Vedas Quotes

“The Hindu religion is the only one of the world’s great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths.
It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang.”
― Carl Sagan, Cosmos

“In the Hindu religion, one can[not] have freedom of speech. A Hindu must surrender his freedom of speech. He must act according to the Vedas. If the Vedas do not support the actions, instructions must be sought from the Smritis, and if the Smritis fail to provide any such instructions, he must follow in the footsteps of the great men.
He is not supposed to reason. Hence, so long as you are in the Hindu religion, you cannot expect to have freedom of thought”
― B.R. Ambedkar

“Transcendence transfigures; it does not reconcile, but rather transmutes opposites into something surpassing them that effaces their oppositions.”
― Sri Aurobindo, The Life Divine

“Do not be led by others,
awaken your own mind,
amass your own experience,
and decide for yourself your own path.”
― Veda

“For while the Vedas say, 'truth is one, paths are many', the differences among those paths are not inconsequential.”
― Rajiv Malhotra, Being Different: An Indian Challenge to Western Universalism

“No text, being human creation, is free from flaws – it is the human mind that should be conscientious enough to accept their good elements and discard the bad ones.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Krishna Cancer

“O Indra, destroy all
those lustful people
behaving like birds....
angry ones
behaving like wolves....
greedy ones
behaving like vultures....
enticed ones
behaving like owls.....
arrogant ones
behaivng like eagles
and the jealous ones
behaving like dogs.”
― Veda

“God is just one more Clown
In this Circus of mine
(from song "no tunnel too dark")”
― Vineet Raj Kapoor

“As far, verily, as this world-space extends, so far extends the space within the heart. Within it, indeed, are contained both heaven and earth, both fire and wind, both sun and moon, lightning and the stars, both what one possesses here and what one does not possess; everything here is contained within it.”
― Chhandogya Upanishad 8.1.3

“Yoga was originated in India around 5500 BCE. Vedas were written during 1500 to 1200 BCE and the Patanjali's yoga sutra was written around 500 BCE.”
― Amit Ray, Yoga The Science of Well-Being

“And once you realise that you've been me and I have been you, you'd be more understanding.”
― Mitta Xinindlu

“The sacred texts of human history from all over the world, can never be perceived by the rational mind as texts of historical accuracy. They can only be a glaring representation of the traditions and ideals of the people. Now, it is up to the rational mind, to analyze those texts and thereafter consume the good elements from them, while discarding the rest.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Rowdy Buddha: The First Sapiens

“Killing a bunch of Jihadis may be morally justified, to save humanity from their wrath, but it won't terminate Jihad for long. Jihad or Holy war would keep festering one way or another, until religious fundamentalism is eradicated from the human society. Until the whole humanity learns to scrutinize its most revered scriptures with the sharp tool of reasoning, Jihad will keep on striking over the world. If one does not have the basic conscientious capacity to refute the primitive textual verses of the scriptures that demand one to kill or torture another being for holding a different belief system than one's own, then that entity is no being of the civilized human society, it is merely a pest from the stone-age. No Quran, no Bible, no Gita, no Cow, is greater than the human self. There shall be hope for harmony and peace in the world, only when fundamentalism is destroyed forever. Harmony is not a luxury, it is an existential necessity of the species. And to achieve it, if a hundred Bibles have to be sacrificed, then be it. But for no Bible, Quran or Gita, can harmony be compromised.”
― Abhijit Naskar

“A religion is not judged by the contents of its book but by the power of its Spirit.”
― Eli Of Kittim, The Little Book of Revelation: The First Coming of Jesus at the End of Days

“As the slough of a snake lies on an ant-hill, dead, cast off, even so lies this body. But this incorporeal, immortal Life is Brahma indeed, is light indeed.”
― Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 4.4.7

“There is a super interesting theory of evolution: Human beings didn't evolve from apes. They evolved from thoughts. Vedas are the original and purest thoughts that existed before human beings. Thoughts use human beings to evolve themselves. Human beings don't use thoughts.”
― Shunya

“Vedas are the origin from which everything has branched out. If you try to get their meaning, you will end up creating one more branch. Just feel the vibe of Mantras.”
― Shunya

“आपका जीवन तब तक निरर्थक है जब तक आप अपने सच्चे स्वरूप को ईश्वर के रूप में अनुभव नहीं कर लेते।”
― Shiva Negi

“Vedas do not accept untouchability. But if Vedas (were to) accept untouchability then I would reject the Vedas.”
― Bal Gangadhar Tilak

“The Vedas don't command or prohibit. They don't prescribe, they describe.”
― Anonymous

“Do not be led by others, awaken your own mind, amass your own experience, and decide for yourself your own path.”
― Atharva Veda

“the Christian stands up and says, "My religion is a historical religion and therefore yours is wrong and ours is true," [the Mimamsaka replies], "Yours being historical, you confess that a man invented it nineteen hundred years ago. That which is true must be infinite and eternal. That is the one test of truth. It never decays, it is always the same. You confess your religion was created by such-and-such a man. The Vedas were not. By no prophets or anything. Only infinite words, infinite by their very nature, from which the whole universe comes and goes.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Thoughts on the Gita

“The oldest Vedantic school, Advaita [‘Not two’], represents an extreme and purist position in arguing that Brahman alone is real. The self and the world are within Brahman, with any apparent difference arising from illusion [maya] and ignorance [avidya]. It is as with a rope, which seems to be a snake, or a seashell, which seems to be of silver. This world is like the foam on the sea, or a peacock’s egg, created simply for play [lila]. Since Brahman is all, Brahman is without attributes. When the mind, which is given to maya, tries to conceive of Brahman, it sees Ishvara in one of his many forms. If certain Upanishadic statements appear to be theistic, it is because their author (nominally, Brahman) is catering to his audience. Only in deep sleep, when we are no longer dreaming, might we experience something of the formlessness of Brahman. We are then pure, disengaged consciousness, like the sun after it has set. This is the experience of disembodied Atma, of death, of home.”
― Neel Burton, Indian Mythology and Philosophy: The Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, Kama Sutra… And How They Fit Together

“There is a being with a thousand heads, a thousand eyes and a thousand feet. He surrounds the earth from all directions, he surrounds the universe from all directions, and yet there is more of him that is left over. This being is divided into four parts. Three of these parts exist in lofty places and the fourth part is manifested on earth. This fourth part embraces the four directions on earth. All beings who have been born and all beings who will be born are manifestations of this being. Three parts of the being are immortal and exist in heaven, and the fourth part sustains all objects on earth. This being is the lord of immortality and of food grains. He is supreme; he is the one who created the earth.”
― Bibek Debroy, Sama Veda

“Vishnu displayed his valour. He kept his feet in three places. It is in those three places that the universe rests. Vishnu's three feet encompass the entire universe.”
― Bibek Debroy, Sama Veda

“Though each of the Vedas may be regarded as a separate work, their composition must have originated contemporaneously. Thus there is no clear division between the notion of the personification of stellar, atmospheric and chthonic phenomena and the henotheistic and henotic notions that finally superseded them. Some members of the brahmin and ksatra classes, and even of the südra, joined secret coteries in the seclusion of the forest and composed radical Äranyakas and Upanisads, which rejected ritual sacrifice as the sole means of liberation (moksa), and introduced a monistic doctrine. Such ideas challenged the stereotyped theological dogmas and revitalized religion in India. So great was their impact that the Äranyakas and Upanishads were finally regarded as the fulfilment of Vedic nascent aspirations, and therefore called the Vedanta, the end or conclusion ‘anta’ of the Veda.”
― Margaret Stutley, Dictionary of Hinduism: Its Mythology, Folklore and Development 1500 BC - AD 1500

“The whole universe is within this human body

19th April, 1958.

Where is this Universe? This is also within you. At the time of birth, the child reflects the world and lives within it. This reflection is spontaneous and for this reason, the man cannot realize it.

In Vedas it is mentioned like this: The spider ejects the net from saliva from its body and lives within it. Though it is a one-sided comparison. Through realization, it can be realized. Beforehand I used to think that such a big universe is within me! But actually, it is so. After visualization of ‘Atman’ or ‘Soul’, when the seer gets the experience of visualizing the universe within ‘Atman’, then only it can be understood. Then what happens? This universe is transformed into seed form, the seed is merged into a dream and ultimately the dream vanishes.”
― Sri Jibankrishna or Diamond

“India – The land of Vedas, the remarkable works contain not only religious ideas for a perfect life, but also facts which science has proved true. Electricity, radium, electronics, airship, all were known to the seers who founded the Vedas.”
― Ella Wheeler Wilcox

“The Vedas still represent eternal truth in the purest form ever written.”
― Paul William Roberts

“The Rig Veda says that desire was the first movement that arose in the One after it had come into being through the power of abstraction. ‘Desire arose first in It, which was the primal germ of mind; (and which) sages, searching with their intellect have discovered in their heart to be the bond which connects entity with non-entity.’48 The very strength of the urge made it useful to use as a metaphor to convey or explicate a metaphysical point. The Brihadaranyaka Upanishad says: ‘Just as a man, closely embraced by his loving wife, knows nothing without, nothing within, so does this “person”, closely embraced by the Self that consists of wisdom, knows nothing without nothing within.’49 The same Upanishad also has this passage where a woman’s genitals are used as symbols to describe a sacrificial fire: ‘Woman is a fire, Gautama: the phallus is her fuel; the hairs are her smoke; the vulva is her flame; when a man penetrates her, that is her coal; the ecstasy is her sparks.’50 As I have discussed, the major gods in the Hindu faith have all got consorts. They are rarely described as celibate recluses; they may be said to be beyond passion in an ontological sense, but in their incarnate form they are explicit in the demonstrative attraction of the opposite sex. The goddesses do not lag behind. Their love for their husbands or lovers is often portrayed in an assertively earthy and sensual manner. Gods and goddesses represent a conscious duality, Purusha and Prakriti, complementing each other.
The inclusion of desire in the larger religious and spiritual vision gave it both sanctity and philosophical legitimacy. Kama, the God of Love, akin to the Greek Eros, or the Roman Cupid or Amor, has been exalted in a hymn of the Atharva Veda as a supreme god and creator. ‘Kama was born the first. Him neither gods, nor fathers, nor men have equalled. Thou art superior to these and for ever great.”
― Pavan K. Varma, The Great Hindu Civilisation: Achievement, Neglect, Bias and the Way Forward