Mahabharata Quotes

“The greatest book in the world, the Mahabharata, tells us we all have to live and die by our karmic cycle. Thus works the perfect reward-and-punishment, cause-and-effect, code of the universe. We live out in our present life what we wrote out in our last. But the great moral thriller also orders us to rage against karma and its despotic dictates. It teaches us to subvert it. To change it. It tells us we also write out our next lives as we live out our present.
The Mahabharata is not a work of religious instruction.
It is much greater. It is a work of art.
It understands men will always fall in the shifting chasm between the tug of the moral and the lure of the immoral.
It is in this shifting space of uncertitude that men become men.
Not animals, not gods.
It understands truth is relative. That it is defined by context and motive. It encourages the noblest of men - Yudhishtra, Arjuna, Lord Krishna himself - to lie, so that a greater truth may be served.
It understands the world is powered by desire. And that desire is an unknowable thing. Desire conjures death, destruction, distress.
But also creates love, beauty, art. It is our greatest undoing. And the only reason for all doing.
And doing is life. Doing is karma.
Thus it forgives even those who desire intemperately. It forgives Duryodhana. The man who desires without pause. The man who precipitates the war to end all wars. It grants him paradise and the admiration of the gods. In the desiring and the doing this most reviled of men fulfils the mandate of man.
You must know the world before you are done with it. You must act on desire before you renounce it. There can be no merit in forgoing the not known.
The greatest book in the world rescues volition from religion and gives it back to man.
Religion is the disciplinarian fantasy of a schoolmaster.
The Mahabharata is the joyous song of life of a maestro.
In its tales within tales it takes religion for a spin and skins it inside out. Leaves it puzzling over its own poisoned follicles.
It gives men the chance to be splendid. Doubt-ridden architects of some small part of their lives. Duryodhanas who can win even as they lose.”
― Tarun J. Tejpal, The Alchemy of Desire

“Widespread criticisms of jihad in Islam and the so-called sword verses in the Quran have unearthed for fair-minded Christians difficult questions about Christianity's own traditions of holy war and 'texts of terror.' Like Hinduism's Mahabharata epic, the Bible devotes entire books to war and rumors thereof. Unlike the Quran, however, it contains hardly any rules for how to conduct a just war.”
― Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

“After all, love without self-sacrifice was just lust”
― Gourav Mohanty, Sons of Darkness

“Those who have never known the future have always hoped for the best. But Sahadeva, who had known the future since the past, has only hoped for it to never become the present!”
― Sahadevi M., SAHADEVA UNDERCOVER Part 1 - The Beginning and the End

“Those who were disrobing Draupadi also thought that they were doing everything within the rules. They were also taking the moral high ground by labelling her as “characterless”.

You can’t decide who is right or wrong, moral or immoral. Leave it on Karma. And watch out for your Karma because cheering at public punishment of a “criminal” is medieval, animalistic and very bad Karma.”
― Shunya

“He (Abhimanyu) picked up a chariot wheel and angrily rushed at Drona. His limbs blazed because of the dust raised by the wheels. He was radiant with the chariot wheel raised high in his arms. In that battle, for a short while, Abhimanyu looked beautiful and seemed to replicate the deeds of Vasudeva.”
― Bibek Debroy, The Mahabharata

“...leaving no doubt he was the Chosen One. Chosen for what precisely, no one bothered to ask.”
― Gourav Mohanty, Sons of Darkness

“You see, that's the thing with conquerors, they cannot stop conquering, for then they would have to start ruling, and my guess is Jarasandh isn't as good a ruler as he is a conqueror.”
― Gourav Mohanty, Sons of Darkness

“An action carried out through human effort may be well planned, well performed
and properly accomplished, and yet be thwarted by fate. But likewise
a fated action, something not carried out by humans, may be frustrated by
human effort, heir of Bharata, as happens with cold and heat, rain, hunger and
thirst. And a man whose being is constrained by fate may none the less opt to
carry out some different action, and fate does not prevent him from doing so.”
― Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa, Mahabharata

“Look out for my recent book "Footnotes of History: A Tale of the Mahabharata" live on all major e-commerce platforms worldwide.”
― Arnab Chatterjee

“If you read scriptures completely, at the end you will get no conclusions of right and wrong, no rules to live life. You will become free from all mental structures. Then everything you do will be right because the Supreme Power shall work through you.”
― Shunya

“अधिकार खो कर बैठ रहना, यह महा दुष्कर्म है;
न्यायार्थ अपने बन्धु को भी दण्ड देना धर्म है।”
― Maithili Sharan Gupt, जयद्रथ वध

“हे सारथे ! हैं द्रोण क्या, देवेन्द्र भी आकर अड़े,
है खेल क्षत्रिय बालकों का व्यूह-भेदन कर लड़े।
श्रीराम के हयमेध से अपमान अपना मान के,
मख अश्व जब लव और कुश ने जय किया रण ठान के।।”
― Maithili Sharan Gupt, जयद्रथ वध

“Ekalavya Jayanti is celebrated along with Mahashivratri in Blessing of lord Shiva and Honor of King Ekalavya ; Who was the Most Exemplary Student, the Greatest Tribal Warrior and the Best Archer of the Indian Epic - Mahabharata. Ekalavya means Unwavering Determination and Pure Love in Pursuit of One's Own Masterpiece.”
― Pradip Bendkule

“Eklavya Jayanti is celebrated along with Mahashivratri in Blessing of lord Shiva and Honor of King Eklavya ; Who was the Most Exemplary Student, the Greatest Tribal Warrior and the Best Archer of the Indian Epic - Mahabharata. Ekalavya means Unwavering Determination and Pure Love in Pursuit of One's Own Masterpiece.”
― Pradip Bendkule

“The obsessive passion of Pururava for Urvashi that led to his downfall would become manifest generations later in Shantanu, not once but twice, first in his love for Ganga and then his love for Satyavati, with the same disastrous consequences. Because human memory is short, and history always repeats itself.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“a son renounces sex so that his old father can remarry
a daughter is a prize in an archery contest
a teacher demands half a kingdom as his tuition fee
a student is turned away because of his caste
a mother asks her sons to share a wife
a father curses his son-in-law to be old and impotent
a husband lets another man make his wife pregnant
a wife blindfolds herself to share her husband's blindness
a forest is destroyed for a new city
a family is divided over inheritance
a king gambles away his kingdom
a queen is forced to serve as a maid
a man is stripped of his manhood for a year
a woman is publicly disrobed
a war is fought where all rules are broken
a shift in sexuality secures victory
the vanquished go to paradise
the victors lose their children
the earth is bathed in blood
God is cursed
until wisdom prevails”
― Devdutt Pattanaik

“Then why do things that cannot be justified continue?’

‘Because the men standing in the light of continuity are more powerful than those cowering in its shadow.”
― Gourav Mohanty, Sons of Darkness

“At the root of all human tragedy is human folly.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“Mighty brawn is no match for a nimble brain.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“Even the worst of villains has a story that perhaps explains their actions, without condoning them.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“One must accept that one’s life is the result of past karmas and that one has the power to choose one’s
response to every situation.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“How does one know the true path?’
‘Not through arguments—they never reach a conclusion; not from teachers—
they can only give their opinions; to know the true path one must, in silence and
solitude, reflect on one’s own life.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“They were participating in a war where father would fight sons, brother would fight brother, uncle would fight nephew, friend would fight friend. This was a war that would mark the end not just of one household but of an entire civilization.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, Jaya: 9

“Krishna sees her looking at him and Draupadi nods slightly at him and then looks back at the pyres, for she has understood a small, insidious truth. She remembers their precipitous flight from the camp in the middle of the night while her sons and brothers were left behind to be murdered in their sleep. There is no Vrishni pyre at this mass funeral and while all the major clans of the river valleys are laid low, Krishna's clansmen are unscathed. Moreover, the only heir with a claim to the throne of Hastinapur to have survived is the secret that Uttara hides in her frail body. So Krishna's nephew is dead but through his hastily arranged marriage to Uttara, the clan of the Vrishnis finally has a claim to kingship and the eternal kingmakers will at last be rajas.”
― Ira Mukhoty, Song of Draupadi: A Novel

“Like numerous river-currents that rush towards the one ocean, those heroes
of the world of men enter your flaming mouths; like moths that fly ever faster
to destroy themselves in a blazing flame, the worlds hurry ever faster to their
destruction in your mouths. With your flaming jaws you lap up complete
worlds and devour them whole; your terrible splendours fill the entire universe
with fiery energy till it is scorched, O Visnu.”
― Vyasa Dvaipayana, Mahabharata

“मायावी मायया वध्य:
(A deceitful enemy needs to be killed by deceit)
- Sri Krishna to Yudhisthira (Mahabharata-9.31.6)”
― Sri Krishna

“Ahimsa is the highest Dharma.
Ahimsa is the highest self-control.
Ahimsa is the greatest gift.
Ahimsa is the best practice.
Ahimsa is the highest sacrifice.
Ahimsa is the finest strength.
Ahimsa is the greatest friend.
Ahimsa is the greatest happiness.
Ahimsa is the highest truth.
Ahimsa is the greatest teaching.”
― Vyasa, Mahabharata

“As Yudhishtara says to the Yaksha: ‘In this cauldron fashioned from delusion, with the sun as fire and day and night as kindling wood, the months and seasons as the ladle for stirring, Time (or Death) cooks all beings: this is the simple truth.”
― Pavan K. Varma, The Great Hindu Civilisation: Achievement, Neglect, Bias and the Way Forward

“A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without any comparison with the other..

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatsoever you are doing, not for the result but for the act itself.

Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician….

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping- stone. You are on an ego trip.

And the problem is: to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can God flow through you.

Only then can he use your hands and your fingers and your brush. Only then something of superb beauty can be born.

It is never BY you but only THROUGH you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that's all; you don't hinder, that's all.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result - that you have to become famous, that you have to win the Nobel Prize, that you have to be the first painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto - then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can't paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the poet and the dancer.

And so is the case with everybody.

In the Gita, Krishna says: Don't think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don't think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost into it. Lose the doer in the doing. Don't be - let your creative energies flow unhindered.

That's why he said to Arjuna, "Don't escape from the war... because I can see this is just an ego trip, this escape. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating: that you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great mahatma.

Rather than surrendering to God, to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously: as if, if you are not there, there will be no war."

Krishna says to Arjuna, "Listen to me. Just be in a state of let-go. Say to God, 'Use me in whatsoever way you want to use me. Use me! I am available, unconditionally available.'

Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it. It will be signed by God, not by you. And you will rejoice because God has chosen you to be a vehicle.”
― Osho