“I recall having read, at the brothers' instance, Madame Blavatsky's Key to Theosophy. This book stimulated in me the desire to read books on Hinduism, and disabused me of the notion fostered by the missionaries that Hinduism was rife with superstition.”
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Probable attribution
This saying is widely associated with Mahatma Gandhi, but the attribution is not supported by a reliable primary source.
Likely origin: From Gandhi's autobiography 'The Story of My Experiments with Truth' (Part I), on reading Blavatsky's 'Key to Theosophy'; exact primary line not fetched to confirm.
About this quote
A stray book can send you back to something you'd dismissed, this time to read it for yourself. Secondhand contempt, a prejudice absorbed from people with their own agenda, rarely survives firsthand study. Once curiosity is lit, it tends to dissolve the caricature you were handed.
When to use it
- A student who wrote off poetry as pretentious picks up one collection and ends up minoring in it.
- A traveler raised to fear a neighboring country visits and watches the border-town stereotypes fall apart in a day.
- After a documentary sparks his interest, a man finally reads the faith he was raised in and finds far less superstition than he'd been told.