Quotes about Bhagavad Gita

Bhagavadgita – the divine song, is part of the famous Indian epic Mahabharata. On the eve of the battle on Kurukshetra, Krishna drove Arjuna in his chariot between the two lined up armies. In that short time he exposed him entire teaching of yoga.
Gita is multi-layered and symbolic, so Arjuna symbolizes the individual soul, body is chariots, horses are mind and senses, the reins is reason, and the coachman is divine in us, the voice of conscience.
Arjuna saw on the other side his relatives, teachers and friends, reject bow and refuses to fight. On what Krishna said, it is the duty of warrior caste to fight, but neither was he who kills, or they can be killed. After all, Krishna continues, It is I who have killed them all (God in the aspect of time).
There cousins symbolize attachments, pride, desires, and the ego would rather never renounced them, but on the road to enlightenment, the ego is the one that we have to dissolve by constant spiritual effort.
In the Qur'an, we have the term Jihad - holy war, and the symbolism is the same - a war against our internal enemies.

Arthur Schopenhauer

“It is the most rewarding and elevating reading possible: it has been the comfort of my life and it will be the one of my death.”

Johann Wolfgang Göethe

“This is the book that enlightened me most in my whole life.”

Erwin Schrödinger

“The unity and continuity of Vedanta are reflected in the unity and continuity of wave mechanics. This is entirely consistent with the Vedanta concept of All in One.”
“The multiplicity is only apparent. This is the doctrine of the Upanishads. And not of the Upanishads only. The mystical experience of the union with God regularly leads to this view, unless strong prejudices stand in the West.”

Albert Einstein

“When I read the Bhagavad Gita and reflect about how God created this universe, everything else seems so superfluous.”

Carl Gustav Jung

“The idea that man is like unto an inverted tree seems to have been current in by gone ages. The link with Vedic conceptions is provided by Plato in his Timaeus in which it states... 'behold we are not an earthly but a heavenly plant.' This correlation can be discerned by what Krishna expresses in chapter 15 of Bhagavad Gita.”

Herman Hesse

“The marvel of the Bhagavad Gita is its truly beautiful revelation of life's wisdom which enables philosophy to blossom into religion.”

Dr. Albert Schweitzer

“The Bhagavad Gita has a profound influence on the spirit of mankind by its devotion to God which is manifested by actions.”

Robert Oppenheimer

In reference to the Trinity test in New Mexico, where his Los Alamos team first tested the bomb, Oppenheimer famously recalled the Bhagavad Gita: “If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendor of the mighty one.”
and
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.” The word trinity he learnt from Vedic Sanskrit word which means three forces as one which is an essence of The Bhagvad Gita.

Henry David Thoreau

“In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita, in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial.”

David Bohm

Bohm explains his theory that there is something like life and mind enfolded in everything. He was profoundly affected by his close contact with Jidu Krishnamurti. “Yes, and Atman is from the side of meaning. You would say Atman is more like the meaning. But then what is meant would be Brahman, I suppose; the identity of consciousness and cosmos... This claims that the meaning and what is meant are ultimately one, which is the phrase 'Atman equals Brahman' of classical Hindu philosophy.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad Gita. It was the first of books; it was as if 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 same questions which exercise us.”

Rudolph Steiner

“In order to approach a creation as sublime as the Bhagavad Gita with full understanding it is necessary to attune our soul to it.”

Aldous Huxley

“The Bhagavad Gita is the most systematic statement of spiritual evolution of endowing value to mankind. It is one of the most clear and comprehensive summaries of perennial philosophy ever revealed; hence its enduring value is subject not only to India but to all of humanity.”

Mahatma Gandhi

“When doubts haunt me, when disappointments stare me in the face, and I see not oneray of hope on the horizon, I turn to Bhagavad Gita and find a verse to comfort me; and I immediately begin to smile in the midst of overwhelming sorrow. Those who meditateon the Gita will derive fresh joy and new meanings from it every day.”