Vishnu Quotes
Shri Krishna says in the Gita, "I am Vyas among Munis [sages].” Veda Vyas is the heart of our culture, the founder and spokesperson of Vedic dharma. Vyasa was endowed with divine energy. He was great yogi, unfathomable scholar, poet par excellence, accomplished philosopher, great preacher, mighty metaphysical as well as a revered singer and preacher of Krishna bhakthi. Vyasa was a personification of Vishnu and god incarnate.
Vyasa
Veda Vyas did not possess four faces, yet he was like Brahma. He did not have four hands yet he acted like Vishnu. He did not have third eye and yet he was like Shiva. "I bow to Vishnu embodied in Vyas and Vyas embodied in Vishnu. One who enriched India through his speech, I bow to thee O Veda Vyas, the poet and creator of destiny and the knower of all.
Vyasa
In every third world age (Dvapara), Vishnu, in the person of Vyasa, in order to promote the good of mankind, divides the Veda, which is properly but one, into many portions. Observing the limited perseverance, energy, and application of mortals, he makes the Veda fourfold, to adapt it to their capacities; and the bodily form which he assumes, in order to effect that classification, is known by the name of Veda-vyasa. Of the different Vyasas in the present Manvantara and the branches which they have taught, you shall have an account. Twenty-eight times have the Vedas been arranged by the great Rishis in the Vaivasvata Manvantara... and consequently eight and twenty Vyasas have passed away; by whom, in the respective periods, the Veda has been divided into four. The first... distribution was made by Svayambhu (Brahma) himself; in the second, the arranger of the Veda (Vyasa) was Prajapati...
Vyasa
Dialogue in Hell:
Seventeenth Dialogue
Montesquieu:... Now I understand the apologue the god Vishnu; you have a hundred arms like the Hindu idol and each one of your fingers touches a spring. In the same way that you touch everything, are you also able to see everything?
Machiavelli: Yes, for I shall make of the police an institution so vast that in the heart of my kingdom half of the people shall see the other half...
...If, as I scarcely doubt, I succeed in attaining this result, here are some of the forms by which my police would manifest themselves abroad: men of pleasure and good company in the foreign courts, to keep an eye on the intrigues of the princes and of the exiled pretenders...the establishment of political newspapers in the great capitals, printers and book stores places in the same conditions and secretly subsidized.
Will Eisner
Protocols:
Number 17, paras. 7,8
Our kingdom will be an apologia of the divinity Vishnu, in whom is found its personification – in our hundred hands will be, one in each, the springs of the machinery of social life. We shall see everything without the aid of official police.... In our programs one-third of our subjects will keep the rest under observation....
Our agents will be taken from the higher as well as the lower raniks of society, from among the administrative class who spend their time in amusements, editors, printers, and publishers, booksellers, clerks, and salesmen, workmen, coachmen, lackeys, et cetera....
Will Eisner
We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried, most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."
Robert Oppenheimer
We waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn. We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita: Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, he takes on his multi-armed form and says, "Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds." I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
Robert Oppenheimer
Though he lives in the conditionings (Upadhis), he, the contemplative one, remains ever unconcerned with anything or he may move about like the wind, perfectly unattached.
On the destruction of the Upadhis, the contemplative one is totally absorbed in "Vishnu", the All-pervading Spirit, like water into water, space into space and light into light.
Realise That to be Brahman, the attainment of which leaves nothing more to be attained, the blessedness of which leaves no other blessing to be desired and the knowledge of which leaves nothing more to be known.
Adi Shankara
Distinguished historian Ranbir Vohra writes in his historical survey, The Making of India, "Most Hindus recall little of Emperor Aurangzeb's brutal, savage reign except that under his general order all the schools and temples of the Hindus were to be destroyed, and that hundreds of temples, particularly the Viswanath Temple at Benares and the Vishnu Temple at Mathura, had been demolished. That the Muslim rulers had built mosques over many of the razed Hindu temples was also a well-known fact."
Aurangzeb
The worship of Shiva, Vishnu, and other popular deities was of the same and in many cases of a more degraded and savage character than the worship of Jupiter, Apollo or Minerva. ... A religion may linger on for a long time, it may be accepted by large masses of the people, because it is there, and there is nothing better. But when a religion has ceased to produce defenders of the faith, prophets, champions, martyrs, it has ceased to live, in the true sense of the word; and in that sense the old orthodox Brahmanism has ceased to live for more than a thousand years.
Max Müller