Best 22 quotes of Devdutt Pattanaik on MyQuotes

If you don't have imagination, you stop being human; animals don't have imagination; Alzheimer's is the death of imagination.

I have been doodling since childhood. I have a passion for illustrating but cannot paint or colour for that matter. I illustrate what I am trying to communicate through my writing. My images are like drawings in a science text book.

In Greek mythology, the hero wants to be great, but the very concept does not exist in the Indian vocabulary. Yet it has become the global template. And it's a template that won't fit in India.

I write on sacred stories, symbols and rituals of all cultures - European, American and Chinese - but my audiences, typically, like me to focus on India.

Medical training taught me the art of breaking down the complex maze of stories, symbols and rituals into clear systems. You could say that it helped me figure out the anatomy and physiology of mythology and its relevance in a society more incisively. How is it that no society can, or does, exist without them?

Mythology is a subjective truth. Every culture imagines life a certain way.

Mythology is a vast body of knowledge that has not been tapped.

Neither death nor wisdom has a full stop. There are only commas-no destinations, only waiting rooms.

Nobody knows why we're alive; so we all create stories based on our imagination of the world; and as a community, we believe in the same story. In India, every person believes his/ her own mythosphere to be real. Indian thought is obsessed with subjectivity; Greek thought with objectivity.

Refusal to accept the flow of the world is the root of all misery.

The crown could go to a person with the most talent. But how could ‘most talent’ be determined? So Indian society settled on age.

There is no such thing as an objective interpretation.

Within infinite myths lies the Eternal Truth Who sees it all? Varuna has but a thousand eyes Indra, a hundred And I, only two

Animal fight to defend their bodies. Humans curse to defend their imagination of themselves.

Every human creates his own imagined version of the world, and of himself. Every human is therefore Brahma, creator of his own aham.Aham Brahmasmi, I am Brahma. Tat tvam asi, so are you.

Fear is a constant, and faith is a choice. Fear comes from karma, from faith arises dharma.

For centuries, pilgrims have travelled to Ayodhya identifying it as a birthplace of Ram. But the exact location is a subject of dispute and political turmoil. Ever since colonial times, Hinduism has felt under siege, forced to explain itself using European templates, make itself more tangible, more structured, more homogenous, more historical, more geographical, less psychological, less emotional, to render itself as valid as the major religions of the world like Christianity, Judaism and Islam. The fallout of this pressure is the need to locate matters of faith in a particular spot. What used to be once a matter of faith becomes a territorial war zone where courts have to intervene

...many forces that influenced the flow of the tale: boons and curses and manmade laws. There was no hero or villain in the epic, just people struggling with life, responding to crises, making mistakes, repeating mistakes, in innocence or ignorance, while trying to make their lives meaningful and worthwhile.

Sometimes, you can see more than me, but you pretend to know less so that I don’t feel intimidated by you. I do the same for you. We do not feel superior when the other is vulnerable; or inferior when we feel helpless. This is what sustains our relationship.

that which deludes you to be unhappy can be overpowered by another delusion that causes greater unhappiness

.. The point of human life is to travel from ignorance to wisdom. In ignorance there is fear. In wisdom there peace and tranquillity.

Within the infinite myths lies the eternal truth