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Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

76 quotes

“In the history of the world, Hinduism is the only religion that exhibits a complete independence and freedom of the human mind, its full confidence in its own powers. Hinduism is freedom, especially the freedom in thinking about God.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hinduism has come to be a tapestry of the most variegated tissues and almost endless diversity of hues.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hinduism is therefore not a definite dogmatic creed, but a vast, complex, but subtly unified mass of spirItual thought and realization. Its tradition of the God ward endeavor of the human spirit has been continuously enlarging through the ages.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hinduism is not a sect but a fellowship of all who accept the law of right and earnestly seek for the truth.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Gita appeals to us not only by its force of thought and majesty of vision, but also by its fervor of devotion and sweetness of spiritual emotion.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted from Londhe, S. (2008). A tribute to Hinduism: Thoughts and wisdom spanning continents and time about India and her culture p 46 ff
“In the mystic traditions of the different religions we have a remarkable unity of spirit. Whatever religion they may profess, they are spiritual kinsmen. While the different religions in their historic forms bind us to limited groups and militate against the development of loyalty to the world community, the mystics have already stood for the fellowship of humanity in harmony with the spirit of the mystics of ages gone by.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) first seen 1939 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Words of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, quoted by Haile Selassie in an address during the Indian President's state visit to Ethiopia (13 October 1965), quoted in Foreign Affairs Record Vol. 11-12 (1965-1966) by India Ministr…
Also quoted by: Haile Selassie (misattributed)
“[Radhakrishnan describes the state of dejection he experienced as a student at Madras Christian College:] 'I was strongly persuaded of the inferiority of the Hindu religion to which I attributed the political downfall of India.... I remember the cold sense of reality, the depressing feeling that crept over me, as a causal relation between the anaemic Hindu religon and our political failure forced itself on my mind.'”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The challenge of Christian critics impelled me to make a study of Hinduism and find out what is living and what is dead in it. My pride as a Hindu, roused by the enterprise and eloquence of Swami Vivekananda, was deeply hurt by the treatment accorded to Hinduism in missionary institutions.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) first seen 1970 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: In: Donald Mackenzie Brown The Nationalist Movement: Indian Political Thought from Ranade to Bhave, University of California Press, 1970, p.153.
“Man is a paradoxical being-the constant glory and scandal of this world.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“My ambition is to unfold the sources of India in the profound plane of human nature.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Instead of celebrating my birthday, it would be my proud privilege if 5 September is observed as Teachers' Day.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If philosophy of religion is to become scientific, it must become empirical and found itself on religious experience.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: As quoted in Critical Terms for Religious Studies (2008) by Mark C. Taylor, p.100
“You Christians seem to us Hindus rather ordinary people making extraordinary claims... If your Christ has not succeeded in making you better men and women, have we any reason to suppose that he would do more for us, if we became Christians?”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: (Blackwell Companions to Religion) Delbert Burkett - The Blackwell Companion to Jesus -Wiley-Blackwell (2010) and quoted in Goel (1996, xi)
“Democracy has become confused with ignorance, lack of discipline, and low tastes … Though educational facilities are within the reach of large numbers, the level of culture is not high. It has become more easy to get into a college and more difficult to get educated. We are taught to read but not trained to think … Those who know better are afraid to speak out but keep step with the average mind. Uncivilized mass-impulses, crowd emotions and class-resentments have taken the place of authority and tradition.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes centuries to make a little history; it takes centuries of history to make a tradition.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poets and prophets do not go into committees.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A stone is not self any more than a self is a stone.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We are grown-up infants, and God is a sort of 'wet nurse' to humanity.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We invent by intuition, though we prove by logic.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To be ignorant is not the special prerogative of man; to know that he is ignorant is his special privilege.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We become more religious in proportion to our readiness to doubt and not our willingness to believe.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We must respect our own dignity as rational beings and thus diminish the power of fraud. It is better to be free than be a slave, better to know than to be ignorant. It is reason that helps us to reject what is falsely taught and believed about God, that He is a detective officer or a capricious despot or a glorified schoolmaster. It is essential that we should subject religious beliefs to the scrutiny of reason.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The violent extermination of Buddhism in India is legendary. Buddhism grew weaker as it spread wider. The spirit of compromise which breathed in the Xllth Edict of Ashoka that there should be no praising of one's sect and decrying of other sects but on the contrary a rendering of honour to other sects for whatever cause honour may be due to them was its strength and weakness. It accommodated too much. Divinities and heavens slipped into Buddhism from other creeds with the spread of the religion.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The disciples surrounded with cheap marvels and wonders the lonely figure of that serene Soul, simple and austere in his yellow robes, walking with bared feet and bowed head towards Benares.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The intolerance of narrow monotheism is written in letters of blood across the history of man from the time when first the tribes of Israel burst into the land of Canaan. The worshippers of the one jealous God are egged on to aggressive wars against people of alien cults. They invoke divine sanction for the cruelties inflicted on the conquered. The spirit of old Israel is inherited by Christianity and Islam.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Wars of religion which are the outcome of fanaticism that prompts and justifies the extermination of aliens of different creeds were practically unknown in Hindu India.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intuition is a distinct form of experience. Intuition is of a self-certifying character (svatassiddha). It is sufficient and complete. It is self-established (svatasiddha), self-evidencing (svāsaṃvedya), and self-luminous (svayam-prakāsa). Intuition entails pure comprehension, entire significance, complete validity. It is both truth-filled and truth-bearing Intuition is its own cause and its own explanation. It is sovereign. Intuition is a positive feeling of calm and confidence, joy and strength. Intuition is profoundly satisfying . It is peace, power and joy.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intuitions are convictions arising out of a fullness of life in a spontaneous way, more akin to sense than to imagination or intellect and more inevitable than either.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Logical knowledge is indirect and symbolic in its character. It helps us to handle and control the object and its workings.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In any concrete act of thinking the mind’s active experience is both intuitive and intellectual.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The art of discovery is confused with the logic of proof and an artificial simplification of the deeper movements of thought results. We forget that we invent by intuition though we prove by logic.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The insight does not arise if we are not familiar with the facts of the case... The successful practice of intuition requires previous study and assimilation of a multitude of facts and laws. We may take it that great intuitions arise out of a matrix of rationality.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The readjustment [of previously known facts] is so easy that when the insight is attained it escapes notice and we imagine that the process of discovery is only rational synthesis.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Knowledge when acquired must be thrown into logical form and we are obliged to adopt the language of logic since only logic has a communicable language.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The presentation of facts in logical form contributes to a confusion between discovery and proof. If the process of discovery were mere synthesis, any mechanical manipulator of prior partial concepts would have reached the insight and it would not have taken a genius to arrive at it.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Creative insight is not the final link in a chain of reasoning. If it were that, it would not strike us as inspired in its origin. Intuition is not the end, but part of an ever-developing and ever-dynamic process of realization. There is continual system of “checks and balances” between intuition and the logical method of discursive reasoning. Cognitive intuitions are not substitutes for thought, they are challenges to intelligence. Mere intuitions are blind while intellectual work is empty. All processes are partly intuitive and partly intellectual. There is no gulf between the two.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Psychic experiences are a state of consciousness beyond the understanding of the normal, and the supernormal is traced to the supernatural.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We can see objects without the medium of the senses and discern relations spontaneously without building them up laboriously. In other words, we can discern every kind of reality directly.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All art is the expression of experience in some medium.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The success of art is measured by the extent to which it is able to render experiences of one dimension into terms of another. Art born out of a creative contemplation which is a process of travail of the spirit is an authentic crystallization of a life process. Its ultimate and in its essence, the poetical character is derived from the creative intuition (that is, integral intuition) which holds sound, suggestion and sense in organic solution.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Technique without inspiration, is barren. Intellectual powers, sense facts and imaginative fancies may result in clever verses, repetition of old themes, but they are only manufactured poetry. It is not simply a difference of quality but a difference of kind in the source itself.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even in the act of composition, the poet is in a state in which the reflective elements are subordinated to the intuitive. The vision, however, is not operative for so long as it continues, its very stress acts as a check on expression.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In emotional vibrancy experience is recollected not in tranquility... but in excitement.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The experience or the vision is the artist’s counterpart to the scientific discovery of a principle or law. What the scientist does when he discovers a new law is to give a new ordering to observed facts. The artist is engaged in a similar task. He gives new meaning to our experience and organizes it in a different way due to his perception of subtler qualities in reality.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Poetic truth is different from scientific truth since it reveals the real in its qualitative uniqueness and not in its quantitative universality. Poetry is the language of the soul, while prose is the language of science. The former is the language of mystery, of devotion, of religion. Prose lays bare its whole meaning to the intelligence, while poetry plunges us in the mysterium tremendum of life and suggests the truths that cannot be stated.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the new harmony glimpsed in the moments of insight is to be achieved, the old order of habits must be renounced. Moral intuitions result in a redemption of our loyalties and a remaking of our personalities.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the chessboard of life, the different pieces have powers which vary with the context and the possibilities of their combination are numerous and unpredictable. The sound player has a sense of right and feels that, if he does not follow it, he will be false to himself. In any critical situation the forward move is a creative act.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Intuition must be not only translated into positive and creative action but shared with others. There is a sense of urgency, if not inevitability, about this. One cannot afford to be absolutely silent and the saints love because they cannot help it.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The moral hero, guided as he or she is by the ethical experience, who carves out an adventurous path is akin to the discoverer who brings order into the scattered elements of a science or the artist who composes a piece of music or designs buildings.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Feeling the unity of himself and the universe, the man who lives in spirit is no more a separate and self-centered individual but a vehicle of the universal spirit. [Like the artist, the moral hero does not turn his back on the world. Instead], He throws himself on the world and lives for its redemption, possessed as he is with an unshakable sense of optimism and an unlimited faith in the powers of the soul.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) first seen 1929 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: An Idealist View of Life (1929)