Zoroastrianism, founded by Zoroaster in ancient Persia around the 6th century BCE, is one of the world’s oldest monotheistic religions. It centers on the worship of Ahura Mazda, a benevolent supreme god, and emphasizes dualistic concepts of good versus evil. The Avesta, its sacred text, includes the revered Gathas attributed to Zoroaster. Fire, symbolizing purity, is central to Zoroastrian rituals, conducted in fire temples. Ethical conduct, focusing on good thoughts, words, and deeds, is paramount. The religion teaches resurrection, a final judgment, and the existence of divine guardian spirits (Fravashi). Despite historical challenges, Zoroastrianism has persevered, with communities in India, particularly Gujarat, and smaller groups in Iran and worldwide.
Zoroastrianism Quotes
1. “Doing good to others is not a duty. It is a joy, for it increases your own health and happiness.”
— Zoroaster
2. “Turn yourself not away from three best things: Good Thought, Good Word, and Good Deed.”
— Zoroaster
3. “One good deed is worth a thousand prayers.”
— Zoroaster
4. “Your good thoughts, good words and good deeds alone will be your intercessors. Nothing more will be wanted. They alone will serve you as a safe pilot to the harbour of Heaven, as a safe guide to the gates of paradise.”
— Zoroaster
5. “Seek your happiness in the happiness of all.”
— Zoroaster
6. “Happiness comes to them who bring happiness to others.”
— Zoroaster
7. “War and courage have done more great things than charity. Not your sympathy, but your bravery has saved the unfotunate.”
— Zoroaster
8. “With an open mind, seek and listen to all the highest ideals. Consider the most enlightened thoughts. Then choose your path, person by person, each for oneself.”
— Zoroaster
9. “Beware of lust; it corrupteth both the body and the mind.”
— Zoroaster
10. “You shall love peace as a means to new wars – and the short peace more than the long.”
— Zoroaster
11. “Ability in a man is knowledge which emanates from divine light.”
— Zoroaster
12. “If one would have a friend, then must one also be willing to wage war for him: and in order to wage war, one must be capable of being an enemy.”
— Zoroaster
13. “When we are in doubt whether an action is good or bad, abstain from it.”
— Zoroaster
14. “One need not scale the heights of the heavens, nor travel along the highways of the world to find Ahura Mazda. With purity of mind and holiness of heart one can find Him in one’s own heart.”
— Zoroaster
15. “He who sows the ground with care and diligence acquires a greater stock of religious merit than he could gain by the repetition of ten thousand prayers.”
— Zoroaster
16. “For a thinking man is where Wisdom is at home.”
— Zoroaster
17. “By my love and my hope I beseech you – do not forsake hero in your soul!”
— Zoroaster
18. “A knife of the keenest steel requires the whetstone, and the wisest man needs advice.”
— Zoroaster
19. “In doubt if an action is just, abstain.”
— Zoroaster
20. “Excessive liberty and excessive servitude are equally dangerous, and produce nearly the same effect.”
— Zoroaster
21. “I who have set my heart on watching over the soul, in union with Good Thought, and as knowing the rewards of Mazda Ahura for our works, will, while I have power and strength, teach men to seek after Right. I have become an alien in a foreign land.”
— Zoroaster
22. “Do not lose joy in life as you grow old in years. Let not your ’joie de vivre be crushed under the weight of years.”
— Zoroaster
23. “Always meet petulance with gentleness and perverseness with kindness. A gentle hand can lead even en elephant by a hair. Reply to thine enemy with gentleness.”
— Zoroaster
24. “A reflective, contented mind is the best possession.”
— Zoroaster
25. “Do not hold grain waiting for higher prices when people are hungry.”
— Zoroaster
26. “Devotion, like fire, goeth upward.”
— Zoroaster
27. “Now the two primal Spirits, who reveal themselves in vision as Twins, are the Better and the Bad, in thought and word and action. Between these two the wise ones chose aright; the foolish not so.”
— Zoroaster
28. “When you are in doubt abstain.”
— Zoroaster
29. “Form no covetous desire, so that the demon of greediness may not deceive thee, and the treasure of the world may not be tasteless to thee.”
— Zoroaster
30. “Satisfaction linked with dishonor or with harm to others is a prison for the seeker.”
— Zoroaster
31. “Taking the first footstep with a good thought, the second with a good word, and the third with a good deed, I entered paradise.”
— Zoroaster
32. “Explore the River of the Soul; whence or in what order you have come…”
— Zoroaster
33. “Suffer no anxiety, for he who is a sufferer of anxiety becomes regardless of enjoyment of the world and the spirit, and contraction happens to his body and soul.”
— Zoroaster
34. “Things divine are not attainable by mortals who understand sensual things.”
— Zoroaster
35. “All flows out from the Deity, and all must be absorbed in Him again.”
— Zoroaster
36. “Let us be such as help the life of the future.”
— Zoroaster