“In a potter's shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms — pots, jars, dishes, plates, etc., — but all are made of the same clay. So God is one, but He is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects.”

—  Ramakrishna

458
Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 17, 2022. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "In a potter's shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms — pots, jars, dishes, plates, etc., — but all are ma…" by Ramakrishna?
Ramakrishna photo
Ramakrishna 142
Indian mystic and religious preacher 1836–1886

Related quotes

Ramakrishna photo

“God is one, but He is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects.”

Ramakrishna (1836–1886) Indian mystic and religious preacher

Source: Sayings of Sri Ramakrishna (1960), p. 458
Context: In a potter's shop there are vessels of different shapes and forms — pots, jars, dishes, plates, etc., — but all are made of the same clay. So God is one, but He is worshipped in different ages and climes under different names and aspects.

Meher Baba photo

“The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names, at different times, in different parts of the world.”

Meher Baba (1894–1969) Indian mystic

Statement of 1938, as quoted in Meher Baba On War : And Other Relevant Messages (1972); also Discourses (1987), p. 268<!-- 1938, India, MJ 1:1 p 4-7 -->
General sources
Context: The Avatar appears in different forms, under different names, at different times, in different parts of the world. As his appearance always coincides with the spiritual birth of man, so the period immediately preceding his manifestation is always one in which humanity suffers from the pangs of the approaching birth.

Meher Baba photo

“You and I, wonder at the sky, call God a different name. As we try, learn and long to fly — you and I are so differently the same.”

Dawud Wharnsby (1972) Canadian musician

"All of Us"
A Picnic of Poems in Allah's Green Garden (2011)

Thomas Henry Huxley photo

“Is Man so different from any of these Apes that he must form an order by himself? Or does he differ less from them than they differ from one another, and hence must take his place in the same order with them?”

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895) English biologist and comparative anatomist

Source: 1860s, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (1863), Ch.2, p. 86

Sylvia Plath photo
George Bernard Shaw photo

“The apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification.”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Letter to the Reverend Ensor Walters (1933), as quoted in Bernard Shaw : Collected Letters, 1926-1950 (1988) by Dan H. Laurence, p. 305; Shaw actually errs here in characterizing Jainism as simply a sect of Hinduism, as it is usually regarded as a separate and independent tradition, though Hindu and Jain philosophers have long had influence on each other, as well as other traditions
1940s and later
Context: The apparent multiplicity of Gods is bewildering at the first glance; but you presently discover that they are all the same one God in different aspects and functions and even sexes. There is always one uttermost God who defies personification. This makes Hinduism the most tolerant religion in the world, because its one transcendent God includes all possible Gods… Hinduism is so elastic and so subtle that the profoundest Methodist and the crudest idolater are equally at home in it.
Islam is very different, being ferociously intolerant. What I may call Manifold Monotheism becomes in the minds of very simple folk an absurdly polytheistic idolatry, just as European peasants not only worship Saints and the Virgin as Gods, but will fight fanatically for their faith in the ugly little black doll who is the Virgin of their own Church against the black doll of the next village. When the Arabs had run this sort of idolatry to such extremes … they did this without black dolls and worshipped any stone that looked funny, Mahomet rose up at the risk of his life and insulted the stones shockingly, declaring that there is only one God, Allah, the glorious, the great… And there was to be no nonsense about toleration. You accepted Allah or you had your throat cut by someone who did accept him, and who went to Paradise for having sent you to Hell. Mahomet was a great Protestant religious force, like George Fox or Wesley….
There is actually a great Hindu sect, the Jains, with Temples of amazing magnificence, which abolish God, not on materialist atheist considerations, but as unspeakable and unknowable, transcending all human comprehension.

“Each people has its gods, or the spirits in which they believe. It may be their god is the same as ours, only clothed in different stories, different ideas, but a god can only be strong, Hannes, if he is worshiped, and the gods of those ancient people are lonesome gods now.”

Louis L'Amour (1908–1988) Novelist, short story writer

Source: The Lonesome Gods (1983), Ch. 8
Context: Long ago, before the Indians who live here now, there were other people.  Perhaps they went away, or maybe they died or were driven out by these Indians’ ancestors, but they are gone. Yet sometimes I am not sure they are gone. I think sometimes their spirits are still around, in the land they loved.
Each people has its gods, or the spirits in which they believe. It may be their god is the same as ours, only clothed in different stories, different ideas, but a god can only be strong, Hannes, if he is worshiped, and the gods of those ancient people are lonesome gods now.
They are out there in the desert and mountains, and perhaps their strength has waned because nobody lights fires on their altars anymore. But they are there, Hannes, and sometimes I think they know me and remember me.

Related topics