advanced scientific and philosophical thought of the West.. . . . . . Sir John Woodroffe

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

There is no book in the world that is so thrilling, stirring and inspiring as the Upanishads.      

. . . . . . Max Muller

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.

 . . . . Mark Twain

India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings. . . . . Will Durant

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 mankind is the Indian way.. . . . . Dr Arnold Toynbee

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. . . . Sir William Jones

Gravitation was known to the Hindus (Indians) before the birth of Newton. The system of blood circulation was discovered by them centuries before Harvey was heard of.    . . . . . P. Johnstone

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

Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world.       . . . Schopenhauer

India has two million gods, and worships them all. In religion all other countries are paupers; India is the only millionaire.

. . . . . Mark Twain

The Hindus were a people remarkably gifted for philosophical abstraction.. . . . . Max Muller

She (India) has left indelible imprints on one fourth of the human race in the course of a long succession of centuries. She has the right to reclaim ... her 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, and her civilization!. . . . . Sylvia Levi

After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed so crazy suddenly made much more sense.. . . . . W. Heisenberg

India was China’s teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and the world’s teacher in trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess as well as in philosophy, and that she inspired Bocaccia, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Emerson.. . . . .Lin Yutang

India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages. She was the mother of our philosophy, mother through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics, mother through Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity, mother through the village communities of self government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. . . . . Will Durant

India is a temple of humanity where you must walk in with bare and sincere heart.. . . . . Iiya Ehremburg

If there is a country on earth which can justly claim the honor of having been the cradle of the human race or at least the scene of primitive civilization, the successive developments of which carried into all parts of the ancient world and even beyond, the blessings of knowledge which is the second life of man, that country assuredly is India

. . . . . Creuzer

The celebrated Wilhelm Von Humbolt ranked Bhagwatgita above the works of Lucretius, Permenides and Empedokles.

Bhagwatgita is perhaps the deepest and loftiest thing the world has to show. The Mahabharat is the most beautiful, nay perhaps the only truly philosophical poem which can find in all the literatures known to us. . . Wilhelm Von Humbolt

We have all heard and read about the ancient region of India. It is the land of the great Vedas, the most remarkable works, containing not only religious ideas on a perfect life, but also facts which all the science has since proved true. Electricity,  Radium, Electrons, Airships, all seem to be known to the sires who found the Vedas. . . .Wheeler Willox

In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life; it will be the solace of my death.       . . . . . Schopenhauer

I have not found in Europe or America, poets, thinkers or popular leaders equal, or even comparable, to those of India today.. . . . . . . . . Keyserling

If there is one place on the face of the earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.. . . Romain Rolland 

It must be admitted, however, that, in exhibiting pictures of domestic life and manners, the Sanskrit epics are even more true and real than the Greek and Roman. . . . . . . . . . Williams 

And this popular form of yoga, no less than the very much sterner and more difficult discipline of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras, to which I first alluded, is a technique to link consciousness to the ultimate truth: the mystery of being. The sense of the whole universe as a manifestation of the radiance of God and of yourself as likewise of that radiance, and the assurance that this is so, no matter what things may look like, round about, is the key to the wisdom of India.. . . . . . . . . Joseph Campbell The Perennial Philosophy is expressed most succinctly in the Sanskrit formula, tat tvam asi ('That art thou'); the Atman,or immanent eternal Self, is one with Brahman, the Absolute Principle of all existence; and the last end of every human being, is to discover the fact for himself, to find out who he really is.". . . . . . . . Aldous  Huxley  

When we read with attention the poetical and philosophical monuments of the East--above all, those of India, which are beginning to spread in Europe--we discover there many a truth, and truths so profound, and which make such a contrast with the meanness of the results at which European genius has sometimes stopped, that we are constrained to bend the knee before the philosophy of the East, and to see in this cradle of the human race the native land of the highest philosophy.  . . . . . . . . . Victor Cousin

After a study of some forty years and more of the great religions of the world, I find none so perfect none so scientific, none so philosophical and none so spiritual that the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. . . . . . . . . . Annie Besant

Today, the western scientific progress has physically united the world. It has not only got rid of the ‘space’ factor, it has also equipped the various countries of the world with deadly arms. But they have not yet learnt the art of knowing and loving one another. If we want to save humanity at this most critical juncture, the only option is the Indian approach.. . . . . . . . . Dr. Arnold  Toynbee 

The Indian teaching, through its clouds of legends, has yet a simple and grand religion, like a queenly countenance seen through a rich veil. It teaches to speak truth, love others, and to dispose trifles. The East is grand - and makes Europe appear the land of trifles.. . . . . . . . . Emerson