Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

We become more religious in proportion to our readiness to doubt and not our willingness to believe.

To be ignorant is not the special prerogative of man; to know that he is ignorant is his special privilege.

We invent by intuition, though we prove by logic.

We are grown-up infants, and God is a sort of 'wet nurse' to humanity.

A stone is not self any more than a self is a stone.

Poets and prophets do not go into committees.

It takes centuries to make a little history; it takes centuries of history to make a tradition.

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 : —

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.

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.

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.