Bhagavad Gita
The 700-verse Sanskrit dialogue that is among the world's most quoted philosophical texts.
The Bhagavad Gita is a dialogue of about seven hundred verses embedded in the Mahabharata, in which Krishna counsels the warrior Arjuna on duty, action, and detachment on the eve of battle. Its verse form and self-contained argument make it exceptionally quotable.
The single most cited passage in the West is chapter 11's theophany, and specifically the line Robert Oppenheimer recalled after the Trinity test. That case is itself a lesson in translation fidelity: Oppenheimer rendered kāla as 'Death', while many translators give 'Time' — a substantially different claim.
Because the Gita has been translated hundreds of times, into registers ranging from Victorian verse to modern colloquial prose, quotation without chapter, verse, and translator is effectively uncheckable.
Common mistake: quoting the Gita as a general statement of 'Eastern philosophy'. It argues a specific position within a live internal debate, and other Indian schools dispute it.
“Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”
Keep reading the glossary
How faithfully a translated quote preserves the meaning and music of the original.
A terse aphoristic formula from Indian religious and technical literature, designed to be memorised.
Marcus Aurelius's private notebook, written for himself and quoted by everyone else.
An 81-chapter Chinese classic whose compression makes it endlessly quotable and endlessly mistranslated.