“In thought faith, In word wisdom,
In deed courage, In life service
So may India be great.”
Inscription on the base of Jaipur Column In front of Rashtrapati Bhavan
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“This is the ancient land where wisdom made it home before it went in to any other country , the same India whose influx of spirituality is represented as it were , on the material plane by rolling rivers like oceans , where the eternal Himalayas rising tier above tier with their snow-caps , look as it were in to the mysteries of heaven. Here the same India whose soil has been trodden by the feet of the greatest sages that ever lived. Here first sprang the inquiries in to the nature of man and in to the internal world. Here first arose the doctrines of the immortality of the soul, the existence of a supervising God, and immanent God in nature and in man and here the highest ideals of religion and philosophy have attained their culminating points. This is the land from whence like the tidal waves, spirituality and philosophy have again and again rushed out and deluged the world, and this is the land from whence once more such tides must proceed in order to bring life and vigor in to the decaying races of mankind. It is the same India which has withstood the shocks of centuries of hundreds of foreign invasions, of hundreds of upheavals of manners and customs It is the same land which stands firmer than any rock in the world, with its undying vigor, indestructible life . Its life is of the same nature as the soul without beginning and without end , immortal and we are the children of such a country .“
-Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902)
“This is indeed India ! The land of dreams and romance , of fabulous wealth and fabulous poverty, of splendor and rags, of palaces and hovels, of famine and pestilence, of genii and giants and Aladdin lamps, of tigers and elephants, of the cobra and jungle , the country of a hundred nations and a hundred tongues, of a thousand religions and two million gods, cradle of the human race, birth place of human speech , mother of history , grandmother of legend , great grandmother of traditions . Whose yesterday bears date with smouldering antiquities of the rest of the nations – the one sole country under the sun that is endowed with an imperishable interest for alien prince and alien peasant for lettered and ignorant , wise and fool, rich and poor , bond and free, the one land that all men desire to see and having seen once , by even a glimpse would not give that glimpse for the show of all the rest of the globe combined.”
- Mark Twain (1835-1910)

“ If I were to look over the whole world to find out the country most richly endowed with all wealth , power and beauty that nature can bestow – in some parts a very paradise on earth – I should point to India . If I were asked under what sky the human mind has most fully developed some of its choicest gifts has most deeply pondered on the greatest problems of life and has found solutions to some of them which well deserve the attention even of those who have studied Plato and kant –I should point to India . And if I were to ask myself from what literature we here in Europe we who have been nurtured almost exclusively on the thoughts of Greeks and Romans, may draw that corrective which is most wanted in order to make our inner life more perfect , more comprehensive , more universal , in fact more truly humane ,a life not for this life only but a transfigured and eternal life – again I should point to India “
- Freidrich Max Muller (1823-1900)