"If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled"
About this Quote
The line about “useless scriptural discussions” is a strategic rebuke to the status culture of religion in 19th-century Bengal, where scripture could be a credential and argument a public performance. Ramakrishna’s spirituality, shaped by intense ecstatic practice and a distrust of mere erudition, refuses to let textual mastery substitute for transformation. He’s not anti-intellectual so much as anti-distraction. “Wasting your energy” reads like a diagnosis: argument consumes the very fuel devotion requires.
Then comes the deliberately deflating “your little brain,” a rhetorical move that punctures pride. It’s paternal, even teasing, but the subtext is severe: the ego loves complexity because complexity lets it stay in charge. “Muddled” is the outcome not of thinking itself but of thinking untethered from discipline, where the mind spins and spirituality becomes a talk show.
The intent is clear: shift the seeker from the marketplace of ideas to the workshop of practice. Faith is “firm,” practice is “slow,” and purity is less an argument to be proven than a life to be steadily lived.
Quote Details
| Topic | Faith |
|---|---|
| Source | Help us find the source |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Ramakrishna. (2026, January 17). If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-desire-to-be-pure-have-firm-faith-and-26173/
Chicago Style
Ramakrishna. "If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled." FixQuotes. January 17, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-desire-to-be-pure-have-firm-faith-and-26173/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"If you desire to be pure, have firm faith, and slowly go on with your devotional practices without wasting your energy in useless scriptural discussions and arguments. Your little brain will otherwise be muddled." FixQuotes, 17 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/if-you-desire-to-be-pure-have-firm-faith-and-26173/. Accessed 6 Feb. 2026.














