The book that influenced great personalities all over the world in different domains. Some examples:
Albert Einstein, Theoretical physicist, who developed the “theory of relativity”: "When I read the Bhagavad-gita and reflect about how God created this universe, everything else seems so superfluous. He also mentioned: I have made the Bhagavad-gita as the main source of my inspiration and guide for the purpose of scientific investigations and formation of my theories."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, American Essayist, Lecturer, and Poet: "I owed a magnificent day to the Bhagavad-gita. It was the first of books; it was as if an empire spoke to us, nothing small or unworthy, but large, serene, consistent, the voice of an old intelligence which in another age and climate had pondered and thus disposed of the same questions which exercise us."
Thomas Merton, American monk, writer, theologian, mystic, poet, social activist, and scholar of comparative religion.: "The Bhagavad-Gita can be seen as the great treatise on the “active life.” But it is really something more, for it tends to fuse worship, action and contemplation in a fulfillment of daily duty that transcends all three by virtue of a higher consciousness: a consciousness of acting passively, of being an obedient instrument of a transcendent will."
Annie Besant, British socialist, theosophist, women’s rights activist, writer, orator, educationist, and philanthropist: ”That the spiritual man need not be a recluse, that union with the divine life may be achieved and maintained in the midst of worldly affairs, that the obstacles to that union lie not outside us but within us such is the central lesson of the Bhagvad Gita.”
Robert Oppenheimer, Father of the atomic bomb and was involved in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan: After a successful experiment, he said, “We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad Gita; Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, ‘Now I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’ I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.” and quoted the following shloka from Bhagwat Gita:
कालोऽस्मि लोकक्षयकृत्प्रवृद्धो
लोकान्समाहर्तुमिह प्रवृत्त:
ऋतेऽपि त्वां न भविष्यन्ति सर्वे
येऽवस्थिता: प्रत्यनीकेषु योधा:
