Quotes & Sayings About Hinduism

(1) Risk-taking behavior, essential for efforts at innovation, is more widespread in some societies than in others. (2) The scientific outlook is a unique feature of post-Renaissance European society that has contributed heavily to its modern technological preeminence. (3) Tolerance of diverse views and of heretics fosters innovation, whereas a strongly traditional outlook (as in China's emphasis on ancient Chinese classics) stifles it. (4) Religions vary greatly in their relation to technological innovation: some branches of Judaism and Christianity are claimed to be especially compatible with it, while some branches of Islam, Hinduism, and Brahmanism may be especially incompatible with it. — Jared Diamond

There is some unwritten code or law that all women or means must be into Hinduism or Mysticism or psychics by the time they reach fifty years of age. The male equivalent is ornate guns. All aging women find psychics, all aging males find gun cabinets and expensive brandy. There's your truth. — Nathan Yocum

Each religion has helped mankind. Paganism increased in man the light of beauty, the largeness and height of his life, his aim at a many-sided perfection; Christianity gave him some vision of divine love and charity; Buddhism has shown him a noble way to be wiser, gentler, purer, Judaism and Islam how to be religiously faithful in action and zealously devoted to God; Hinduism has opened to him the largest and profoundest spiritual possibilities. — Sri Aurobindo

Present-day Hinduism and Buddhism were growths from the same branch. Buddhism degenerated, and Shankara lopped it off! — Swami Vivekananda

Pleasure from the senses seems like nectar at first, but it is bitter as poison in the end. — Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

Cow preservation is an article of faith in Hinduism. — Mahatma Gandhi

Artha - attainment of wealth, material prosperity,
Its realization on righteous and moral basis be;
- 5 - — Munindra Misra

These are the themes in life which are consistent in Judaism, Islam, Hinduism - of being grounded in who you are and being engaged in an unjust world. — Cory Booker

Hinduism, with its openness, its respect for variety, its acceptance of all other faiths, is one religion that should be able to assert itself without threatening others. — Shashi Tharoor

To remove untouchability is a penance that caste Hindus owe to Hinduism and to themselves. — Mahatma Gandhi

Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war. — Stephen R. Prothero

Swaraj will favour Hinduism no more than Islam, nor Islam more than Hinduism. — Mahatma Gandhi

Hinduism is like the Ganga, pure and unsullied at its source but taking in its course the impurities in the way. Even like the Ganga it is beneficent in its total effect. It takes a provincial form in every province, but the inner substance is retained everywhere. — Mahatma Gandhi

Harijan service is a duty the caste Hindus owe to themselves. — Mahatma Gandhi

Hinduism loses its right to make a universal appeal if it closes its temples to Harijans. — Mahatma Gandhi

The supreme truth is that nothing ever is born. — Gaudapada

Hinduism would not have been much of a religion if Rama had not steeled his heart against every temptation. — Mahatma Gandhi

The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the true measure of India from the poets of the Veda, the sages of the Upanishads, the founders of the Vedanta and Sankhya philosophies, and the authors of the oldest law-books, and not from the millions who are born and die in their villages, and who have never for one moment been roused out of their drowsy dream of life. — Friedrich Max Muller

Bahaism gives you a pluralistic view, and a lot of aspects of Hinduism give you a moral framework with no accountability other than the karmic system. There's no linear movement or point of accountability toward God. — Ravi Zacharias

The awareness of liberation is not liberation. The awareness of time is not liberation. — Frederick Lenz

I have nothing of the communalist in me because my Hinduism is all inclusive. — Mahatma Gandhi

Once you have personally experienced enlightenment, you will see beyond the ocean of death to the everlasting shores of immortality. — Frederick Lenz

Performing the duty prescribed by (one's own) nature, one incurreth no sin. — Anonymous

The concept (of happiness) is universal. In Buddhism, it is called causeless joy, in Christianity, the kingdom of heaven within, and in Judaism it is called ashrei, an inner sense of holiness and health. Is Islam it is called falah, happiness and well-being, and in Hinduism it is called ananda, or pure bliss. — Marci Shimoff

If you can get out of the mind you will get out of Christianity, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, and all kinds of rubbish will be just finished. You can come to a full stop. — Osho

The only way Hinduism can convert the whole world to cow-protection is by giving an object-lesson in cow-protection and all it means. — Mahatma Gandhi

From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hinduism religion. — Swami Vivekananda

But we should not cling! A plague upon fundamentalists and literalists! I am reminded of a story of Lord Krishna when he was a cowherd. Every night he invites the milkmaids to dance with him in the forest. They come and they dance. The night is dark, the fire in their midst roars and crackles, the beat of the music gets ever faster - the girls dance and dance and dance with their sweet lord, who has made himself so abundant as to be in the arms of each and every girl. But the moment the girls become possessive, the moment each one imagines that Krishna is her partner alone, he vanishes. So it is that we should not be jealous with God. — Yann Martel

The more I study Hindu scriptures, and the more I discuss them with Brahmins, the more I feel convinced that untouchability is the greatest blot upon Hinduism. — Mahatma Gandhi

The vision of Hinduism is unity in diversity. First, Hinduism lovingly embraces all alien elements; second, it tries to assimilate them; third, it tries to expand itself as a whole, with a view to serving humanity and nature. — Sri Chinmoy

Hinduism has an enormous capacity to absorb from outside influences and accept it in a peaceful and steady manner without perturbing the system. — N. R. Narayana Murthy

I do regard Islam to be a religion of peace in the same sense as Christianity, Buddhism and Hinduism are. — Mahatma Gandhi

In medieval India, the Hindu Vaishnava system of bhakti-yoga (devotional yoga) developed highly sophisticated categories of relation (rasa) to God, including santa (awe and reverence), vatsalya (parental attitude toward God), dasya (servant of God), sakhya (being friends and playmates with God), and madburya (passionate, romantic love). — Siobhan Houston

My life is dedicated to the service of Indians through the religion of nonviolence which I believe to be the root of Hinduism. — Mahatma Gandhi

Any religion can be compared to the attic of an old home. Unless the attic is regularly cleaned, it gathers dust and cobwebs and eventually becomes unusable. Similarly, if a religion cannot be updated or cleaned from time to time, it loses its usefulness and cannot relate anymore to changed times and people. — Bhaskarananda

After long study and experience, I have come to the conclusion that (1) all religions are true; (2) all religions have some error in them; (3) all religions are almost as dear to me as my own Hinduism, in as much as all human beings should be as dear to one as one's own close relatives. — Mahatma Gandhi

The river and its waves are one surf: where is the difference between the river and its waves?
When the wave rises, it is the water; and when it falls, it is the same water again. Tell me, Sir, where is the distinction?
Because it has been named as wave, shall it no longer be considered as water?
Within the Supreme Brahma, the worlds are being told like beads:
Look upon that rosary with the eyes of wisdom. — Kabir

My Hinduism must be a very poor thing if it cannot flourish even under the most adverse influence. — Mahatma Gandhi

I know that Buddhism is to Hinduism what Protestantism is to Roman Catholicism, only in a much stronger light, to a much greater degree. — Mahatma Gandhi

I'm an agnostic in the truest sense of the word. I think about these things - I grew up Roman Catholic, I've been interested in Hinduism, in Eastern religions, but I'm not dedicated to anything - I go through periods where I think maybe it's all nonsense; maybe it's 'The Matrix ... ' I'm open to various ideas. — Ronald D. Moore

What does spirituality, money and happiness have in common? Everything. — Robin Sacredfire

My whole soul rebels against the idea that Hinduism and Islam represent two antagonistic cultures and doctrines. — Mahatma Gandhi

Feel nothing, know nothing, do nothing, have nothing, give up all to God, and say utterly, 'Thy will be done.' We only dream this bondage. Wake up and let it go. — Swami Vivekananda

For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as a birthplace of Ram. But the exact location is a subject of dispute and political turmoil. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more structured, more homogenous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. What used to be once a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts have to intervene — Devdutt Pattanaik

God stipulates in the Bible that Jesus Followers are to love and serve everyone regardless of their faith or lack of it. But, this does not require us to honour and respect their Biblically-heinous cultural practises like multiculturalism does! — Gary Patton

Sri Krishna refers, of course, to this world as a joyless, transient world. Obviously, he's never been to Disneyland. — Frederick Lenz

Terrorism has no religion, but secularism has one and only one. — Satyendra Singh 'Shyamal'

No individual is solely reflective, emotional, active, or experimental, and different life situations call for different resources to be brought into play. Most people will, on the whole, find travel on one road more satisfactory than on others and will consequently tend to keep close to it; but Hinduism encourages people to test all four and combine them as best suits their needs. — Huston Smith

As the sun, revealer of all objects to the seer, is not harmed by the sinful eye, nor by the impurities of the objects it gazes on, so the one Self, dwelling in all, is not touched by the evils of the world. (The Upanishads: Breath of the Eternal, pg. 35) — Swami Prabhavananda

Then, O King! the God, so saying,
Stood, to Pritha's Son displaying
All the splendour, wonder, dread
Of His vast Almighty-head.
Out of countless eyes beholding,
Out of countless mouths commanding,
Countless mystic forms enfolding
In one Form: supremely standing
Countless radiant glories wearing,
Countless heavenly weapons bearing,
Crowned with garlands of star-clusters,
Robed in garb of woven lustres,
Breathing from His perfect Presence
Breaths of every subtle essence
Of all heavenly odours; shedding
Blinding brilliance; overspreading-
Boundless, beautiful- all spaces
With His all-regarding faces;
So He showed! If there should rise
Suddenly within the skies
Sunburst of a thousand suns
Flooding earth with beams undeemed-of,
Then might be that Holy One's
Majesty and radiance dreamed of! — Edwin Arnold

India is still medieval. — Abhijit Naskar

My respectful study of other religions has not abated my reverence for or my faith in the Hindu scriptures. — Mahatma Gandhi

So my students sometimes say: "Everything you teach about religion you seem to like. You always say such positive things about Islam and such positive things about Judaism and Hinduism, which one do you believe?" And I say: "Which one do you think God believes?" [laughter] What the students say is true. I like all religions and I think religion is a natural expression of the higher aspirations of humanity just as it all too often is also an expression of the despotic and most base aspects of humanity. — Mark Juergensmeyer

A more common explanation for the feeling of being Old in Soul is tied up in Buddhist and Hindu ideas of reincarnation, or metempsychosis. Interestingly, this is most likely where the origin of the phrase "Old Soul" came from in the first place. — Aletheia Luna

What you know can never be the beyond. Whatever you experience is not the beyond. If there is any beyond, this movement of 'you' is absent. The absence of this movement probably is the beyond, but the beyond can never be experienced by you; it is when the 'you' is not there. Why are you trying to experience a thing that cannot be experienced? — U.G. Krishnamurti

The Bhagavad-Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity. — Aldous Huxley

Beware of generalizations about any faith because they sometimes amount to the religious equivalent of racial profiling. Hinduism contained both Gandhi and the fanatic who assassinated him. — Nicholas Kristof

In Hinduism, incarnation is ascribed to one who has performed some extraordinary service of mankind. All embodied life is in reality an incarnation of God, but it is not usual to consider every living being an incarnation. Future generations pay this homage to one who, in his own generation, has been extraordinarily religious in his conduct. I can see nothing wrong in this procedure; — Mahatma Gandhi

The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan. — Fritjof Capra

I believe Buddhism to be a simplification of Hinduism and Islam to be a simplification of Xianity. — C.S. Lewis

Perform all thy actions with mind concentrated on the Divine, renouncing attachment and looking upon success and failure with an equal eye. Spirituality implies equanimity.
[Trans. Purohit Swami] — Anonymous

All of us have to ensure that our future generations lead a life of peace, dignity and mutual respect. We need to sow the seeds of a conflict-free world, and in this endeavour, Buddhism and Hinduism have a great contribution. — Narendra Modi

Modern Hinduism, modern Jainism, and Buddhism branched off at the same time. For some period, each seemed to have wanted to outdo the others in grotesqueness and humbuggism. — Swami Vivekananda

Self-realization is liberation. Liberation is self-realization. — Frederick Lenz

When I was a schoolboy in England, the old bound volumes of Kipling in the library had gilt swastikas embossed on their covers. The symbol's 'hooks' were left-handed, as opposed to the right-handed ones of the Nazi hakenkreuz, but for a boy growing up after 1945 the shock of encountering the emblem at all was a memorable one. I later learned that in the mid-1930s Kipling had caused this 'signature' to be removed from all his future editions. Having initially sympathized with some of the early European fascist movements, he wanted to express his repudiation of Hitlerism (or 'the Hun,' as he would perhaps have preferred to say), and wanted no part in tainting the ancient Indian rune by association. In its origin it is a Hindu and Jainas symbol for light, and well worth rescuing. — Christopher Hitchens

One must be a lotus to emerge from mucky waters clean. — Will Advise

Hinduism would not be eternal were it not constantly growing and spreading, and taking in new areas of experience. Precisely because it has this power of self addition and re-adaptation, in greater degree than any other religion that the world has even seen, we believe it to be the one immortal faith. — Sister Nivedita

Gita and Ganga constitute the essence of Hinduism; one its theory and the other its practice. — Swami Vivekananda

The perceiver of the dream, the one whom the dream is unfolding before, is what we call the Self. — Frederick Lenz

The five elements are energies, not things. In Hinduism, they are known as the five tattvas. Psychic people can see them and their geometric forms. — Stefan Emunds

Shutting out all external objects, fixing the vision between the eyebrows, making even the inward and outward breaths, the sage who has controlled the senses, mind and understanding, who is intent upon liberation, who has cast away desire, fear and anger, he is ever freed. — The Bhagavad Gita

... the designation of wife in India, of the Hindu wife, is higher and grander than that of Empress. She is called Devi — Virchand Gandhi

In Hindu parlance he had 'realised the Self'; that is to say, he had realised by direct experience that nothing existed apart from an indivisible and universal consciousness which was experienced in its unmanifest form as beingness or awareness and in its manifest form as the appearance of the universe. — David Godman

All the variety of species of life created be,
By combination of three basic material energy;
- 45 -
These Guna modus operandi of material energy,
They are called tamo, rajo and sattva clearly;
- 46 -
Tamo-guna associated with inertia, ignorance be,
The rajo-guna associated with passion, activity;
- 47 -
Sattva-guna associated with goodness, harmony,
And all three of them associated with thinking truly.
- 48 - — Munindra Misra

Does a man who is acting on the stage in a female part forget that he is a man? Similarly, we too must play our parts on the stage of life, but we must not identify ourselves with those parts. — Ramana Maharshi

Hinduism has absorbed the best of all the faiths of the world and in that sense Hinduism is not an exclusive religion. — Mahatma Gandhi

One point of difference between Hinduism and other religions is that in Hinduism we pass from truth to truth-from a lower truth to a higher truth-and never from error to truth. — Swami Vivekananda

Religions in general have to rediscover their roots. In Hinduism and the Koran, animals are described as equals. If you walk into a cathedral and look at the decorations of early Christianity, there are vines, animals, creatures and birds thriving all over the stonework. — Margaret Atwood

In sanskrit they say: "Tat twam asi" - thou art that. You are God. The bubble of your awareness bursts and you're flooded with immortality. — Frederick Lenz

To a realized master, death and rebirth is in every breath. Death is that of body consciousness, ego and limits of the mind. Rebirth is that of the cosmic mind of being the Spirit. In this realization is liberation.

When awake as liberated, each prayer and each moment of meditation is for humanity as there is no more individual ego or identity left. Such realized masters continually gift humanity with the grace of higher consciousness- so that each of us attain our fullest potential in goodness. — Nandhiji

The concept of "the chosen people" is thus turned, in the plastic hands of Hinduism, into the "choosing people" - Hindus choose the gods they worship. — Arvind Sharma

Let not the wise disturb the mind of the unwise in their selfish work. Let him, working with devotion, show them the joy of good work. — Anonymous

If being is many, it must be both like and unlike, and this is impossible, for neither can the like be unlike, nor the unlike like — Zeno Of Citium

A very advanced master can glow so strongly that you see divine in them. You look into them and you see infinity constantly changing, evolving and radiating in new forms. — Frederick Lenz

Beyond the parameters of the self is an ocean ... and it's most excellent. — Frederick Lenz

You will breathe throughout your life, every moment of it, but an opportunity like this comes once in a lifetime, and not even to everyone. Go for it! — K. Hari Kumar

The most distinctive and largest contribution of Hinduism to India's culture is the doctrine of ahimsa. — Mahatma Gandhi

My Hinduism teaches me to respect all religions. In this lies the secret of Ramarajya. — Mahatma Gandhi

If I were asked to define the Hindu creed, I should simply say: Search after truth through non-violent means. A man may not believe in God and still call himself a Hindu. Hinduism is a relentless pursuit after truth ... Hinduism is the religion of truth. Truth is God. Denial of God we have known. Denial of truth we have not known. — Mahatma Gandhi

I think when religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism - as well as Christianity and Judaism - were founded, at that time societies were generally male-dominated. So, therefore this social notion also influenced religion. — Dalai Lama

Hinduism advises such people not to try to think of God as the supreme instance of abstractions like being or consciousness, and instead to think of God as the archetype of the noblest reality they encounter in the natural world. — Huston Smith

Man has to create marriage because man is afraid of the unknown. On all levels of life and existence, man has created substitutes: for love there is marriage; for real religion there are sects - they are like marriages. Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Christianity, Jainism - they are not real religion. Real religion has no name; it is like love. But because love is dangerous and you are so afraid of the future, you would like to have some security. You believe more in insurance companies than in life. That's why you have created marriage. — Rajneesh

All of his (Nanak's) progressive thinking attained absolution at the age of 30, when he had the transcendental experience, quite similar to that of Mohammed and Joan of Arc, that was about to rock the very foundation of orthodox Hinduism in India. — Abhijit Naskar

I should have been glad to acquire some sort of idea of Hindu theology, ... but the difficulties were too great. — Mark Twain

I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. Believe me, everything that we call chance today won't make sense anymore. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance. — Michio Kaku

It is a good and gentle religion, but inconvenient. — Mark Twain

So long as untouchability disfigures Hinduism, so long do I hold the attainment of Swaraj to be an utter impossibility. — Mahatma Gandhi

Here an attempt is made to explain suffering: the outcaste of traditional Hinduism is held to deserve his fetched fate; it is a punishment for the wrongs he did in a previous life. — Walter Kaufmann

Hindus believe Buddha to be an Avatara. — Swami Vivekananda

In Hinduism we have got an admirable foot-rule to measure every shastra and every rule of conduct, and that is truth. — Mahatma Gandhi