India is one of the oldest civilizations in the world and home to 1.3 billion people, it is a country that is almost bursting with diversity. Ancient India was a great force of trade and have experienced large waves of migration or invasion throughout history. A lot has been said about India and its greatness, here we are sharing some quotes by notable figures from the past about India.

1. When the real history of India will be unearthed, it will be proved that, as in matters of religion, so in fine arts, India is the primal Guru of the whole world. – Swami Vivekanand (Indian Philosopher)

2. India is the cradle of the human race, the birthplace of human speech, the Mother of history, the grandmother of legend, and the great grandmother of tradition. Our most valuable and most artistic materials in the history of man are treasured up in India only! – Mark Twain

3. India is an Old country but a young nation…I am young and I too have a dream, I dream of India Strong, Independent, Self-Reliant, and in the front rank of the nations of the world, in the service of mankind. – Rajiv Gandhi

4. India conquered and dominated China culturally for 20 centuries without ever having to send a single soldier across her border. – Hu Shih (Former Ambassador of China to the USA)

5. Indians are the Italians of Asia and vice versa. Every man in both countries is a singer when he is happy, and every woman is a dancer when she walks to the shop at the corner. For them, food is the music inside the body and music is the food inside the heart. ‘Amore’ or ‘Pyar’ makes every man a poet, a princess of peasant girl if only for second eyes of man and woman meets. – Gregory David Roberts

6. India was the motherland of our race, and Sanskrit the mother of Europe’s languages: she was the mother of our philosophy; mother, through the Arabs, of much of our mathematics; mother, through the Buddha, of the ideals embodied in Christianity; mother, through the village community, of self-government and democracy. Mother India is in many ways the mother of us all. – Will Durant

7. Whenever I have read any part of the Vedas, I have felt that some unearthly and unknown light illuminated me. In the great teaching of the Vedas, there is no touch of sectarianism. It is of all ages, climbs, and nationalities and is the royal road for the attainment of the Great Knowledge. When I read it, I feel that I am under the spangled heavens of a summer night. – Henry David Thoreau

8. 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, I should point to India. – Max Mueller

9. If there is one place on the face of earth where all the dreams of living men have found a home from the very earliest days when man began the dream of existence, it is India. – Romain Rolland

10. The Indian way of life provides the vision of the natural, real way of life. We veil ourselves with unnatural masks. On the face of India are the tender expressions that carry the mark of the Creator’s hand. – George Bernard Shaw

11. India will teach us the tolerance and gentleness of a mature mind, an understanding spirit, and a unifying, pacifying love for all human beings. – Will Durant

12. We owe a lot to the Indians, who taught us how to count, without which no worthwhile scientific discovery could have been made. – Albert Einstein

13. People say Calcutta is a city of palaces, but the houses look much like so many boxes placed one upon the other! They convey no idea whatever. In Rajputana, you can still find much pure Hindu architecture. If you look at a Dharmashala, you will feel as if it calls you with open arms to take shelter within and partake of its unqualified hospitableness. If you look at a temple, you are sure to find a Divine Presence in and about it. If you look about a rural cottage, you will at once be able to comprehend the special meanings of its different portions, and that the whole structure bears evidence to the predominant nature and ideal of the owner thereof. This sort of expressive architecture I have seen nowhere else except in Italy. – Swami Vivekanand

14. But it is a truism for Hindus, the spirit of mutual good-will, esteem, and veritable love which is the traditional spirit of the religions in an Indian family. This is one of India’s gift to the world. – Arnold Toynbee

15. There has been no more revolutionary contribution than the one which the Indians made when they invented zero. – Lancelot Hogben

16. Gravitation was known to the Hindus (Indians) before the birth of Newton. The system of blood circulation was discovered by them centuries before Harvey was heard of. – P. Johnstone

17. In India, I found a race of mortals living upon the Earth, but not adhering to it, inhabiting cities, but not being fixed to them, possessing everything, but possessed by nothing. – Apollonius Tyanaeus

18. There are some parts of the world that, once visited, get into your heart and won’t go. For me, India is such a place. When I first visited, I was stunned by the richness of the land, by its lush beauty and exotic architecture, by its ability to overload the senses with the pure, concentrated intensity of its colors, smells, tastes, and sounds… I had been seeing the world in black & white and, when brought face-to-face with India, experienced everything re-rendered in brilliant technicolor. – Keith Bellows

19. In the great books of India, an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence, which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the questions that exercise us. – R.W. Emerson

20. From the Vedas, we learn a practical art of surgery, medicine, music, house building under which mechanized art is included. They are encyclopedia of every aspect of life, culture, religion, science, ethics, law, cosmology, and meteorology. – William James

21. Our present knowledge of the nervous system fits in so accurately with the internal description of the human body given in the Vedas (5000 years ago). Then the question arises whether the Vedas are really religious books or books on the anatomy of the nervous system and medicine. – B.G. Rele

22. One Billion-Year-Old fossil proves life began in India: AFP Washington reports in Science Magazine that German Scientist Adolf Seilachar and Indian Scientist P.K. Bose have unearthed fossil in Churhat a town in Madhya Pradesh, India which is 1.1 billion years old and has rolled back the evolutionary clock by more than 500 million years. – Adolf Seilachar & P.K. Bose

23. After the conversations about Indian philosophy, some of the ideas of Quantum Physics that had seemed crazy suddenly made much more sense. – W. Heisenberg

24. The surgery of the ancient Indian physicians was bold and skillful. A special branch of surgery was dedicated to rhinoplasty or operations for improving deformed ears, noses, and forming new ones, which European surgeons have now borrowed. – Sir W. Hunter

25. Vedas are the most rewarding and the most elevating book which can be possible in the world. – Schopenhauer

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