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Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan

76 quotes

“[The moral hero is] fighting for the reshaping of his own society on sounder lines [his] behavior might offend the sense of decorum of the cautious conventionalist.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If experience is the soul of religion, expression is the body through which it fulfills its destiny. We have the spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Conceptual expressions are tentative and provisional... [because] the intellectual account... are constructed theories of experience. [And he cautions us to] distinguish between the immediate experience or intuition which might conceivably be infallible and the interpretation which is mixed up with it.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea of God is an interpretation of experience.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religious intuition is a unique form of experience. Religious intuition is more than simply the confluence of the cognitive, aesthetic, and ethical sides of life. However vital and significant these sides of life may be, they are but partial and fragmented constituents of a greater whole, a whole which is experienced in its fullness and immediacy in religious intuition.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religious intuition informs, conjoins, and transcends an otherwise fragmentary consciousness.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hinduism accepts all religious notions as facts and arranges them in the order of their more or less intrinsic significance. The worshippers of the Absolute are the highest in rank; second to them are the worshippers of the personal God; then come the worshippers of the incarnations like Rama, Kṛṣṇa, Buddha; below them are those who worship ancestors, deities and sages, and the lowest of all are the worshippers of the petty forces and spirits.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religion is a kind of life or experience.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Religion in terms of “personal experience is an independent functioning of the human mind, something unique, possessing and autonomous character. It is something inward and personal which unifies all values and organizes all experiences. It is the reaction to the whole of man to the whole of reality. It may be called spiritual life, as distinct from a merely intellectual or moral or aesthetic activity or a combination of them.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Vedanta is not a religion, but religion itself in its most universal and deepest significance.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We have spiritual facts and their interpretations by which they are communicated to others, sruti or what is heard, and smṛti or what is remembered. Śaṅkara equates them with pratyakṣa or intuition and anumana or inference. It is the distinction between immediacy and thought. Intuitions abide, while interpretations change.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While no tradition coincides with experience, every tradition is essentially unique and valuable. While all traditions are of value, none is finally binding.”
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. The Hindu philosophy of religion starts from and returns to an experimental basis. Hindu thinker readily admits of other points of view than his own and considers them to be just as worthy of attention.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The creeds of religion correspond to theories of science... intuitions of the human soul should be studied by the methods which are adopted with such great success in the region of positive science.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is for philosophy of religion to find out whether the convictions of the religious seers fit in with the tested laws and principles of the universe.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The marginalization of intuition and the abandonment of the experimental attitude in matters of religion has lead Christianity to dogmatic stasis. It is an unfortunate legacy of the course which Christian theology has followed in Europe that faith has come to connote a mechanical adherence to authority. If we take faith in the proper sense of truth or spiritual conviction, religion is faith or intuition.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Hindu maxim that theory, speculations, [and] dogma change from time to time as the facts become better understood.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Asceticism is an excess indulged in by those who exaggerate the transcendent aspect of reality. Instead, the rational mystic does not recognize any antithesis between the secular and the sacred. Nothing is to be rejected; everything is to be raised.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The institution of caste illustrates the spirit of comprehensive synthesis characteristic of the Hindu mind with its faith in the collaboration of races and the co-operation of cultures. Paradoxical as it may seem, the system of caste is the outcome of tolerance and trust.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In the history of thought, creative and critical epochs succeed each other. Periods of rich and glowing faith are followed by those of aridity and artificiality. When we pass from the Rig-Veda to the Yajur and the Sama-Vedas and the Brahmanas, we feel a change in the atmosphere. The freshness and simplicity of the former give place to the coldness and artificiality of the latter. The spirit of religion is in the background, while its forms assume great importance. The need for prayer books is felt. Liturgy is developed. The hymns are taken out of the Rig-Veda and arranged to suit sacrificial necessities. The priest becomes the lord... The religion of the Yajur-Veda is a mechanical sacerdotalism.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley. - In search of the cradle of civilization _ new light on ancient India-Quest Books (2011)
“If the Upanishads help us to rise above the glamour of the fleshly life, it is because their authors, pure of soul ever striving towards the divine, reveal to us their pictures of the splendours of the unseen. The Upanishads are respected not because they are a part of Sruti or revealed literature and so hold a reserved position, but because they have inspired generations of Indians with vision and strength by their inexhaustible significance and spiritual power. Indian thought has constantly turned to these scriptures for fresh illumination and spiritual recovery or recommencement, and not in vain. The fire still burns bright on their altars. Their light is for the seeing eye and their message is for the seeker after truth.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: quoted in Georg Feuerstein, Subhash Kak, and David Frawley. - In search of the cradle of civilization _ new light on ancient India-Quest Books (2011)
“The East and the West are not so sharply divided as the alarmists would make us believe. The products of spirit and intelligence, the positive sciences, the engineering techniques, the governmental forms, the legal regulations, the administrative arrangements, and the economic institutions are binding together peoples of varied cultures and bringing them into closer reciprocal contact. The world today is tending to function as one organism. The outer uniformity has not, however, resulted in an inner unity of mind and spirit. The new nearness into which we are drawn has not meant increasing happiness and diminishing friction, since we are not mentally and spiritually prepared for the meeting. Maxim Gorky relates how, after addressing a peasant audience on the subject of science and the marvels of technical inventions, he was criticized by a peasant spokesman in the following words : "Yes, we are taught to fly in the air like birds, and to swim in the water like the fishes, but how to live on the earth we do not know." Among the races, religions, and nations which live side by side on the small globe, there is not that sense of fellowship necessary for good life. They rather feel themselves to be antagonistic forces. Though humanity has assumed a uniform outer body, it is still without a single animating spirit. The world is not of one mind. … The provincial cultures of the past and the present have not always been loyal to the true interests of the human race. They stood for racial, religious, and political monopolies, for the supremacy of men over women and of the rich over the poor. Before we can build a stable civilization worthy of humanity as a whole, it is necessary that each historical civilization should become conscious of its limitations and it's unworthiness to become the ideal civilization of the world.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“While the triumph of mechanical inventions provides a common basis for the civilization of the future, the break-down of traditional systems of thought, belief, and practice is the necessary preparation for the building of a spiritual unity. The leaven is at work among all the peoples, especially among the youth who are unwilling to be mere clay in the hands of others, be they ever so old or wise. There is a quickened consciousness, a sense of something in adequate and unsatisfactory in the ideas and conceptions we have held and the groping after new values. Dissolution is in the air. The old forms of faith are tottering. Among the thoughtful men of every creed and country there is a note of spiritual wistfulness and expectancy. If we leave aside the fanatics with whom no argument is possible, the leaders of every historical civilization to-day are convinced that mankind in all its extent and history is a single organism, worshipful in its growing majesty and capable of a capable of a progress upon which none dare set any bounds. Dante proclaimed: "There is not one goal for this civilization and one for that, but for the civilization of all mankind there is a single goal." If there is a single goal for all civilization, it does not mean that all shall speak a common tongue or profess a common creed, or that all shall live under a single government, or all shall follow an unchanging pattern in customs and manners.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“War with its devastated fields and ruined cities, with its millions of dead and more millions of maimed and wounded, its broken-hearted and defiled women and its starved children bereft of their natural protection, its hate and atmosphere of lies and intrigue, is an outrage on all that is human. So long as this devil-dance does not disgust us, we cannot pretend to be civilized. It is no good preventing cruelty to animals and building hospitals for the sick and poor houses for the destitute so long as we willing to mow down masses of men by machine-guns and poison non-combatants, including the aged and the infirm, women and children — and all for what? For the glory of God and the honour of the nation! It is quite true that we attempt to regulate war, as we cannot suppress it; but the attempt cannot succeed. For war symbolizes the spirit of strife between two opposing national units which is to be settled by force. When we allow the use of force as the only argument to put down opposition, we cannot rightly discriminate between one kind of force and another. We must put down opposition by mobilizing all the forces at our disposal. There is no real difference between a stick and a sword, or gunpowder and poison gas. So long as it is the recognized method of putting down opposition, every nation will endeavour to make its destructive weapons more and more efficient. War is its only law add the highest virtue is to win, and every nation has to tread this terrific and deadly road. To approve of warfare but criticize its methods, it has been well said is like approving of the wolf eating the lamb but criticizing the table-manners. War is war and not a game of sport to be played according to rules.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is true that internationalism is growing. Economists warn us that war does not pay. It is bad business. Some of us are growing pacifist by policy, though not by conviction. The spirit of internationalism is but skin-deep. Except a small minority in each country who remained heroically faithful to its principles, the rest sacrificed their humanity at the altar of their country in the last war. Even the dignitaries of the Church proved themselves to be of the school of Mephistopheles, "who built God a church and laughed his word to scorn." Churches were turned into recruiting offices. The fanatic appeals of all sides to the Almighty must have confused God himself, and the frame of mind in which the onlookers were is well expressed in J. C. Squire's quatrain : —”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The truths of the ṛṣis are not evolved as the result of logical reasoning or systematic philosophy but are the products of spiritual intuition, dṛṣti or vision. The ṛṣis are not so much the authors of the truths recorded in the Vedas as the seers who were able to discern the eternal truths by raising their life-spirit to the plane of universal spirit. They are the pioneer researchers in the realm of the spirit who saw more in the world than their followers. Their utterances are not based on transitory vision but on a continuous experience of resident life and power. When the Vedas are regarded as the highest authority, all that is meant is that the most exacting of all authorities is the authority of facts.”
Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan (1888–1975) said by 1975 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source