Annie Besant

Philosopher

1847-10-01 – 1933-09-20

Annie Besant was a British-born social reformer, writer, and public speaker who became a leading advocate for Indian self-rule. She was active in the Theosophical movement and Indian political life.

Quotes by Annie Besant

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.
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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.
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Death consists, indeed, in a repeated process of unrobing, or unsheathing. The immortal part of man shakes off from itself, one after the other, its outer casings, and - as the snake from its skin, the butterfly from its chrysalis - emerges from one after another, passing into a higher state of consciousness.
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Socialism is the ideal state, but it can never be achieved while man is so selfish.
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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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In a deep metaphysical sense, all that is conditioned is illusory. All phenomena are literally 'appearances,' the outer masks in which the One Reality shows itself forth in our changing universe. The more 'material' and solid the appearance, the further is it from reality, and therefore the more illusory it is.
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We were an ill-matched pair, my husband and I, from the very outset; he, with very high ideas of a husband's authority and a wife's submission, holding strongly to the 'master-in-my-own-house theory,' thinking much of the details of home arrangements, precise, methodical, easily angered and with difficulty appeased.
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Everyone knows the beautiful story of Abraham and the sacrifice of Isaac. How this noble father led his child to the slaughter; how Isaac meekly submitted; how the farce went on till the lad was bound and laid on the altar, and how God then stopped the murder, and blessed the intending murderer for his willingness to commit the crime.
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The essence of religion is the knowledge of God which is eternal life. That and nothing less than that is religion. Everything else is on the surface, is superfluous save for the needs of men.
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The birth of science rang the death-knell of an arbitrary and constantly interposing Supreme Power.
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Clairvoyants can see flashes of colour, constantly changing, in the aura that surrounds every person: each thought, each feeling, thus translating itself in the astral world, visible to the astral sight.
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One of the great advantages of cremation - apart from all sanitary conditions - lies in the swift restoration to Mother Nature of the material elements composing the physical and astral corpses, brought about by the burning.
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You should always take a religion at its best and not at its worst, from its highest teachings and not from the lowest practices of some of its adherents.
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Theosophy has no code of morals, being itself the embodiment of the highest morality; it presents to its students the highest moral teachings of all religions, gathering the most fragrant blossoms from the gardens of the world-faiths.
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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.
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Muhammadan law in its relation to women, is a pattern to European law. Look back to the history of Islam, and you will find that women have often taken leading places - on the throne, in the battle-field, in politics, in literature, poetry, etc.
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A common religion is not possible for India, but a recognition of a common basis for all religions, and the growth of a liberal, tolerant spirit in religious matters, are possible.
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The body is never more alive than when it is dead; but it is alive in its units, and dead in its totality; alive as a congeries, dead as an organism.
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Every form, not being the whole, must, of necessity, be imperfect; less than the whole, it cannot be identical with the whole, and being less than the whole and, therefore, imperfect by itself, it shows imperfection as evil, and only the totality of a universe can mirror the image of God.
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The sunlight ranges over the universe, and at incarnation we step out of it into the twilight of the body, and see but dimly during the period of our incarceration; at death we step out of the prison again into the sunlight, and are nearer to the reality.
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