Even though many misconceptions about Hinduism exist in the world, with it often being portrayed as a religion of blind belief, outdated customs and social problems, most sincere individuals who have looked deeper into Hinduism have been appreciative and amazed at the philosophic sophistication, poetic beauty and tolerant spirit in this the world’s most ancient religion. The following are quotes of several scholars intellectuals of relatively modern times speaking about Hinduism, with particular emphasis on Hinduism's scientific temperament:

"Religious faith in the case of the Hindus has never been allowed to run counter to scientific laws, moreover the former is never made a condition for the knowledge they teach." Romain Rolland (1866-1944), French Nobel laureate, professor of the history of music at the Sorbonne and thinker.

"Hinduism has proven much more open than any other religion to new ideas, scientific thought, and social experimentation. Many concepts like reincarnation, meditation, yoga and others have found worldwide acceptance. It would not be surprising to find Hinduism the dominant religion of the twenty-first century." Klaus L. Klostermaier, Professer Religious Studies at the University of Manitoba.

"The Hindu religion is the only one of the world's great faiths dedicated to the idea that the Cosmos itself undergoes an immense, indeed an infinite, number of deaths and rebirths. It is the only religion in which the time scales correspond, to those of modern scientific cosmology. Its cycles run from our ordinary day and night to a day and night of Brahma, 8.64 billion years long. Longer than the age of the Earth or the Sun and about half the time since the Big Bang. And there are much longer time scales still." Dr Carl Sagan, (1934-1996) famous astrophysicist

"In the morning I bathe my intellect in the stupendous and cosmogonal philosophy of the Bhagavad Gita in comparison with which our modern world and its literature seem puny and trivial." Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862) American Philosopher, Unitarian, social critic, transcendentalist and writer.

"The Hindu genius is a love for abstraction and, at the same time, a passion for the concrete image. At times it is rich, at others prolix. It has created the most lucid and the most instinctive art. It is abstract and realistic, sexual and intellectual, pedantic and sublime. It lives between extremes, it embraces the extremes, rooted in the earth and drawn to an invisible beyond." Octavio Paz (1914-1998) was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1990.

"An examination of the Vedic thesis shows that it is in conformity with the most advanced philosophical and scientific thoughts of the West and, where this is not so, it is the scientist who will go to the Vedantist and not the Vedantist to the scientist." John Woodroffe aka Arthur Avalon (1865 -1936) the well known scholar, Advocate-General of Bengal and former Legal Member of the Government of India.