Subhash Kak

Subhash Kak (born 26 March 1947) is an Indian American philosopher, poet, and scientist.

Quotes

 * Like other social media platforms, Wikipedia has evolved into an echo chamber where the user is presented with only one type of content instead of being shown a balanced narrative. This disinformation is powerful since the articles are written in an academic style and users do not see other sources that disagree with the article.... Some editors of Wikipedia are failed academics with demonic energy who wish to conquer anonymously what they were unable to do in their normal careers. And spending much of their working life editing Wikipedia articles and by the use of multiple anonymous handles they have obtained administrative status which entitles them to block opposing views. The anonymous persona of the editors and the low stakes have made Wikipedia politics much more vicious than real politics.
 * Subhash Kak, April 9, 2019 Wikipedia or Trashpedia?


 * Once scientists and scholars invest parts of their career in support of a paradigm, it becomes a sort of a self-betrayal to abandon it.
 * "The honey bee dance language controversy," The Mankind Quarterly, 1991, 357-365.


 * Men and women in their mutual attraction are driven to the very emptiness they are trying to avoid.
 * Recursionism and Reality, 2002.


 * The essence of the Vedas is a narrative on who the experiencing self is. Ordinary science informs us of the relationships between objects and also their transformations. But the Vedas say that this ordinary science leaves out the self who observes these objects.
 * Interview The Hindu, 2014


 * Beauty takes us to a space that is ineffable, a place of secrets.
 * Interview The Hindu, 2014


 * Indian Anglosphere indifference to #KashmiriPandit genocide & expulsion is a shameful episode of recent history. Look at the Yazidis; their genocide and sex-slavery is not rationalized. The Indian Anglosphere lives in a cocoon of self-hate, self-deception and brazen mendacity.
 * March 2022

The Secrets of Ishbar (1996)

 * The best paradise is the paradise we are exiled from.


 * What is the chance that one can roll up the sky like a hide?


 * The world is a game of information and paradox.


 * I have so much of desire that desire itself is my fulfillment.

The Prajna Sutra (2007)

 * People embrace false magical theories in the hope something good will come out of them. In the most extreme of these, good comes out of them only at the end of this life, in paradise.


 * Man is a mimic animal, happiest acting a part, needing a mask to tell the truth.


 * Gods have many faces.


 * The body is like the wife to the spirit. The two must cohabit to create new forms, but their pleasures rarely coincide.


 * When the mind grasps the universe, the senses retreat.

The Wishing Tree (2015)

 * History is scraps of evidence joined by the glue of imagination.


 * Ritual is intimately connected with the mask, either in the wearing that hides the true face, or in the adoption of a public face.


 * Modern life alienates us from Nature, even our own.

The Loom of Time (2016)

 * If the heart sorrows over physical loss, the spirit rejoices over hope of understanding.


 * Europe has resurrected its pagan gods.


 * The dance of the peacock attracts not only the peahen but also the human.


 * The clash of civilizations is nothing but a clash of different myths.


 * One is not a single self, although there is some common thread holding together disparate incarnations.


 * If chess is about decisive victory by vanquishing the enemy by taking the fight to the place where the king is located, weiqi is about consolidation of territory.

The Circle of Memory, An Autobiography (2016)

 * If social media can bring the sense of freedom, it can also bind people into delusional cults.


 * The idea of consciousness requires not only an awareness of things, but also the awareness that one is aware.


 * Since language is linear, whereas the unfolding of the universe takes place in a multitude of dimensions, language is limited in its ability to describe reality.


 * There is nothing as uplifting and inspiring as the Upanishads.


 * A culture is like a lens through which people construct their world.