Varadaraja V. Raman Quotes

American physicist

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Varadaraja V. Raman (born May 28, 1932, in Calcutta, India) is Emeritus Professor of Physics and Humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He has authored numerous books, more than 300 book reviews and scores of articles on science and religion. He is an active member of organizations devoted to building understanding between science and the humanities. In 2005 he was elected Senior Fellow of the Metanexus Institute on Science and Religion. In 2006 he was the recipient of the Raja Rao Award which honors and recognizes writers who have made an outstanding contributions to the literature of the South Asian Diaspora.

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Alternative Names: Varadaraja Venkata Raman

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The person of faith, in ritual or worship, while reciting a prayer, singing a psalm, and invoking a mantra, feels deep within a communion that, like the philosopher’s stone of alchemy, transforms the lead and copper of animal existence into the silver and gold of divine delight.

Bookish academics need to remember that when it comes to analyzing works regarded as sacred by vast numbers of people, sound scholarship is like the firmness of bones, while appreciation and sensitivity are like flesh and blood. Without the latter, the former is merely an ugly skeleton: morbid and monstrous, lifeless and lamentable. With the latter, scholarship becomes robust and living.

When one is involved in the discovery and discernment of the marvelous law and symmetries that shape the phenomenal world, one cannot but be struck by the silent and unfathomable intelligence that seems to pervade the Cosmos.

The spiritual quest is the expression of the deepest longing to connect with the Whole.

When the poet said that for him poetry was not a purpose, but a passion, he was also expressing the feelings of the true scientist to his own field.

all the light and beauty, all the grandeur and majesty of the universe are unraveled only in the tiny retinas of human beings.

It has been said that science is proof without certainty, where as religion is certainty without proof.

Ultimately, we all become photographs.

Modern science rests on a universality that transcends ethnic, racial, and religious frameworks.

Of all the wondrous elements in our vast and complex universe, there is perhaps nothing more intriguing, than consciousness.

If we do not wonder about origins and ends at least once during life’s journey, we are but biochemical blobs that devour matter and energy for a time-span, sport and make noise, and then go into eternal extinction.

science and religion are intrinsically interconnected both being expressions of the human spirit.

We are creatures, not only of the mind, but of feelings and emotions as well. Indeed, feelings and emotions are more fundamental to our being than pure logic and reasoning.

The fact is, when we are born, we are neither theists nor atheists, but ignoro-theists.

The religious approach to spirituality is like delighting in a gourmet meal; the scientific approach is like studying recipes or chemically analyzing the ingredients of the menu.