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An accurate knowledge of the past of a country is necessary for everyone who would understand its present, and who desires to judge of its future.

Annie Besant

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Annie Besant
Age: 86 †
Born: 1847
Born: January 1
Died: 1933
Died: January 1
Editor
Essayist
Feminist
Journalist
Member Of The London School Board
Orator
Politician
Suffragist
Theosophist
Writer
London
England
Annie Wood Besant
Annie Wood
Annie Besant
Country
Necessary
Would
Present
Knowledge
Future
Everyone
Accurate
Desire
Desires
Understand
Judge
Past
Judging

More quotes by Annie Besant

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Never yet was a nation born that did not begin in the spirit, pass to the heart and the mind, and then take an outer form in the world of men.
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Let Indian history be set side by side with Europe history with what there is of the latter century by century and let us see whether India need blush at the comparison.
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At the solemn moment of death, every man, even when death is sudden, sees the whole of his past life marshalled before him, in its minutest details. For one short instant the personal becomes one with the individual and all-knowing ego. But this instant is enough to show to him the whole chain of causes which have been at work during his life.
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Where love rules, laws are not needed.
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Quick condemnation of all that is not ours, of views with which we disagree, of ideas that do not attract us, is the sign of a narrow mind, of an uncultivated intelligence. Bigotry is always ignorant, and the wise boy, who will become the wise man, tries to understand and to see the truth in ideas with which he does not agree.
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The destruction of India's village system was the greatest of England's blunders.
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Science regards man as an aggregation of atoms temporarily united by a mysterious force called the life-principle. To the materialist, the only difference between a living and a dead body is that in the one case that force is active, in the other latent.
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For centuries the leaders of Christian thought spoke of women as a necessary evil, and the greatest saints of the Church are those who despise women the most.
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After death we live for some time in the astral world in the astral body used during our life on earth, and the more we learn to control and use it wisely now the better for us after death.
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Men are at every stage of evolution, from the most barbarous to the most developed men are found of lofty intelligence, but also of the most unevolved mentality in one place there is a highly developed and complex civilisation, in another a crude and simple polity.
Annie Besant
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No circumstances can ever make or mar the unfolding of the spiritual life. Spirituality does not depend upon the environment it depends upon one's attitude towards life.
Annie Besant
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God' is always the equivalent of 'I do not know.
Annie Besant
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The position of the Atheist is a clear and reasonable one. I know nothing about ‘God’ and therefore I do not believe in Him or in it what you tell me about your God is self‐contradictory, and therefore incredible. I do not deny ‘God,’ which is an unknown tongue to me I do deny your God, who is an impossibility. I am without God.
Annie Besant
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Man peoples his current living space with a world of his own, crowded with the offspring of his fancies, desires, impulses, and passions.
Annie Besant
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The worlds in which man is evolving as he treads the circle of births and deaths are three: the physical world, the astral or intermediate world, the mental or heavenly world.
Annie Besant
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Matter is, in its constituent elements, the same as spirit existence is one, however manifold in its phenomena life is one, however multiform in its evolution.
Annie Besant
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When we recognise that unity of all living things, then at once arises the question - how can we support this life of ours with least injury to the lives around us how can we prevent our own life adding to the suffering of the world in which we live?
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Belief in karma ought to make the life pure, strong, serene and glad. Only our own deeds can hinder us only our own will can fetter us. Once let men recognize this truth, and the hour of their liberation has struck. Nature cannot enslave the soul that by wisdom has gained power and uses both in love.
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Isaiah is by far the finest and least objectionable of the seventeen prophets whose supposed productions form the latter part of the Old Testament. A distinctly higher moral tone appears in the writings called by his name, and this is especially noticeable in the 'Second Isaiah,' who wrote after the Babylonish captivity.
Annie Besant
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Control of the tongue! Vital for the man who would try to tread the Path, for no harsh or unkind word, no hasty impatient phrase, may escape from the tongue which is consecrated to service, and which must not injure even an enemy for that which wounds has no place in the Kingdom of Love.
Annie Besant