Annie Besant 175th Birth Anniversary: 10 Inspiring Quotes by the Indian Independence Crusader

ANNIE BESANT 175TH BIRTH ANNIVERSARY: A prominent British socialist, Annie Wood, known as Annie Besant was sincerely involved in the Indian independence movement. She was an ardent supporter of Irish and Indian self-rule and also became president of the Indian National Congress in 1917.

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Regarded as a champion of human freedom, Besant was a theosophist, women’s rights activist, philanthropist and reformer. Besant, born on October 1, 1847 in London was active in union actions including the London match girls strike of 1888. She was a prolific author, an educationist, and an eminent orator for the Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democratic federation.

On the occasion of Annie Besant’s 175th birth anniversary, here are few inspiring quotes by the socialist:

1. “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.”
2. “There is no life without consciousness; there is no consciousness without life.”
3. “Thought creates character.”
4. “No philosophy, no religion, has ever brought so glad a message to the world as this good news of Atheism.”
5. “No soul that aspires can ever fail to rise; no heart that loves can ever be abandoned. Difficulties exist only that in overcoming them we may grow strong, and they who have suffered are able to save.”
6. “Someone ought to do it, but why should I? Someone ought to do it, so why not I? Between these two sentences lie whole centuries of moral evolution.”
7. “Better remain silent, better not even think, if you are not prepared to act.”
8. “All men die. You may say: ‘Is that encouraging?’ Surely yes, for when a man dies, his blunders, which are of the form, all die with him, but the things in him that are part of the life never die, although the form be broken.”
9. “Refusal to believe until proof is given is a rational position; denial of all outside of our own limited experience is absurd.”
10. “The highest Hindu intellectual training was based on the practice of yoga, and produced, as its fruit, those marvellous philosophical systems, the six Darshanas and the Brahma Sutras, which are still the delight of scholars and the inspiration of occultists and mystics.”

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