16 Quotes by Wendy Doniger

Who would not prefer animals to these people who prefer animals to people?

Although proselytizing is not in itself necessarily intolerant, it does close the open-ended door of pluralism

As long as it was just a matter of graft and the lust for power, the British treated the people they robbed as human beings. It was religion that made them treat them like devils

Kautilya makes Machiavelli look like Mother Teresa

Holi, the spring carnival, when members of all castes mingle and let down their hair, sprinkling one another with cascades of red powder and liquid, symbolic of the blood that was probably used in past centuries.

The dog who doesn’t bark is about a silence that speaks; it is a good metaphor for the Pariah voice, the dog’s voice, that we can sometimes hear only when it does not speak.

I’m a pacifist. I don’t believe in ‘good’ wars.

Voltaire was deeply impressed by it and cited it often.

The swan is also a liminal bird, able to live in two worlds, land and water, or matter and spirit.