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Max Müller

72 quotes

“He must be a man of little faith, who would fear to subject his own religion to the same critical tests to which the historian subjects all other religions. We need not surely crave a tender or merciful treatment for that faith which we hold to be the only true one. We should rather challenge it for the severest tests and trials, as the sailor would for the good ship to which he trusts his own life, and the lives of those who are dear to him. In the Science of Religion, we can decline no comparisons, nor claim any immunities for Christianity, as little as the missionary can, when wrestling with the subtle Brahmin, or the fanatical Mussulman, or the plain speaking Zulu.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)
“Missionaries are apt to look upon all other religions as something totally distinct from their own, as formerly they used to describe the languages of barbarous nations as something more like the twittering of birds than the articulate speech of men. The Science of Language has taught us that there is order and wisdom in all languages, and even the most degraded jargons contain the ruins of former greatness and beauty. The Science of Religion, I hope, will produce a similar change in our views of barbarous forms of faith and worship; and missionaries, instead of looking only for points of difference, will look out more anxiously for any common ground, any spark of the true light that may still be revived, any altar that may be dedicated afresh to the true God. And even to us at home, a wider view of the religious life of the world may teach many a useful lesson.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)
“The position which believers and unbelievers occupy with regard to their various forms of faith is very much the same all over the world. The difficulties which trouble us, have troubled the hearts and minds of men as far back as we can trace the beginnings of religious life. The great problems touching the relation of the Finite to the Infinite, of the human mind as the recipient, and of the Divine Spirit as the source of truth, are old problems indeed; and while watching their appearance in different countries, and their treatment under varying circumstances, we shall be able, I believe, to profit ourselves, both by the errors which others committed before us, and by the truth which they discovered. We shall know the rocks that threaten every religion in this changing and shifting world of ours, and having watched many a storm of religious controversy and many a shipwreck in distant seas, we shall face with greater calmness and prudence the troubled waters at home.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)
“If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, i.e. without a constant return to its fountan-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others, suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers froln the mere fact of its being breathed. Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with Buddha misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine had to remind the assembled priests that "what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said;" and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as, for instance, the instruction given to his son, Râhula, were apocryphal, if not heretical.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)
“It is necessary that we too should see the beam in our own eyes, and learn to distinguish between the Christianity of the nineteenth century and the religion of Christ. If we find that the Christianity of the nineteenth century does not win as many hearts in India and China as it ought, let us remember that it was the Christianity of the first century in all its dogmatic simplicity, but with its overpowering love of God and man, that conquered the worId and superseded religions and philosophies, more difficult to conquer than the religious and philosophical systems of Hindus and Buddhists. If we can teach something to the Brahmans in reading with them their sacred hymns, they too can teach us something when reading with us the gospel of Christ. Never shall I forget the deep despondency of a Hindu convert, a real martyr to his faith, who had pictured to himself from the pages of the New Testament what a Christian country must be, and who when he came to Europe found everything so different from what he had imagined in his lonely meditations at Benares!”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1872 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Preface (Scribner edition, 1872)
“I do not wish by what I have said to raise any exaggerated expectations as to the worth of these ancient hymns of the Veda, and the character of that religion which they indicate rather than fully describe. The historical importance of the Veda can hardly be exaggerated; but its intrinsic merit, and particularly the beauty or elevation of its sentiments, have by many been rated far too high. Large numbers of the Vedic hymns are childish in the extreme: tedious, low, commonplace. The gods are constantly inyoked to protect their worshippers, to grant them food, large flocks, large families, and a long life; for all which benefits they are to be rewarded by the praises and sacrifices offered day after day, or at certain seasons of the year. But hidden in this rubbish there are precious stones.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1865 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Lecture on the Vedas" - first presented at the Philosophical Institution, Leeds (March 1865)
“Still the child betrays the passions of the man, and there are hymns, though few in number, in the Veda, so full of thought and speculation that at this early period no poet in any other nation could have conceived them. I give but one specimen, the 129th hymn of the tenth book of the Rig-veda. It is a hymn which long ago attracted the attention of that eminent scholar H. T. Colebrooke, and of which, by the kind assistance of a friend, I am enabled to offer a metrical translation. In judging it we should hear in mind that it was not written by a gnostic or by a pantheistic philosopher, but by a poet who felt all these doubts and problems as his own, without any wish to convince or to startle, only uttering what had been weighing on his mind, just as later poets would sing the doubts and sorrows of their heart.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many things are still unintelligible to us, and the hieroglyphic language of antiquity records but half of the mind's unconscious intentions. Yet more and more the image of man, in whatever clime we meet him, rises before us, noble and pure from the very beginning; even his errors we learn to understand, even his dreams we begin to interpret. As far as we can trace back the footsteps of man, even on the lowest strata of history, we see the divine gift of a sound and sober intellect belonging to him from the very first, and the idea of a humanity emerging slowly from the depths of an animal brutality can never be maintained again.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I have declared again and again that if I say Aryas, I mean neither blood nor bones, nor hair nor skull; I mean simply those who speak an Aryan language. The same applies to Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts, and Slavs. When I speak of them I commit myself to no anatomical characteristics. The blue-eyed and fair-haired Scandinavians may have been conquerors or conquered, they may have adopted the language of their darker lords or their subjects, or vice versa. I assert nothing beyond their language, when I call them Hindus, Greeks, Romans, Germans, Celts and Slavs; and in that sense, and in that sense only, do I say that even the blackest Hindus represent an earlier stage of Aryan speech and thought than the fairest Scandinavians. This may seem strong language, but in matters of such importance we cannot be too decided in our language. To me, an ethnologist who speaks of Aryan race, Aryan blood, Aryan eyes and hair, is as great a sinner as a linguist who speaks of a dolichocephalic dictionary or a brachycephalic grammar. It is worse than a Babylonian confusion of tongues- it is down-right theft. We have made our own terminology for the classification of language; let ethnologists make their own for the classification of skulls, and hair and blood.”
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
“My warnings have been of little effect; and such is the influence of evil communications, that I myself cannot help pleading guilty of having occasionally used linguistic terms in an ethnological sense. Still it is an evil that ought to be resisted with all our might. Ethnologists persist in writing of Aryas, Shemites and Turanians, Ugrians, Dravidians, Kolarians, Bantu races and c., forgetting that these terms have nothing to do with blood, or bones, or hair, or facial angles, but simply and solely with language. Aryas are those who speak Aryan languages, whatever their color, whatever their blood. In calling them Aryas we predicate nothing of them except that the grammar of their language is Aryan. The classification of Aryas and Shemites is based on linguistic grounds and on nothing else; and it is only because languages must be spoken by somebody that we may allow ourselves to speak of language as synonymous with peoples.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1888 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 (Müller 1888: 244–45).
“Tell me some of your chief difficulties that prevent you and your countrymen from openly following Christ, and when I write to you I shall do my best to explain how I and many who agree with me have met them and solved them... From my point of view, India, at least the best part of it, is already converted to Christianity. You want no persuasion to become a follower of Christ. Then make up your mind to act for yourselves. Unite your flock, and put up a few folds to hold them together. The bridge has been built by you for those who came before you. Step boldly forward, it will not break under you, and you will find many friends to welcome you on the other shore, and among them none more delighted that you old friend and fellow labourer.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1883 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Letter to Protap Chunder Mozoomdar, author of The Oriental Christ (1883); published in The Life and Letters of Right Honorable Friedrich Max Müller (1902) edited by Georgina Müller, Vol. II., Ch. XXXIV
“They would not have it, they would not believe that there could be any community of origin between the people of Athens and Rome, and the so-called Niggers of India. The classical scholars scouted the idea, and I still remember the time, when 1 was a student at Leipzig and begun to study Sanskrit, with what contempt any remarks on Sanskrit or comparative grammar were treated by my teachers. . . . No one ever was for a time so completely laughed down as Professor Bopp, when he first published his Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Zend, Greek, Latin and Gothic. All hands were against him. (28) Unlike some of his contemporaries, Muller was effusive in his admiration for things Indian (although he never subscribed to an Indian homeland). In his course of lectures "India: What Can It Teach Us?" (1883), he declared that she was "the country most richly endowed with all the wealth, power and beauty that nature can bestow," indeed, "a very paradise on earth," a place where "the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, [and] has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life. [Such lavish praise was far too extreme for those who, as Muller himself noted, would be] "horror struck at the idea that the humanity they meet with [in India] . . . should be able to teach us any lesson.”
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)(6,7).
“If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts, has most deeply pondered over the greatest problems of life, and has found solutions of some of them which well 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 almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, and one Semitic race, the Jewish, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect, more comprehensive, more universal, in fact, more truly human, a life not for this life only, but a transfigured and eternal life—again I should point to India.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My own experience with regard to the native character has been, of course, very limited. Those Hindus whom I have had the pleasure to know personally in Europe may be looked upon as exceptional, as the best specimens, it may be, that India could produce. Also, my intercourse with them has naturally been such that it could hardly have brought out the darker sides of human nature. During the last twenty years, however, I have had some excellent opportunities of watching a number of native scholars under circumstances where it is not difficult to detect a man's true character — I mean in literary work and, more particularly, in literary controversy. I have watched them carrying on such controversies both among themselves and with certain European scholars, and I feel bound to say that, with hardly one exception, they have displayed a far greater respect for truth and a far more manly and generous spirit than we are accustomed to even in Europe and America. They have shown strength, but no rudeness; nay, I know that nothing has surprised them so much as the coarse invective to which certain Sanskrit scholars have condescended, rudeness of speech being, according to their view of human nature, a safe sign not only of bad breeding, but of want of knowledge. When they were wrong, they have readily admitted their mistakes; when they were right, they have never sneered at their European adversaries. There has been, with few exceptions, no quibbling, no special pleading, no untruthfulness on their part, and certainly none of that low cunning of the scholar who writes down and publishes what he knows perfectly well to be false, and snaps his fingers at those who still value truth and self-respect more highly than victory or applause at any price. Here, too, we might possibly gain by the import cargo.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Veda may be called primitive, because there is no other literary document more primitive than it; but the language, the mythology, the religion and philosophy that meet us in the Veda open vistas of the past which no one would venture to measure in years. Nay, they contain, by the side of simple, natural, childish thoughts, many ideas which to us sound modern, or secondary and tertiary, as I called them, but which nevertheless are older than any other literary document, and give us trustworthy information of a period in the history of human thought of which we knew absolutely nothing before the discovery of the Vedas.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We look in vain among their poets for excellence in epic and dramatic composition. Painting and plastic arts never more than at the decorative stage. Politics patriarchal and despotic, and their inability to organize on a large scale has deprived them of the means of military success. Perhaps the most general feature of their character is a negative one,—their inability to perceive the general and abstract whether in thought, language, poetry or politics; and, on the other hand, a strong attraction towards the individual and personal, which makes them monotheistic in religion, lyrical in poetry, monarchical in politics, abrupt in style and useless for speculation. (Müller 1895: 1.339)”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Muller about the Jews, quoted in Dorothy M. Figueira, Aryans, Jews, Brahmins: Theorizing Authority Through Myths of Identity, New Delhi, Navayana Publishing Pvt Ltd. (2002), Reprint 2017
“I need hardly say that I agree with almost every word of my critics. I have repeatedly dwelt on the merely hypothetical character of the dates, which I have ventured to assign to first periods of Vedic literature. All I have claimed for them has been that they are minimum dates, and that the literary productions of each period which either still exist or which formerly existed could hardly be accounted for within shorter limits of time than those suggested. ... If now we ask as to how we can fix the dates of these periods, it is quite clear that we cannot hope to fix a terminum a qua [sic]. Whether the Vedic hymns were composed [in] 1000 or 2000 or 3000 years BC, no power on earth will ever determine.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 3000 BC wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No power on earth will be able to determine " he says , " whether the Vedic hymns were composed in 1000 or 1500 or 2000 or 3000 BC.
“Without a subject there is no object in the world, without understanding there is nothing to understand, without mind no matter. You think that matter comes first, and then what we call mind. Where is this matter? Where have you ever seen matter? You see oak, fir, slate, and granite, and all sorts of other materies, as the old architects called them, never matter. Matter is the creation of the mind, not the reverse. Our entire world is thought, not wood and stone. We learn to think or reflect upon the thoughts, which the Thinker of the world, invisible, yet everywhere visible, has first thought. What we see, hear, taste, and feel, is all within us, not without. Sugar is not sweet, we are sweet. The sky is not painted blue, we are blue. Nothing is large or small, heavy or light, except as to ourselves. Man is the measure of all things, as an ancient Greek philosopher asserted; and man has inferred, discovered, and named matter. And how did he do it? He called everything, out of which he made anything, matter; materia first meant nothing more than wood used for building, out of which man built his dwelling. Here you have the whole secret of matter. It is building-material, oak, pine, birch, whichever you prefer.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is surely astounding that such a system as the Vedanta should have slowly been elaborated by the indefatigable and intrepid thinkers of India thousands of years ago, a system that even now makes us feel giddy as in mounting the last steps of the swaying spire of a Gothic cathedral. None of our philosophers, including Heraclitus, Plato, Kant or Hegel, has ventured to erect such a spire, never frightened by storms or lightning. 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 One, as there will be but One in the end, whether we call it Atman or Brahman.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Max Müller. source: The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy, Max Müller Quoted from Gewali, Salil (2013). Great Minds on India. New Delhi: Penguin Random House.
“Whatever the Vedas may be called, they are to us unique and priceless guides in opening before our eyes tombs of thought richer in relics than the royal tombs of Egypt, and more ancient and primitive in thought than the oldest hymns of Babylonian or Accadian poets. If we grant that they belonged to the second millennium before our era, we are probably on safe ground, though we should not forget that this is a constructive date only, and that such a date does not become positive by mere repetition. ... 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
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)
“Thus we may infer that the only characteristic difference between modern Christianity and the old heathen faiths is the belief of the former in a personal devil and in hell. "The Aryan nations had no devil," says Max Muller. "Pluto, though of a sombre character, was a very respectable personage; and Loki (the Scandinavian), though a mischievous person, was not a fiend. The German Goddess, Hell, too, like Proserpine, had once seen better days. Thus, when the Germans were indoctrinated with the idea of a real devil, the Semitic Seth, Satan or Diabolus, they treated him in the most good-humored way.”
Max Müller (1823–1900) first seen 1877 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted by H.P. Blavatsky, in Isis Unveiled —Vol. 2, Chapter 1, p. 10 (1877)
“These two sciences. the Science of Language and the Science of Man, cannot. at least for the present, be kept too much asunder; and many misunderstandings, many controversies, would have been avoided. if scholars had not attempted to draw conclusions from language to blood, or from blood to language. When each of these sciences shall have carried out independently its own classification of men and languages, then, and then only, will it be time to compare their results; but even then, I must repeat, what I have said many times before, it would be as wrong to speak of Aryan blood as of dolichocephalic grammar.(61)”
Max Müller (1823–1900) said by 1900 at the latest 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.