(325 ई.पू.) और इसलिए उसका सम्पर्क भारत के बन्दरगाहों में आवाजाही करने वाले व्यापारियों से हुआ था, ने उतना ही सही कहा था कि “भारतीय लोग पीट-पीट कर जमाई गई… - Friedrich Max Müller

Knowledge which has no object beyond itself is, in most cases, but a pretext for vanity. It is so easy, even for the most superficial scholar, to bring together a vast mass of information, bearing more or less remotely on questions of no importance whatsoever. The test of a true scholar is to be able to find out what is really important, to state with precision and clearness the results of long and tedious researches, and to suppress altogether lucubrations, which, though they might display the laboriousness of the writer, would but encumber his subject with needless difficulty.

प्रकृति में दक्षिण और उत्तर होते हैं, क्या वैसे ही मानव स्वभाव में दो गोलार्द्ध नहीं होते — एक ओर तो सक्रिय युद्धप्रिय, और राजनीतिक और दूसरी ओर पैसिव, ध्यानी और दार्शनिक। और इस समस्या के हल के लिए कोई भी साहित्य उतनी सामग्री प्रदान नहीं करता जितना वेद, जो ऋचाओं से शुरू होते हैं और उपनिषदों में खत्म होते हैं।

The worship of Shiva, Vishnu, and other popular deities was of the same and in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship of Jupiter, Apollo or Minerva. ... A religion may linger on for a long time, it may be accepted by large masses of the people, because it is there, and there is nothing better. But when a religion has ceased to produce defenders of the faith, prophets, champions, martyrs, it has ceased to live, in the true sense of the word; and in that sense the old orthodox Brahmanism has ceased to live for more than a thousand years.