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Quotes of the day from previous years:
The supreme truths are neither the rigid conclusions of logical reasoning nor the affirmations of credal statement, but fruits of the soul's inner experience. Intellectual truth is only one of the doors to the outer precincts of the temple. And since intellectual truth turned towards the Infinite must be in its very nature many-sided and not narrowly one, the most varying intellectual beliefs can be equally true because they mirror different facets of the Infinite. However separated by intellectual distance, they still form so many side-entrances which admit the mind to some faint ray from a supreme Light. There are no true and false religions, but rather all religions are true in their own way and degree. Each is one of the thousand paths to the One Eternal. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
Spirituality is much wider than any particular religion, and in the larger ideas of it that are now coming on us even the greatest religion becomes no more than a broad sect or branch of the one universal religion, by which we shall understand in the future man's seeking for the eternal, the divine, the greater self, the source of unity and his attempt to arrive at some equation, some increasing approximation of the values of human life with the eternal and the divine values. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
The Flag links up the past and the present. It is the legacy bequeathed to us by the architects of our liberty. … The world is full of misunderstandings, suspicions and distrusts. In these difficult days it depends on us under what banner we fight. Here we are Putting in the very centre the white, the white of the Sun's rays. The white means the path of light … the ideal light, the light of truth … The Asoka's wheel represents to us the wheel of the Law, the wheel Dharma. Truth can be gained only by the pursuit of the path of Dharma, by the practice of virtue. ...the orange, the Bhagwa colour, represents the spirit of renunciation. All forms of renunciation are to be embodied in Raja Dharma. … Our leaders must be disinterested. They must be dedicated spirits … the green is there, our relation to the soil, our relation to the plant life here, on which all other life depends. We must build our Paradise, here on this green earth... This flag tells us "Be ever alert, be ever on the move, go forward, work for a free, flexible, compassionate, decent, democratic society in which Christians, Sikhs, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists will all find a safe shelter." Let us all unite under this banner and rededicate ourselves to the ideas our flag symbolizes. |
~ Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan ~ |
This Sanatana Dharma has many scriptures: The Veda, the Vedanta, the Gita, the Upanishads, the Darshanas, the Puranas, the Tantras, nor could it reject the Bible or the Koran, but its real, the most authoritative scripture is in the heart in which the Eternal has his dwelling. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
All religions have some truth in them, but none has the whole truth; all are created in time and finally decline and perish. Mahomed himself never pretended that the Koran was the last message of God and there would be no other. God and Truth outlast these religions and manifest themselves anew in whatever way or form the Divine Wisdom chooses. You cannot shut up God in the limitations of your own narrow brain or dictate to the Divine Power and Consciousness how or where or through whom it shall manifest; you cannot put up your puny barriers against the divine Omnipotence. These again are simple truths which are now being recognised all over the world; only the childish in mind or those who vegetate in some formula of the past deny them. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
Whatever plans we may make, we shall find quite useless when the time for action comes. Revolutions are always full of surprises, and whoever thinks he can play chess with a revolution will soon find how terrible is the grasp of God and how insignificant the human reason before the whirlwind of His breath. That man only is likely to dominate the chances of a Revolution, who makes no plans but preserves his heart pure for the will of God to declare itself. The great rule of life is to have no schemes but one unalterable purpose. If the will is fixed on the purpose it sets itself to accomplish, then circumstances will suggest the right course; but the schemer finds himself always tripped up by the unexpected. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
The highest spirituality indeed moves in a free and wide air far above that lower stage of seeking which is governed by religious form and dogma; it does not easily bear their limitations and, even when it admits, it transcends them; it lives in an experience which to the formal religious mind is unintelligible. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
Indian religion has always felt that since the minds, the temperaments and the intellectual affinities of men are unlimited in their variety, a perfect liberty of thought and of worship must be allowed to the individual in his approach to the Infinite. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
What are we? What is the future? What is the past? What magic fluid envelops us and hides from us the things it is most important for us to know? We are born, we live, and we die in the midst of the marvelous. |
~ Napoleon I of France ~ |
It is the nature of human institutions to degenerate, to lose their vitality, and decay, and the first sign of decay is the loss of flexibility and oblivion of the essential spirit in which they were conceived. The spirit is permanent, the body changes; and a body which refuses to change must die. The spirit expresses itself in many ways while itself remaining essentially the same but the body must change to suit its changing environments if it wishes to live. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
Those who oppose the novel most vociferously today are of the opinion that intermingling with a different culture will inevitably weaken and ruin their own. I am of the opposite opinion. The Satanic Verses celebrates hybridity, impurity, intermingling, the transformation that comes of new and unexpected combinations of human beings, cultures, ideas, politics, movies, songs. It rejoices in mongrelization and fears the absolutism of the Pure. Melange, hotchpotch, a bit of this and a bit of that is how newness enters the world. It is the great possibility that mass migration gives the world... The Satanic Verses is for change-by-fusion, change-by-conjoining. It is a love song to our mongrel selves. |
~ Salman Rushdie ~ |
The fool has one great advantage over a man of sense — he is always satisfied with himself. |
~ Napoleon ~ |
Do not be afraid of obstacles in your path, it does not matter how great the forces are that stand in your way … Do not think that anything is impossible when miracles are being worked on every side. If you are true to yourself there is nothing to be afraid of. There is nothing unattainable by truth, love and faith. |
~ Sri Aurobindo ~ |
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India is, the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grand mother of tradition. Our most valuable and most instructive materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only. ~ Mark Twain in honour of the India independence day
This country's planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man's laws, not God's — and if you cut them down — and you're just the man to do it — d'you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake. ~ Robert Bolt (born August 15, 1924)
Since one must take sides, one might as well choose the side that is victorious, the side which devastates, loots, and burns. Considering the alternative, it is better to eat than to be eaten. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
A king is sometimes obliged to commit crimes; but they are the crimes of his position. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
A picture is worth a thousand words. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
Better to have a known enemy than a hidden ally. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
Cruelty can only be justified by necessity. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
In victory, you deserve Champagne; in defeat, you need it. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
Speeches pass away, but acts remain. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
The bullet that will kill me is not yet cast. ~ Napoleon I of France (born August 15)
If all the world must see the world
As the world the world hath seen,
Then it were better for the world
That the world had never been. ~ Charles Godfrey Leland
More glorious to merit a sceptre than to possess one. ~ Napoleon I of France
Those who are free from common prejudices acquire others. ~ Napoleon I of France
The barbarous custom of having men beaten who are suspected of having important secrets to reveal must be abolished. It has always been recognized that this way of interrogating men, by putting them to torture, produces nothing worthwhile. The poor wretches say anything that comes into their mind and what they think the interrogator wishes to know. ~ Napoleon I of France
Whatever misanthropists may say, ingrates and the perverse are exceptions in the human species. ~ Napoleon I of France
Destiny urges me to a goal of which I am ignorant. Until that goal is attained I am invulnerable, unassailable. When Destiny has accomplished her purpose in me, a fly may suffice to destroy me. ~ Napoleon I of France
I am the instrument of providence, she will use me as long as I accomplish her designs, then she will break me like a glass. ~ Napoleon I of France
War is becoming an anachronism … There are two systems, the past and the future. The present is only a painful transition. Which must triumph? The future, will it not? Yes indeed, the future! That is, intelligence, industry, and peace. The past was brute force, privilege, and ignorance. Each of our victories was a triumph for the ideas of the Revolution. Victories will be won, one of these days, without cannon, and without bayonets. ~ Napoleon I of France
A good sketch is better than a long speech. ~ Napoleon I of France
It is not that addresses at the opening of a battle make the soldiers brave. The old veterans scarcely hear them, and recruits forget them at the first boom of the cannon. Their usefulness lies in their effect on the course of the campaign, in neutralizing rumors and false reports, in maintaining a good spirit in the camp, and in furnishing matter for camp-fire talk. The printed order of the day should fulfill these different ends. ~ Napoleon I of France
In order not to be astonished at obtaining victories, one ought not to think only of defeats. ~ Napoleon I of France
Nothing is so contrary to military rules as to make the strength of your army known, either in the orders of the day, in proclamations, or in the newspapers. ~ Napoleon I of France
There is nothing so imperious as feebleness which feels itself supported by force. ~ Napoleon I of France
It is not necessary to prohibit or encourage oddities of conduct which are not harmful. ~ Napoleon I of France
Courage cannot be counterfeited. It is one virtue that escapes hypocrisy. ~ Napoleon I of France
There is only one favorable moment in war; talent consists in knowing how to seize it. ~ Napoleon I of France
In a battle, as in a siege, the art consists in concentrating very heavy fire on a particular point. ~ Napoleon I of France
It is only by prudence, wisdom, and dexterity, that great ends are attained and obstacles overcome. Without these qualities nothing succeeds. ~ Napoleon I of France
The man fitted for affairs and authority never considers individuals, but things and their consequences. ~ Napoleon I of France
Parties weaken themselves by their fear of capable men. ~ Napoleon I of France
The superior man is never in anyone's way. ~ Napoleon I of France
One must indeed be ignorant of the methods of genius to suppose that it allows itself to be cramped by forms. Forms are for mediocrity, and it is fortunate that mediocrity can act only according to routine. Ability takes its flight unhindered. ~ Napoleon I of France
The laws of circumstance are abolished by new circumstances. ~ Napoleon I of France
One can lead a nation only by helping it see a bright outlook. A leader is a dealer in hope. ~ Napoleon I of France
It is often in the audacity, in the steadfastness, of the general that the safety and the conservation of his men is found. ~ Napoleon I of France
Imagination governs the world. ~ Napoleon I of France
Lead the ideas of your time and they will accompany and support you; fall behind them and they drag you along with them; oppose them and they will overwhelm you. ~ Napoleon I of France
All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances ~ Napoleon I of France
The whole world yearns after freedom, yet each creature is in love with his chains; this is the first paradox and inextricable knot of our nature. ~ Sri Aurobindo
None can reach heaven who has not passed through hell.
This too the traveller of the worlds must dare. ~ Sri Aurobindo
All can be done if the god-touch is there. ~ Sri Aurobindo
All things are real that here are only dreams,
In our unknown depths sleeps their reserve of truth,
On our unreached heights they reign and come to us
In thought and muse trailing their robes of light.
~ Sri Aurobindo ~
Even soul-force, when it is effective, destroys. Only those who have used it with eyes open, know how much more destructive it can be than the sword and the cannon; and only those who do not limit their view to the act and its immediate results, can see how tremendous are its after-effects, how much is eventually destroyed and with that much all the life that depended upon it and fed upon it. Evil cannot perish without the destruction of much that lives by the evil, and it is no less destruction even if we personally are saved the pain of a sensational act of violence. ~ Sri Aurobindo
What I cannot do now is the sign of what I shall do hereafter. The sense of impossibility is the beginning of all possibilities. Because this temporal universe was a paradox and an impossibility, therefore the Eternal created it out of His being. ~ Sri Aurobindo
Evolution is not finished; reason is not the last word nor the reasoning animal the supreme figure of Nature. As man emerged out of the animal, so out of man the superman emerges. ~ Sri Aurobindo
Thought is not essential to existence nor its cause, but it is an instrument for becoming; I become what I see in myself. All that thought suggests to me, I can do; all that thought reveals in me, I can become. This should be man's unshakable faith in himself, because God dwells in him. ~ Sri Aurobindo
There are two allied powers in man; knowledge and wisdom. Knowledge is so much of the truth seen in a distorted medium as the mind arrives at by groping, wisdom what the eye of divine vision sees in the spirit. ~ Sri Aurobindo
If a religion is not universal, it cannot be eternal. A narrow religion, a sectarian religion, an exclusive religion can live only for a limited time and a limited purpose. ~ Sri Aurobindo
Spirituality is not necessarily exclusive; it can be and in its fullness must be all-inclusive. ~ Sri Aurobindo
It is hardly necessary to say that August 15 was hailed with joy all over India, and no words can adequately describe the tumultuous scenes of wild rejoicings witnessed in every city and every village. Lord and Lady Mountbatten, driving in state, were greeted with resounding cheers by the enthusiastic crowds that lined the streets. This heralded a new era of goodwill between India and Britain. Stories of many hard and bitter struggles between India and Britain, and of animosities between the Indians and the British fill the pages of this work. Let it end with a note of goodwill, trust, and confidence which manifested itself on the streets of Delhi on 15 August, 1947. |
~ R. C. Majumdar ~ |
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