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There was an Indian edition of most of my books, but it didn't make much of a splash.

— Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

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On the impact of her books in India. But her publication of The Hindus: An Alternative History, a sweeping history of Hinduism from its origins in 2500 B.C. to the present, though a success, it has been controversial (this aspect has been covered in another quote above).

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More quotes by Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty

Aldous Huxley once said that an intellectual was someone who had found something more interesting than sex; in Indology, an intellectual need not make that choice at all.

There is generally, therefore, an inverse ratio between the worship of goddesses and the granting of rights to human women. Nor are the goddesses by and large compassionate; they are generally a pretty bloodthirsty lot. Goddesses are not the solution.

James Joyce, in his novel Finnegans Wake, in 1939, punned on the word “Hindoo” (as the British used to spell it), joking that it came from the names of two Irishmen, Hin-nessy and Doo-ley: “This is the hindoo Shimar Shin between the dooley boy and the hinnessy.

The Hindus (2009)

The Bhagavad Gita is not as nice a book as some Americans think…Throughout the Mahabharata … Krishna goads human beings into all sorts of murderous and self-destructive behaviors such as war…. The Gita is a dishonest book …”

All Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty quotes →

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

It is not in the books of the Philosophers, but in the religious symbolism of the Ancients, that we must look for the footprints of Science, and re-discover the Mysteries of Knowledge.

Albert Pike Morals and Dogma of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite of Freemasonry (1871)

There is more than one way to burn a book. And the world is full of people running about with lit matches.

Ray Bradbury Fahrenheit 451 (1953)

People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading.

Logan Pearsall Smith Afterthoughts (1931)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.