Famous quotes

Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide

English Italiano Polski עברית Français Português فارسی Español 中文 Русский Deutsch العربية हिन्दी 日本語 Ελληνικά Latina

Max Müller

72 quotes

“It was the celebrated Friedrich Max Muller who gave the last two testimonies in a 1882 lecture in defence of the “Character of the Hindus,” and he observed: It is surely extremely strange that whenever, either in Greek, or in Chinese, or in Persian, or in Arab writings, we meet with any attempts at describing the distinguishing features in the national character of the Indians, regard for truth and justice should always be mentioned first.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Danino, M., & Nahar, S. (1996). The invasion that never was (1st ed). Mother’s Institute of Research & Mira Aditi, Mysore, India.
“We all come from the East—all that we value most has come to us from the East, and in going to the East... everybody ought to feel that he is going to his 'old home,' full of memories, if only he can read them.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: in Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley. - In search of the cradle of civilization _ new light on ancient India-Quest Books (2011)
“That there are startling coincidences between Buddhism and Christianity cannot be denied, and it must likewise be admitted that Buddhism existed at least 400 years before Christianity. I go even further, and should feel extremely grateful if anybody would point out to me the historical channels through which Buddhism had influenced early Christianity.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Perhaps we shall have to confess that after all our ideas of what human beings in India ought to have thought 3000 years ago are evolved from our inner consciousness and that we must learn to digest facts though they do not agree with our tastes and our preconceived ideas.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“‘When the last two volumes of Veda are published we shall have saved from destruction a work, older than Iliad, older than any other literary document of that noble race of mankind to which the greatest nations in the world’s history have belonged—a race which after receiving from a Semitic race, from the Jews, its best treasure, its religion, the religion of the Old and New Testaments, is now with the English in the van, carrying on slowly but irresistibly the conquest of the world by means of commerce, colonization, education and conversion’.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“It is almost impossible to speak of religion at all, without giving offence either on the right or on the left. With some, religion seems too sacred a subject for scientific treatment.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“‘I may make diligent and impartial enquiry into all religions and so be sure to find out the best, I shall for a time, look upon my self as one not at all interested in any particular religion whatsoever, much less in the Christian religion’.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: , quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“We all come from the East—all that we value most has come to us from the East, and in going to the East, not only those who have received a special Oriental training, but everybody who has enjoyed the advantages of a liberal, that is, of a truly historical education, ought to feel that he is going to his “old home”.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“It is curious to see how the descendants of the same race, to which the first conquerors and masters of India belonged, return . . . to accomplish the glorious work of civilization, which had been left unfinished by their Arian bretheren.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Muller (1847) (349). quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.
“Muller may have well felt the need to stress that "an ethnologist who speaks of an Aryan race, Aryan eyes and hair, and Aryan blood is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolicocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar"; after all, it was he who had been a principal cause in such misconceptions through his earlier remarks on the common blood that the "English soldier" shared with the "dark Bengali".”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Muller 1854a, 29-30; ) quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.
“[A]s in his language and in his grammar [the Indian] has preserved something of what seems peculiar to each of the northern [Indo-european] dialects singly, as he agrees with the Greek and the German where the Greek and the German seem to differ from all the rest … no other language has carried off so large a share of the common Aryan heirloom – whether roots, grammar, words, myths or legends.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1859 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1859:14 quoted in Kazanas, N. (2015). Vedic and IndoEuropean studies. Aditya Prakashan., chapter 3
“India is much riper for Christianity than Rome or Greece was at the time of St. Paul. The rotten tree has for some time had artificial supports, because its fall would have been inconvenient for the Government.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Life and Letters Max Müller. vol 1 ed. s.l.: Longmans, Green, and Co, quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism…
“As early as in 1850, he wrote to Bunsen ‘…if Wilson would write from the standpoint of a missionary, and would show how the knowledge and bringing into light of the Veda would upset the whole existing system of Indian theology, it might become of real interest’.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Müller’s, W. M. (1902). Life and letters max Müller, vol. 1. s.l., Longmans, Green & co., quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century So…
“Languages seemed to float about like islands on the ocean of human speech; they did not shoot together to form themselves into larger continents . . . and if it had not been for a happy accident, which like an electric spark, caused the floating elements to crystallise into regular forms, it is more doubtful whether the long list of languages and dialects could have sustained the interest of the student of languages. This electric spark was the discovery of Sanskrit.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1866: 153–4) quoted in Bryant, E. F., & Patton, L. L. (2005). The Indo-Aryan controversy : evidence and inference in Indian history. Routledge. 181-2
“The translation of the Veda will hereafter tell to a great extent on the fate of India and on the growth of millions of souls in that country. It is the root of their religion, and to show them what the root is, I feel sure, is the only way of uprooting all that has sprung from it during the last 3000 years.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1866 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his wife Georgina (December 1866), published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller ; also quoted in Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dile…
“India must be conquered again, and that second conquest should be a conquest by education.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1868 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Writing to the Duke of Argyll (December 1868), as quoted in Missionaries in India: Continuities, Changes, Dilemmas (1994) by Arun Shourie
“How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed, and tell them what Christianity was meant to be; unless he may show that. like all other religions, Christianity, too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the Middle Ages, that the Christianity of the MiddIe Ages was not that of the early Councils, that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and "that what has been said by Christ, that alone was weII said?”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)
“Whether listening to the shrieks of the Shaman sorcerers of Tatary, or to the odes of Pindar, or to the sacred songs of Paul Gerhard: whether looking at the pagodas of China, or the Parthenon of Athens, or the cathedral of Cologne: whether reading the sacred books of the Buddhists, of the Jews, or of those who worship God in spirit and in truth, we ought to be able to say, like the Emperor Maximilian, Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto,' or, translating his words somewhat freely, 'I am a man, nothing pertaining to man I deem foreign to myself.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture on the Vedas 1867 Chips Vol 1 p. 4
“The worship of Shiva, Vishnu, and other popular deities was of the same and in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship of Jupiter, Apollo or Minerva. ... A religion may linger on for a long time, it may be accepted by large masses of the people, because it is there, and there is nothing better. But when a religion has ceased to produce defenders of the faith, prophets, champions, martyrs, it has ceased to live, in the true sense of the word; and in that sense the old orthodox Brahmanism has ceased to live for more than a thousand years.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1873 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture at Westminster Abbey (1873); as quoted in Hinduism : A Religion to Live By (1997) by Nirad C. Chaudhari
“This . . . shows, better than anything else, how violent a shock was given by the discovery of Sanskrit to prejudices most deeply engrained in the mind of every educated man. The most absurd arguments found favor for a time, if they could only furnish a loophole by which to escape the unpleasant conclusion that Greek and Latin were of the same kith and kin as the language of the black inhabitants of India.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller (1875) quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1.(164)
“The Zoroastrians were a colony from Northern India. They had been together for a time with the people whose sacred songs have been preserved to us in the Veda. A schism took place, and the Zoroastrians migrated westward to Arachosia and Persia.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“But it was more faithfully preserved by the Zoroastrians, who migrated from India to the North-west and whose religion has been preserved to us in the Zind Avesta, though in fragments only...”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“They gave to the new cities and to the rivers along which they settled, the names of cities and rivers familiar to them, and reminding them of the localities which they had left.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1875 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller (1875) —. 1875. The Science of Language. New York: Scribner. (p. 248). quoted in Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. Al…
“Our words are not rough, unhewn stones, left at our door by a glacial moraine; they are blocks that have been brought to light by immense labour, that have been carved, measured and weighted again, before they became what we find them to be. Our poets make poems out of words, but every word, if carefully examined, will turn out to be itself a petrified poem, a reward of a deed done or a thought thought by those to whom we owe the whole of our intellectual inheritance, the capital on which we live, with which we speculate and strive to grow richer from day to day.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller. —— (1888) Biographies of words and the home of the Aryas, London: Longmans, Green & Co.
“There is no Aryan race in blood, but whoever, through the imposition of hands, whether of his parents or his foreign masters, has received the Aryan blessing, belongs to that unbroken spiritual succession which began with the first apostles of that noble speech, and continues to the present day in every part of the globe. Aryan, in scientific language, is utterly inapplicable to race. It means language and nothing but language ; and if we speak of Aryan race at all, we should know that it means no more than Aryan speech.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1888 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas (1888) [https://archive.org/stream/biographiesword01mlgoog/biographiesword01mlgoog_djvu.txt
“All one's ideas of Adam and Eve, and the Paradise, and the tower of Babel, and Shem, Ham, and Japhet, with Homer and Aeneas and Virgil too, seemed to be whirling round and round, till at last one picked up the fragments and tried to build a new world, and to live with a new historical consciousness.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1. (Muller 1883, 29).
“If an answer must be given as to the place where our Aryan ancestors dwelt before their separation, . . . I should still say, as I said forty years ago, 'Somewhere in Asia,' and no more.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1887 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted from Bryant, E. F. (2001). The Quest for the Origins of Vedic Culture : the Indo-Aryan migration debate. Oxford University Press. chapter 1. Max Muller's (]1887]1985) (127)
“I wish to point out that there was another sphere of intellectual activity in which the Hindus excelled–the meditative and transcendent–and that here we might learn from them some lessons of life which we ourselves are but too apt to ignore or to despise.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[An] ancient city has been laid bare before our eyes which, in the history of all other religions, is filled up with rubbish, and built over by new architects. Some of the earliest and most instructive scenes of our distant childhood have risen once more above the horizon of our memory which, until thirty or forty years ago, seemed to have vanished forever. (Müller 1892: 244)”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller, quoted in Dorothy M. Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, New Delhi, Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd. (2002), Reprint 2017
“There is more real antiquity in the Veda than in all the inscriptions of Egypt or Ninevah . . . old thoughts, old hopes, old faith, and old errors, the old Man altogether. (Müller 1895: 1.75–76)”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller, quoted in Dorothy M. Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, New Delhi, Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd. (2002), Reprint 2017
“The same word, Deva, in Sanskrit, Deus in Latin, remained unchanged in all their prayers, their rites, their superstitions, their philosophies, and even today it rises up to heaven from thousands of churches and cathedrals—a word which, before there were Brahmans or Germans, had been framed in the dark workshop of the Aryan world. (Müller 1895: 4.221)”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller, quoted in Dorothy M. Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, New Delhi, Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd. (2002), Reprint 2017
“There will be and can be no rest till we admit, what cannot be denied, that there is in man a third faculty, which I call simply the faculty of apprehending the Infinite, not only in religion, but in all things; a power independent of sense and reason, a power in a certain sense contradicted by sense and reason; but yet, I suppose, a very real power, if we see how it has held its own from the beginning of the world — how neither sense nor reason has been able to overcome it, while it alone is able to overcome both reason and sense.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 562
“We shall then learn that the history of mankind is the best philosophy, and that not only in Christianity and Judaism, but that in all religions of the world, God has at divers times spoken through the prophets in divers manners, and still speaks.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Finally, in his Autobiography published just after his death in 1900, he made this astonishing statement: “As to the actual date of the Veda … if we were to place it at 5000 BC, I doubt whether anybody could refute such a date, while if we go back beyond the Veda, and come to measure the time required for the formation of Sanskrit … I doubt whether even 5,000 years would suffice for that.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Autobiography, in Danino, M., & Nahar, S. (1996). The invasion that never was (1st ed). Mother’s Institute of Research & Mira Aditi, Mysore, India.
“Whatever may be the date of the Vedic hymns, whether 1500 B.C.E. or 15,000 B.C.E., they have their own unique place and stand by themselves in the literature of the world. They tell us something of the early growth of the human mind of which we find no trace anywhere else.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller, in The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy (1899)
“None of our philosophers, not excepting Heraclitus, Plato, Kant, or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightnings. Stone follows on stone, In regular succession after once the first step has been made, after once it has been clearly seen that in the beginning there can have been but One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Muller, F. Max (Friedrich Max) The six systems ofIndian philosophy. London; New York: Longmans, Green, 1903 p. 239, Miiller, F. Max (Friedrich Max) Three lectures on the Vedanta philosophy: delivered at the Royal Instit…
“Max Müller explained that his conjectural chronology of the Rigveda was only a terminus ad quem adding “we should not forget that this is a constructive date only and that such a date does not become positive by mere repetition” (1916: 34).”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Kazanas, N. (2002). Indigenous Indo-Aryans and the Rigveda. Journal of Indo-European Studies, 30(3-4), 275-334.
“Whatever may be the date of the Vedic hymns , whether 1500 or 15,000 B.C. , they have their own unique place and stand by themselves in the literature of the world " .”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Would you say that any one sacred book is superior to all others in the world? ... I say the New Testament, after that, I should place the Koran, which in its moral teachings, is hardly more than a later edition of the New Testament. Then would follow according to my opinion the Old Testament, the Southern Buddhist Tripitaka, the Tao-te-king of Laotze, the Kings of Confucius, the Veda and the Avesta.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to his son, published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller, Vol. II, Ch. XXXII
“If history is to teach us anything, it must teach us that there is a continuity which binds together the present and the past, the East and the West. And no branch of history teaches that lesson more powerfully than the history of language and the history of religion.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Ibn, W. (2009). Defending the West: A critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books.
“If I live for one purpose it is for this, that I will preach the union of Eastern and Western philosophy, the reconciliation of Europe and Asia. The idea may seem absurd to many in the present age. It may provoke ridicule and angry reviling. But posterity will prove a better judge.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Ibn, W. (2009). Defending the West: A critique of Edward Said's Orientalism. Amherst, N.Y: Prometheus Books.
“The missionaries have done far more than they themselves seem to be aware of, nay, much of the work which is theirs they would probably disclaim. The Christianity of our nineteenth century will hardly be the Christianity of India. But the ancient religion of India is doomed- and if Christianity does not step in, whose fault it be?”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The hostile spirit of a party, which has been working for the last years, particularly in this country, to attack all the theories of the Sanscrit antiquarians, has chosen the modern languages of India as a weak point, in order to prove that, as they have no connexion by their grammatical system with the pretended old language of India, the Sanscrit, this sacred language itself has never exercised any real influence upon the people, just as they have tried to prove that the literature, the religion, morals and philosophy of the Brahmins have never historically existed but in the hands of some foreign intriguing priests.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1847 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1847:325) quoted in Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. 174
“No authority could have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army [of Alexander] that their gods and their hero-ancestors were the same as those of [the Indian] King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins, as in the veins of the dark Bengalese. And yet there is not an English jury now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claim of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in India and in England that witnessed the first separation of the northern and southern Arians, and these are witnesses not to be shaken by any cross-examination. The terms for God, for house, for father, mother, son, daughter, for dog and cow, for heart and tears, for axe and tree, identical in all the Indo-European idioms, are like the watch- words of an army. We challenge the seeming stranger, and whether he answer with the lips of a Greek, a German, or an Indian, we recognize him as one of ourselves. Though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Slaves [sic], the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living together beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Max Muller 1855:29) quoted in Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. 177
“In April 1856, in one letter he wrote to Bunsen ‘I only recognize one chronology for India, the four literary periods of the Veda, which bring us to at least 1500 BC, and even at that time show us a formulated system of divinities and even priest-craft’. On the other hand, in the same letter, he mentions that, ‘… and before the nomadic Greeks separated from the nomadic Indians, centuries must have passed…So you see the oldest date of the name Ophir occurring in the Bible is the latest time in which the Aryans were already settled by the sea, and at the time of the Veda they had not yet settled there’. However, it should also be noted here that in a true scientific spirit, Müller was open to ideas that argued against these dates. While discussing the age of the Veda in 1891, Müller quoted Prof. Sayce, who presented some evidence that would ‘prove the presence of Sanskrit -speaking Aryans in India about at least 3000 BC’.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“In 1859, Max Müller wrote—‘Although the Brahmans of India belong to the same family, the Aryan or Indo-European family, which civilized the whole of Europe, the two great branches of that primitive race were kept asunder for centuries after their first separation. The mainstream of the Aryan nations has always flowed towards the northwest. No historian can tell us by what impulse those adventurous Nomads were driven on through Asia towards the isles and shores of Europe. The first start of this world-wide migration belongs to a period far beyond the reach of documentary history; to times when the soil of Europe had not been trodden by either Celts, Germans, Slavonians, Romans, or Greeks’.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Subrata Chattopadhyay Banerjee - The Development of Aryan Invasion Theory in India, A Critique of Nineteenth-Century Social Constructionism-Springer (2020)
“As sure as the six Romance dialects point to an original home of Italian shepherds on the seven hills at Rome, the Aryan languages together point to an earlier period of language, when the first ancestors of the Indians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Romans, the Slaves, the Celts, and the Germans were living together within the same enclosures, nay, under the same roof. . . . Before the ancestors of the Indians and Persians started for the south, and the leaders of the Greek, Roman, Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic colo- nies marched towards the shores of Europe, there was a small clan of Aryans, settled probably on the highest elevation of Central Asia, speaking a language, not yet Sanskrit or Greek or German, but containing the dialectic germs of all; a clan that had advanced to a state of agricultural civilisation; that had recognised the bonds of blood, and sanctioned the bonds of marriage; and that invoked the Giver of Light and Life in heaven by the same name which you may still hear in the temples of Benares, in the basilicas of Rome, and in our own churches and cathedrals.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (1861:219-220) quoted in Trautmann, Thomas R. (2008). Aryans and British India. 177-8
“There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts. the Germans, the Slavonians. the Greeks and Italians, the Persians and the Hindus. were living together beneath the same roof. separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.... The Aryan nations who pursued a north- westerly direction, stand before us in history as the principal nations of north*western Asia and Europe. They have been the prominent actors in the great drama of history, and have carried to their fullest growth all the elements of active life with which our nature is endowed. They have perfected society and morals, and we learn from their literature. and works of art the element of science, the laws of art, and the principles of philosophy. In continual struggle with each other and with Semitic and Turanian races, these Aryan nations have become the rulers of history. and it seems to be their mission to link all parts of the world together by the chains of civilisation. commerce, and religion. ... But while most of the members of the Aryan family followed this glorious path. the southern tribes were slowly migrating toward the mountains which gird the north of India.... Left to themselves in a world of their own, without a past, and without a future before them, they had nothing but themselves to ponder on. Struggles there must have been in India also. Old dynasties were destroyed. whole f.uni.lies annihilated. and new empires founded. Yet the inward life of the Hindu was not changed by these convulsions. His mind was like the lotus leaf arter a shower of rain has passed over it; its character remained the same, passive, meditative, quiet, and thoughtful.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1861 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Arvidsson, Stefan (2006), Aryan Idols: Indo-European Mythology as Ideology and Science, translated by Sonia Wichmann, Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.(47-8) **F. M. MUller 1861-7S, 1:64-66.
“How can a missionary in such circumstances meet the surprise and questions of his pupils, unless he may point to that seed (Referring to the seed planted by Jesus and his Apostles) and tell them what Christianity was meant to be? unless he may show that, like all other religions, Christianity too, has had its history; that the Christianity of the nineteenth century is not the Christianity of the middle ages, and that the Christianity of the middle ages was not that of the early Councils; that the Christianity of the early Councils was not that of the Apostles, and that what has been said by Christ, that alone was well said?”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1867 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Chips," vol. i., p. 26, Preface (1867) quoted by H.P. Blavatsky, in Isis Unveiled —Vol. 2, Chapter 1, p. 10 (1877)
“History seems to teach that the whole human race required a gradual education before, in the fullness of time, it could be admitted to the truths of Christianity. All the fallacies of human reason had to be exhausted, before the light of a high truth could meet with ready acceptance. The ancient religions of the world were but the milk of nature, which was in due time to be succeeded by the bread of life.... The religion of Buddha has spread far beyond the limits of the Aryan world, and to our limited vision, it may seem to have retarded the advent of Christianity among a large portion of the human race. But in the sight of Him with whom a thousand years are but as one day, that religion, like the ancient religions of the world, may have but served to prepare the way of Christ, by helping through its very errors to strengthen and to deepen the ineradicable yearning of the human heart after the truth of God.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1860 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: History of Ancient Sanksrit Literature (1860)