“We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made.”- Albert Einstein
“India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend and the great grand mother of tradition.” - American Writer and Humorist Mark Twain
“If there is one place on the face of earth where all dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India.” - French scholar Romain Rolland
“India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border.” - Hu Shih (Former Chinese ambassador to USA, referring to the entry of Buddhism into China. Buddhism was born in ancient India).
“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
“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.”- Apollonius Tyanaeus, Greek Thinker and Traveller 1st Century AD
“Bear in mind that the commerce of India is the commerce of the world and … he who can exclusively command it is the dictator of Europe.”- Peter the Great of Russia
“Many of the advances in the sciences that we consider today to have been made in Europe were in fact made in India centuries ago.” – Grant Duff, British Historian
“India was the motherland of our race and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages. India was the mother of our philosophy, of much of our mathematics, of the ideals embodied in Christianity… of self-government and democracy. In many ways, Mother India is the mother of us all” – Will Durant, American Historian
“Ancient Indian theories lacked an empirical base, but they were brilliant imaginative explanations of the physical structure of the world, and in a large measure, agreed with the discoveries of modern physics.” – A.L. Basham, Australian Indologist
“If I am asked which nation had been advanced in the ancient world in respect of education and culture then I would say it was – India” – Max Muller, German Indologist
“In religion, India is the only millionaire …. 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” - Mark Twain
“Indian cities are prosperous and stretch far and wide. There are many guest houses for travellers. There are hospitals providing free medical service for the poor. The viharas and temples are majestic. People are free to choose their occupations. There are no restrictions on the movement of the people. Government officials and soldiers are paid their salaries regularly. People are not addicted to drinks. They shun violence. The administration provided by the Gupta rulers is fair and just” - Chinese traveller Fa-Hien during the reign of Chandragupta II
“Indians have in general superior endowments in reading, writing and arithmetic than the common people of any nation in Europe.” - Warren Hastings
I believe that the civilization India has evolved is not to be beaten in the world. Nothing can equal the seeds sown by our ancestry. Rome went; Greece shared the same fate; the might of the Pharaohs was broken; Japan has become westernized; of China nothing can be said; but India is still, somehow or other, sound at the foundation. – Mahatma Gandhi
The absolute superiority of India over the West in philosophy; poetry from the Mahabharata, containing the Bhagavad-Gita, “perhaps the most beautiful work of the literature of the world - Count Hermann Keyserling
At the close of this century, the world would be dominated by the West, but that in the 21st century “India will conquer her conquerors.” – Dr. Arnold J. Toynbee – British Historian
India had the start of the whole world in the beginning of things. She had the first civilization; she had the first accumulation of material wealth; she was populous with deep thinkers and subtle intellects; she had mines, and woods, and a fruitful soul. - Mark Twain
The vast and tranquil metaphysics of India is unfolded; her conception of the universe, her social organization, perfect in its day and still capable of adaptation to the demands of modern times; the solution which she offers for the feminist problem, for the problems of the family, of love, of marriage; and lastly, the magnificent revelation of her art. The whole vast soul of India proclaims from end to end of its crowded and well ordered edifice the same domination of a sovereign synthesis.” There is no negation. All is harmonized. All the forces of life are grouped like a forest, whose thousand waving arms are led by Nataraja, the master of the Dance. Everything has its place, every being has its function, and all take part in the divine concert, their different voices, and their very dissonances, creating, in the phrase of Heraclitus, a most beautiful harmony. Whereas in the West, cold, hard logic isolates the unusual, shutting it off from the rest of life into a definite and distinct compartment of the spirit. India, ever mindful of the natural differences in souls and in philosophies, endeavors to blend them into each other, so as to recreate in its fullest perfection the complete unity. The matching of opposites produces the true rhythm of life. – Romain Rolland
1. Whatever the age of the Vedas, they are the oldest books in existence.
2. The names are in fluid state, not yet as proper names.
3. Vedic language has a charm which no other literature has. It is spontaneous, original and truthful.
Words retain their original meanings. Every thought in spite of being most intricate is however true.
4. Vedas have two fold interests for us. They belong to the history of world as well as of India. They fill up the gap which no other book does. They take us to the times of which we have no record, anywhere.
5. I maintain that to every man who cares for himself, for his ancestors and for intellectual growth, the study of Vedas is indispensable.
6. Vedas are nevertheless older than any other literary document and they give us trustworthy information of a time in the history of human thought, of which we know nothing absolutely before the discovery of the Vedas.
7. Vedic literature opens to us a treasure in the adventure of human race to which we can fine no parallel anywhere else.
8. Let it not be supposed that because there are several translations of the Vedas in English, French, German, Latin, all that the Vedas tell, has been known. Far from it, every one of these is tentative. We are still in the surface of the Vedic Knowledge.
9. If I were asked under which sky the human mind has fully developed and has deeply wondered on the great problems of life, I would point to India. Whatever sphere of human thought you may select for your study, I would point to India.
10. It is certain that there is nothing more ancient not only in India but in the whole world than the Rig Veda. – Max Muller about Vedas in specific
Great! The best words Max Muller had ever spoken