Voltaire(1694-1778) Author and Philosopher It does not behove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indian and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity Aldous Huxley(1894-1963) English novelist The (Bhagavad) Gita is one of the clearest and most comprehensive summaries of the perennial philosophy ever to have been done. Hence its enduring value, not only for the Indians, but also for all mankind. It is perhaps the most systematic spiritual statement of the perennial philosophy Rudyard Kipling(1865-1936) “Now it is not good for the Christian’s health to hustle the Hindu brown. For the Christian riles and the Hindu smiles and weareth the Christian down ; And the end of the fight is a tombstone while with the name of the late deceased and the epitaph drear, A fool lies here who tried to hustle the east’ John Archibald Wheeler(b-1911) Theoretical Physicist, who coined “Black Hole “I like to think that someone will trace how the deepest thinking of India made its way to Greece and from there to the philosophy of our times Guy Sorman author of “Genius of India” Temporal notions in Europe were overturned by an India rooted in eternity. The Bible had been the yardstick for measuring time, but the infinitely vast time cycles of India suggested that the world was much older than anything the Bible spoke of. It seem as if the Indian mind was better prepared for the chronological mutations of Darwinian evolution and astrophysics.” Adam Smith (1723-1790) Father of economics, and author of “Wealth of Nations” The difference between the genius of the British constitution which protects and governs North America, and that of the mercantile company [British East India Company] which oppresses and domineers in the East Indies[India], cannot perhaps be better illustrated than by the different state of those countries H.G. Wells (1866-1946) Sociologist, and Historian and Author of “Time Machine” and “War of the Worlds” “The history of India for many centuries had been happier, less fierce, and more dreamlike than any other history. In these favourable conditions, they built a character – meditative and peaceful and a nation of philosophers such as could nowhere have existed except in India.” Jean-Sylvain Bailly (1736-1793) French Astronomer The motion of the stars calculated by the Hindus before some 4500 years vary not even a single minute from the tables of Cassine and Meyer (used in the 19-th century). The Hindu systems of astronomy are by far the oldest and that from which the Egyptians, Greek, Romans and – even the Jews derived from the Hindus their knowledge George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) Irish dramatist, literary critic, socialist spokesman The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creator’s hand. Dr David Frawley American Teacher, Doctor, Author, Speaker, Historian “India possesses a great indigenous civilization dating back to 7000 BC, such as recent archaeological discoveries at Mehrgarh clearly reveal. It had the most extensive urban culture in the world in the third millennium BCE with the many cities of the Indus and Sarasvati rivers. When the Sarasvati river of Vedic fame dried up in the second millennium BCE, the culture shifted east to the more certain rivers of the Gangetic plain, which became the dominant region of the subcontinent. Gone is the old idea of the Aryan invasion and an outside basis for Indian culture. In its place is the continuity of a civilization and its literature going back to the earliest period of history. Unfortunately, over the first fifty years since Independence, India has not discovered its real roots. Its intellectuals have mimicked Western trends in thought. They have forgotten their own profound modern sages like Swami Vivekananda and Sri Aurobindo who projected modern and futuristic views of the Indian tradition. While Westerners come to India seeking spiritual knowledge, Indian intellectuals look to the West with an adulation that Annie Wood Besant (1847-1933) British Theosophical Society 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 than the great religion known by the name of Hinduism. Make no mistake, without Hinduism, India has no future. Hinduism is the soil in to which India’s roots are stuck and torn out of that she will inevitably wither as a tree torn out from its place. And if Hindus do not maintain Hinduism – who shall save it? If India’s own children do not cling to her faith who shall guard it? India alone can save India and India and Hinduism are one.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803-1882) Philosopher “I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us.“ “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. … all is soul and the soul is Vishnu …cheerful and noble is the genius of this cosmogony” “When India was explored, and the wonderful riches of Indian theological literature found, that dispelled once and for all, the dream about Christianity being the sole revelation. Nature makes a Brahmin of me presently.” ” Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) German Philosopher “In the whole world there is no study so beneficial and so elevating as that of the Upanishads. It has been the solace of my life – it will be the solace of my death.” “It is the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world. “ “I believe that the influence of the Sanskrit literature will penetrate not less deeply than did the revival of Greek literature in the fifteenth century.” Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American Philosopher In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmological philosophy of the Bhagavad-Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.” “…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 the sectarianism. It is of ages, climes, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I am at it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night.“ Mark Twain(1835-1920) American Author “This is India! The land of dreams and romance, of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, the cobra and the jungle, the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birthplace of human speech, mother of history, grandmother of legend, great-grandmother of tradition, whose yesterdays bear date with the mouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien persons, for lettered and ignorant, wise and fool, rich and poor, bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see, and having seen once, by even a glimpse, would not give that glimpse for all the shows of all the rest of the globe combined. Even now, after a lapse of a year, the delirium of those days in Bombay has not left me and I hope it never will.” Ken Wilber(b-1949) American Philosopher and Author Larry [Warchowski] is just about as philosophically /spiritually well read as anyone you’re likely to find, and The Matrix films are a stunning tribute to that fact. Larry said that when he found Ken’s work, “It was like Schopenhauer discovering the Upanishads. ” Professor Max Muller(1823-1900) “India, what can it teach us?, “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 developed some of it choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has found solutions of some of them which will deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and Kant, I should point to India. . And if I were to ask myself from what literature we, here in Europe, who have been nurtured most exclusively on the thoughts of the Greeks and Romans and of the Semitic race and the Jewish may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more comprehensive, more universal, in fact a more truly human life, again, I should point to India. George Harrison(1943-2001) Beatles For every human there is a quest to find the answer to why I am here, who am I, where did I come from, where am I going. For me that became the most important thing in my life. Everything else is secondary Here everybody is vibrating on a material level, which is nowhere. Over there [India], they have this great feeling of something else that’s just spiritual going on Lin Yutang(1895-1976) Chinese writer India was China’s teacher in religion and imaginative literature, and world’s teacher in Trigonometry, quadratic equations, grammar, phonetics, Arabian Nights, animal fables, chess as well as in philosophy, and she inspired Boccasccio, Goethe, Schopenhauer and Emerson.”
J.Robert Oppenheimer Albert Einstein J. Robert Oppenheimer (1904-1967) American nuclear physicist “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the Mighty One. . . . Now I am become death, the destroyer of worlds.“ Oppenheimer “the father of the atomic bomb” quoting from the Hindu scripture Bhagavad-Gita upon witnessing the mushroom cloud resulting from the detonation of the world’s first atomic bomb in New Mexico, U.S.A., on July 16, 1945. “Access to the Vedas is the greatest privilege this century may claim over all previous centuries Victor Cousin (1792-1867) French Philosopher When we read 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. Hu Shih (1891-1962) former Ambassador of China to USA “India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. Dr. Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975) 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 human history, the only way of salvation for mankind is the Indian way.” Albert Einstein (1879 -1955) “When I read the Bhagavad-Gita and reflect about how God created this universe everything else seems so superfluous.” “We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.“ Will Durant (1885-1981) American historian “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 the 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”. “Perhaps in return for conquest, arrogance and spoilation, India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of the mature mind, the quiet content of the unacquisitive soul, the calm of the understanding spirit, and a unifying, a pacifying love for all living things.”
Dr.S.Radhakrishnan By Geeta Padmanaban Courtesy: The Hindu September 5! An important day for all of us. It is the day set aside to remember our teachers. For the time they spent with us, for what they taught us and finally for what we are today. It is Teachers’ Day to commemorate a great teacher, philosopher and statesman – Dr. S. Radhakrishnan, whose birth anniversary falls on this day. Ask any adult. They may not remember what they learnt in school, but every one of them will tell you the name of the teacher they admired the most. They will tell you why they remember that teacher after all these years. Goes to show how much our teachers are part of our growing years! Our school life (with so much to study) is happy because of our teachers. You do have a teacher you think is special, right? “My favourite? My Science teacher,” said Naren, a Std. VIII student. “She is very strict, doesn’t spare anyone who misbehaves or comes without doing home-work. You miss home-work, you lose marks. You delay it, she won’t even accept it.” But the kids love her because she is fair to all. She allows time for students to chatter in the class. “She teaches the principles of science in a fun way,” he says. “She shows videos to explain scientific principles.” Once she made them do a children’s book about cells in a way that small children could understand. “I wrote about an adventure of a boy named Max who is whisked away by the amazing Professor Cellular in a small spaceship travelling through cells. On the way, he explains things like the mitochondria, nucleus and the golgi bodies.” Overall, a good teacher is strict and fun at the same time, knows how to get along with kids, has a vast knowledge of her subject, thinks of the quality of the students’ education first, gives students fair and just punishment for academic crime — forgetting home-work, misbehaving and chattering when you should be working, not respecting the rules of the school. Me? I like a teacher who gives you something to take home to think about besides homework. Teacher, Philosopher, Statesman Dr. Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan’s birthday (September 5, 1888), is celebrated as Teacher’s Day. He was born into a middle class family at Tirutani in Tamil Nadu state, a town in Madras Presidency, British India. Radhakrishnan went through most of his education on scholarships. He joined the Voorhee’s College in Vellore but switched to the Madras Christian College. He graduated with a Master’s degree in Philosophy from the Madras Christian College in 1906. In 1921, he was appointed as a professor in philosophy to occupy the King George V Chair of Mental and Moral Science at the University of Calcutta. In 1929, Radhakrishnan was invited to take the post vacated by Principal J. Estlin Carpenter in Manchester College, Oxford. For his services to education, he was knighted by the British Government in 1931, but did not use the title in personal life preferring instead his academic title ‘Doctor’. He was the Vice-Chancellor of Andhra University from 1931 to 1936. In 1936, Radhakrishnan was named Spalding Professor of Eastern Religions and Ethics at the University of Oxford, and was elected a Fellow of All Souls College. In 1939, Pt. Madan Mohan Malaviya invited him to become Vice-Chancellor of Banaras Hindu University. He continued as its Vice-Chancellor till January, 1948. When India became independent in 1947, Radhakrishnan represented India at UNESCO, and was later Ambassador of India to the Soviet Union, from 1949 to 1952. He was also elected to the Constituent Assembly of India. Radhakrishnan was elected as the first Vice President of India in 1952. He was elected as the second President of India (1962-1967). When he became President, some of his students and friends requested him to allow them to celebrate his birthday. He replied, “Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if September 5 is observed as Teachers’ Day.”
