INDIA QUOTES
quotations about India
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 OF TYANA
attributed, The Transition to a Global Society
Like India herself, I am at home in hovels and palaces, Ganapathi, I trundle in bullock-carts and propel myself into space, I read the vedas and quote the laws of cricket. I move to the strains of a morning raga in perfect evening dress.
SHASHI THAROOR
The Great Indian Novel
India is India because of Sanathana Dharma; it has enabled her to survive many a feasible storm; it has kept the country culturally united, infinite of varieties of language and food habits and dress.
SRI SATHYA SAI BABA
Sathya Sai Speaks
India is not, as people keep calling it, an underdeveloped country, but rather, in the context of its history and cultural heritage, a highly developed one in an advanced state of decay.
SHASHI THAROOR
"Reflections", World Policy Journal
India is a geographical term. It is no more a united nation than the equator.
WINSTON CHURCHILL
speech at Royal Albert Hall, March 18, 1931
India, she now knew, would not be content staying in the background, was nobody's wallpaper, insisted in interjecting itself into everyone's life, meddling with it, twisting it, molding it beyond recognition. India, she had found out, was a place of political intrigue and economic corruption, a place occupied by real people with their incessantly human needs, desires, ambitions, and aspirations, and not the exotic, spiritual, mysterious entity that was a creation of the Western imagination.
THRITY UMRIGAR
The Weight of Heaven
India is a country in which every great religion finds a home.
ANNIE BESANT
attributed, The Modern Review, 1942
India knows of their trouble. She knows of the whole world's trouble, to its uttermost depth. She calls "Come" through her hundred mouths, through objects ridiculous and august. But come to what? She has never defined. She is not a promise, only an appeal.
E. M. FORSTER
A Passage to India
To other countries, I may go as a tourist, but to India, I come as a pilgrim.
MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR.
The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr.
India is like a living tree. It has shed many old barks and put on new barks age after age, but the Indian tree is eternal.
SWAMI RANGANATHANANDA
Our Cultural Heritage Modern Orientation
India must recognize that certain standards of taste, thought and sentiment are necessary to union, and should devise and carry out a comprehensive scheme of "Indianization", with a view of creating a new type of Indian citizenship and building up an efficient, unified Indian nation.
M. VISVESVARAYA
Indian Unity
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 human peoples.
SRI AUROBINDO
Arya: A Philosophical Review, January 1921
In India we celebrate the commonality of major differences; we are a land of belonging rather than of blood.
SHASHI THAROOR
"The Creation of India", The Shashi Tharoor Column, 2001
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 round. Nothing seems to have been forgotten, nothing overlooked.... Perhaps it will be simplest to throw away the tags and generalize her with one all-comprehensive name, as the Land of Wonders.
MARK TWAIN
Following the Equator
India is the guru of the nations, the physician of the human soul in its profounder maladies; she is destined once more to remould the life of the world and restore the peace of the human spirit.
SRI AUROBINDO
Sri Aurobindo Mandir Annual
I probably did too much thinking in India. I blame it on the roads, for they were superb.
ROBERT EDISON FULTON JR.
One Man Caravan
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.... For more than 30 centuries, the tree of vision, with all its thousand branches and their millions of twigs, has sprung from this torrid land, the burning womb of the Gods.
ROMAIN ROLLAND
Life of Ramakrishna
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. It was as if all my life I had been seeing the world in black and white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor.
KEITH BELLOWS
attributed, Think India: The Rise of the World's Next Superpower and What It Means for Every American
On the face of India are the tender expressions which carry the mark of the Creator's hand.
GEORGE BERNARD SHAW
attributed, Science & Technology in India Through the Ages
India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of mature mind, understanding spirit and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings.
WILL DURANT
Dancing With Siva