Q0204

Bhagavad Gita

A verified English rendering from the curated archive.

English

You have a right to action alone, never to its fruits.
Thinker Bhagavad Gita
School Indian Classical Philosophy
Source Bhagavad Gita 2.47
Theme Action
Another quotation More from this thinker

Source context

This English passage is associated with Bhagavad Gita 2.47, within the tradition of Indian Classical Philosophy. The wording below is a verified rendering prepared for careful reading rather than a claim of unique translation authority.

A short reading

Read in the register of action, the sentence asks the reader to test an assumption rather than to collect a slogan. In Bhagavad Gita's wider work, similar claims are usually offered as prompts for judgment: what would have to be true for the sentence to hold, and what would follow if it did?

How to cite this quotation

APA: Bhagavad Gita. (n.d.). You have a right to action alone, never to its fruits. In Philosophy Blind Box. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0204

MLA: Bhagavad Gita. “You have a right to action alone, never….” Philosophy Blind Box, https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0204.

Chicago: Bhagavad Gita. “You have a right to action alone, never….” Philosophy Blind Box. Accessed 2026. https://www.philosophydef.com/quotes/q0204.

Same thinker

More from Bhagavad Gita

  1. Contacts with the senses give cold and heat, pleasure and pain; they come and go and are impermanent—endure them.
  2. One should lift oneself by the Self and not degrade oneself; for the Self alone is friend and enemy of the self.
  3. Treating pleasure and pain, gain and loss, victory and defeat as the same…
  4. Contacts with the senses, O son of Kunti, give cold and heat, pleasure and pain; they come and go — endure them.
  5. One should lift oneself by oneself; one should not degrade oneself.

All quotations by Bhagavad Gita

Same theme

More on action

  1. The human good is activity of soul in accordance with virtue.
  2. It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that they are difficult.
  3. If you wish to be loved, love.
  4. We must cultivate our garden.
  5. Men, not Man, live on the earth and inhabit the world.

Browse the action theme