Man and his world

Great sayings of V R Narla
(Narla Venkateswararao emerged as great thinker and writer as he grew in age and mind.He reflected on global aspects and reflected under the title Man and his World.He would have changed the title as humans and world , which includes both men and women)

MAN AND HIS WORLD

THE WORLD
The world is real, very much real, a thousand times more real than the philosophers who call it an illusion, a mirage or a phantom.

MAN THE THINKER
Man is thinking animal, and the more he thinks and thinks objectively and creatively, the lesser will be the animal in him.



ETHICS
If you insist, as Gandhi did, on an absolute truth, asolute celibacy, absolute non-violence, absolute sacrifice, absolute non-possession, and other such absolute ethical values it will result in absolute hypocrisy.
By getting mixed up with religion, ethics loses much of its point, most of its purpose, and almost all of its spontaneity.

GANDHIAN ATHEIST
If anyone claims to be both a Gandhian and an atheist, he must be either a fool or a knave.
RELIGION AND CULTURE
A world religion is an impossibility; a world culture is not. The only hope of One World and One Humanity, therefore, lies in the emergence of a world culture.

THE DEEPEST LOVE
Expresses itself, not though a cataract of words, but by the glow on the face, the sparkle in the eye, he thrill of togetherness.

MAN
As an individual is now by far more humane than in the earlier ages, but man in the mass is infinitely more brutish.

NATURE
Unnatural pleasure will be novel, intense and exotic, but in the end nature will surely have its revenge – total, terrible, terminal.

THINKER
The primary function of a thinker is to recognize in advance the emerging historical forces and to transform them into ideas, concepts, hypotheses or theories.

TO DIE
With a smile on your lips – what a grateful and gracious farewell to life it would be !

CUSTOM AND TRADITION
Custom makes life a routine; tradition makes thinking needless; and together they make man a robot.

CUSTOM AND TRADITION
Entrenched habit is custom; mummified custom is tradition.

CUSTOM AND TRADITION
If custom is really sound, a better name for it will be rational behaviour; and if there is such a thing as a healthy tradition, a more apt name for it will be a living heritage.

ABRACADABRA
If the syllable “OM” opens the gates to heaven, why should the syllable “Blash” be less sacred or magical ?

SYCOPHANT
A Slave can be pitied, for slavery is often imposed by others; a sycophant can only be detested, for sycophancy is self imposed.

SWADESHI
After having campaigned for more than half a century for Swadeshi during the British rule we are now enjoying the privilege of wearing chains bearing the legend “Made in India.”

GANDHI
Who can doubt Madam Gandhi’s hold on the affections of the Indian masses? And yet one cannot help fearing whether that hold is not turning into a stranglehold. (1981).

HYPOCRITE
An outright scoundrel is a saint compared to a downright bypocrite.

FROG, HE SUPER YOGI
A yogi can live in an air-tight chamber for days and weeks. But as a frog can do it for years and years, should it not be deemed a Super Yogi ?

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Have made the world small; it is a boon, an inestimable boon. Science and technology have also made the human being small; it is a curse, a terrible curse.

SCIENCE AND PHYLOSOPHY
Science should explain the world to man; Philosophy should teach man as to how he could make his life in the world joyous as well as meaningful.

OUR LAW MAKERS
Break laws without the least compunction, for they think thar the laws are, after all, of their own making.

THE CLASS IN POWER
No class in power liquidates, itself. It is therefore foolish to think that the Indian bourgeoisie, though it swears by socialism, will ever establish a socialist order of society.

HUMBUG
To take vow of silence and yet to carry on conversation through the medium of writing is sheer humbug.

FORGIVENESS
Personal injuries may be forgiven, but certainly not public injustices.

ASTROLOGICAL SCIENCE
Is a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

MIXED ECONOMY
In the mixed economy of India, all the losing industries are run by the public sector and all the profitable ones by the private sector.

LIGHT AND LIGHTING
When intellectuals meet, there is light; when wits meet, there is lighting.
A CLOSED MIND
Is the worst prison in the world.

A BLESSING
A corrupt bureaucracy is a real blessing under dictatorship for it lacks the character as well as the will to ground down everything like a bulldozer.


DILEMMA
To enter politics is to soil yourself; to shun politics is to allow the country to go to the dogs.

CORRUPT POLITICIANS
Thieves fall out when it comes to sharing their loot, and so do corrupt politicians when it comes to sharing office and power.

SARAT CHATTERJEE
In Saratchandra Chatterjee, the man and the artist were closely inter-related. This is true of all master artists and their art, but in the case of Sarat the identity between the man and his art was complete, total. It may be said the Sarat, the man, emptied himself into Sarat, the artist.

EINSTEIN
Unlike Gandhi, Lenin and Mao who aspired to be great, Einstein was unconsciously great.

GREATNESS
Thrust upon people will lose it glitter in a generation or two.

FAME
Is often a poor index of greatness.

LIE
To lie with a straight face is in art; to remain unblushing when caught in the process of lying is super-art.

THE BIGGEST LIAR
is he who tells you that never in his life was he guilty of even a white lie.

HALF - TRUTH
is a bastard, being the offspring of illicit union between truth and falsehood.

MAN
should aim at being a total man and not a superman.

LITTLE MEN
When great principles end, little men come to the top.

ATHEISM
The day atheism produces a scripture is will be dead; to be ever living and ever growing it should be ever questioning.

POWER
If being too long in power corrupts, being too long in opposition, with little or no prospect of ever attaining power, corrupts much more.

MEN
We need neither supermen nor under-men, only rational men, and the larger their number the saner will be the world.

THE TEST OF A GREAT MAN
Lies in the number of followers whom he inspires to rise to greater heights than himself.

IMMORTALITY
Works for a great idea, or better still, for a great ideal, for that idea or ideal may acquire a life of its own, a life that knows no death.

TO HATE
An evil man is moral; to be nice to him is amoral, if not immoral.

CASTES AND CLASSES
There are thousands of castes in India, but only two classes – those who eat those who are eaten.

CROOK
To think that a crook would not cheat you because of his affection or regard for you is to fool yourself that a tiger can, on occasion, be a vegetarian.

ADVAITA
is unending prattle on what is said to be the unsociable, the unmeasurable, the unnamable, the unknowable, etc., etc., etc.

PHILOSOPHY
A Philosophy that is unrelated to contemporary life is no philosophy. It can only help idle men to while away their idle time.
A philosophy that is obtuse is no philosophy. It can only help one to indulge in intellectual gymnastics.
A philosophy that goes against the proven facts of science is no philosophy. It makes a people highly superstitious if not positively idiotic.

PHILOSOPHER
The wisest of all philosophers is the laughing philosopher, and he laughs mostly at himself.

A MORALIST
need not be a bore provided he knows how to laugh at himself.

LEADERS
are not made; most often, they are self-made.

LEADERS
When your gods are of low morals, you cannot have leaders of high morals.

LEADERS
Who can hyptonize themselves will their lies can finally hyptonize, as Hitler and Mussolini did, their followers, too, with the same lies.

GOD AND MAN
Where God is enthroned, man is enslaved.


IN OLD AGE
Your physical pleasures get less keen and your physical pains more acute.

WHAT IS YOUR AGE ?
It can be much more than the total of your years or much less.

A POLITICIAN
makes headlines; a statesman makes history.