Swami Vivekananda Quotations

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.

The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.

The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.

Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.

You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.

Arise! Awake! and stop not until the goal is reached.

Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

May He who is the Brahman of the Hindus, the Ahura-Mazda of the Zoroastrians, the Buddha of the Buddhists, the Jehovah of the Jews, the Father in Heaven of the Christians give strength to you to carry out your noble idea.

As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.

In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.

Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.

Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.

The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.

All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.

The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.

God is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.

External nature is only internal nature writ large.

The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.

Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.

If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.

The devil comes in many guises-anger in the form of justice-passion in the form of duty. When it first comes, the man knows and then he forgets. Just as your pleaders' conscience; at first they know it is all Badmashi (roguery), then it is duty to their clients; at last they get hardened.

A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.

When I asked god for peace, he showed me how to help others.

Let new India arise out of peasants cottage, grasping the plough, out of huts, cobbler and sweeper.

God Gave Me Nothing I Wanted , He Gave Me Everything I Needed.

GOD of truth, be Thou alone my guide

IT is good to love God for hope of reward, but it is better to love God for loves sake; and the prayer goes: O Lord, I do not want wealth nor children nor learning. If it be Thy will, I shall go from birth to birth. But grant me this, that I may love thee without the hope of reward - love unselfishly for loves sake.

Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man

When we really begin to live in the world, then we understand what is meant by brotherhood or mankind, and not before.

Those whose only aim is to barter the energies of life for gold, or name, or any other enjoyment; those to whom the tramp of embattled cohorts is the only manifestation of power; those to whom the enjoyment of the senses is the only bliss that life c

WHY should a man be miserable even here in the reign of a just and merciful God?

PRAYER is divine love alone. When this highest ideal of love is reached, philosophy is thrown away. Who will then care of it ? Freedom, salvation, nirvana- all are thrown away. Who cares to become free while in the enjoyment of divine love?

Purity,patience, and preserverance are the three essentials to success, and above all: love.

Do not stand on a high pedestal and take 5 cents in your hand and say, "here, my poor man", but be grateful that the poor man is there, so by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself.It is not the reciever that is blessed, but it is the giver.Be thankful that you are allowed to exercise your power of benevolence and mercy in the world, and thus become pure and perfect.

Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man

THE Lord is great! - He will not allow me to become a hypocrite. Now let what is in come out....

If you have not even a little imagination, you are simply a brute. So you must not lower your ideal, neither are you to lose sight of practicality. We must avoid the two extremes.... You must try to combine in your life immense idealism with immense practicality.

The world sympathizes only with strong and powerful.

This is the central idea of the Gita- to be calm and steadfast in all circumstances, with one's body, mind, and soul centered at His hallowed feet!

But on the heights of the Himalayas I have a place where I am determined nothing shall enter except pure truth. There I want to work out this idea about which I have spoken to you today. There are an Englishman and an Englishwoman in charge of the place. The purpose is to train seekers of truth and to bring up children without fear and without superstition. They shall not hear about Christs and Buddhas and Shivas and Vishnus - none of these.

Stamping down the weakness of mind and heart, stand up, saying, "I am possessed of heroism, I am possessed of a steady intellect..." Never allow weakness to overtake your mind.

We have seemingly been divided, limited, because of our ignorance; and we have become as it were the little Mrs. so - and - so and Mr. so - and - so. But all nature is giving this delusion the lie every moment. I am not that little man or little woman cut off from all else; I am the one universal existence. The soul in its own majesty is rising up every moment and declaring its own intrinsic Divinity.

First, let us be Gods, and then help others to be Gods. "Be and make." Let this be our motto. Say not man is a sinner. Tell him that he is a God. Even if there were a devil, it would be our duty to remember God always, and not the devil.

If the suns come down, and the moons crumble into dust, and systems after systems are hurled into annihilation, what is that to you? Stand as a rock; you are indestructible. You are the Self, the God of the universe. Say - "I am Existence Absolute, Bliss Absolute, Knowledge Absolute, I am He," and like a lion breaking its cage, break your chain and be free forever. What frightens you, what holds you down? Only ignorance and delusion; nothing else can bind you. You are the Pure One, the Ever-blessed.

Ignorance is death, Knowledge is life.

Take off the veil of hypnotism which you have cast upon the world, send not out thoughts and words of weakness unto humanity.

And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature.

This is the only way to reach the goal, to tell ourselves, and to tell everybody else, that we are divine. And as we go on repeating this, strength comes. He who falters at first will get stronger and stronger, and the voice will increase in volume until the truth takes possession of our hearts, and courses through our veins, and permeates our bodies.

I am responsible for my fate, I am the bringer of good unto myself, I am the bringer of evil. I am the Pure and Blessed One. We must reject all thoughts that assert to the contrary.

Say to your own minds, "I am He, I am He". Let it ring day and night in your minds like a song, and at the point of death declare : "I am He". That is truth; the infinite strength of the world is yours.

Men are taught from childhood that they are weak and sinners. Teach them that they are all glorious children of immortality, even those who are the weakest in manifestation.

"You are pure and perfect, and what you call sin does not belong to you". Sins are low degrees of Self-manifestation; manifest your Self in a high degree.

Infinite strength is religion and God.

The best guide in life is strength.

Know that all sins and all evils can be summed up in that one word, weakness. It is weakness that is the motive power in all evil doing; it is weakness that makes men injure others; it is weakness that makes them manifest what they are not in reality. Let them know what they really are.....

What makes a man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin.

Strength, strength for us. What we need is strength, who will give us strength? There are thousands to weaken us, and of stories we have had enough.....

It is weakness, says the Vedanta, which is the cause of all misery in this world. Weakness is the one cause of suffering. We become miserable because we are weak. We lie, steal, kill and commit other crimes, because we are weak. We die because we are weak. Where there is nothing to weaken us, there is no death nor sorrow. We are miserable through delusion. Give up the delusion and the whole thing vanishes.

March on, the Lord is our General.

We are the sons of Light and children of God. Glory unto the Lord, we will succeed.

Do you believe in that Infinite, good Providence working in and through you? If you believe that this Omnipresent One is present in every atom, is through and through, Ota-Prota, as the Sanskrit word goes, penetrating your body, mind and soul, how can you lose heart?

How do you know what possibilities lie behind that degradation on the surface? You know but little of that which is within you. For behind you is the ocean of infinite power and blessedness.

This faith in themselves was in the hearts of our ancestors, this faith in themselves was the motive power that pushed them forward and forward in the march of civilisation, and if there has been degeneration, if there has been defect, mark my words, you will find that degeneration to have started on the day our people lost faith in themselves.

We have lost faith in ourselves. Therefore to preach the Advaita aspect of the Vedanta is necessary to rouse up the hearts of men, to show them the glory of their souls. It is therefore that I preach this Advaita, and I do so not as a sectarian, but upon universal and widely acceptable grounds.

The Vedanta teaches men to have faith in themselves first. As certain religions of the world say that a man who does not believe in a Personal God outside of himself is an atheist, so the Vedanta says, a man who does not believe in himself is an atheist. Not believing in the glory of our own soul is what the Vedanta calls atheism.

God is pure, and the same to all.

It is not that Christ is superior to Allah, not that Allah is everything and Brahma is nothing, but it is the same one whom you call either Brahma or Allah, or Almighty, or by a hundred other names. The names are different but God is one and the same.

In whatever name or form they are offered, all these flowers are laid at God's feet, for He is the one Lord of all, the one Soul of all souls.

God is one the paths to reach him (religions) are many - just as different rivers, originating in different mountains, traverse different paths, flowing straight or crooked, and at last join the ocean. He is the one Lord of all, the one Soul of all souls.

There is but one soul throughout the universe, all is but one existence - "Thou art in the woman, thou in the man, thou in the young man walking in the pride of youth, thou in the old man tottering on his stick - thou art All - in all, in everything, and I am thee, because I am made from thee."

Since everything emanates from God, he is the embodied principle in every being. Each one of us is made from God. Tat twam asi - "You are That One" who is eternally blissful, that one principle manifesting itself as this variety of Creation.

This is the principle of Universal Brotherhood of man with one another, with all life down to the little ants.

Just as the law of gravitation existed before its discovery and would exist if all humanity forgets it, so it is with the laws that govern the spiritual world. The moral, ethical and spiritual relations between soul and soul and between individual spirits and the Father of all spirits were there before their discovery and would remain even if we forget them.

Help and not fight. Assimilation and not destruction. Harmony and Peace and not dissension.

Gita and Ganga constitute the essence of Hinduism; one its theory and the other its practice.

My ideal, indeed, can be put into a few words, and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.

The householder must always please his wife with money, clothes, love and faith and never do anything to disturb her. That man who has succeeded in getting the love of a chaste wife has succeeded in his religion and has all the virtues.

Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is HIS business.

Every action generates a force of energy that returns to us in like kind...what we sow is what we reap.

Relationships are more important than life,but it is important for those relationships to have life in them

Sincerity of conviction and purity of motive will surely gain the day; and even a small minority, armed with these, is surely destined to prevail against all odds.

It is entirely wrong to think that we have done, or can do, good to the world, or to think that we have helped such and such people. It is a foolish thought, and all foolish thoughts bring misery. We think that we have helped some man and expect him to thank us, and because he does not, unhappiness comes to us. Why should we expect anything in return for what we do? Be grateful to the man you help, think of him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow men?

None deserves liberty who is not ready to give liberty

This life is a tremendous assertion of freedom

Liberty in thought and action is the only condition of life, growth and well-being: Where it does not exist, the man, the race, and the nation must go down.

The secret of karma yoga which is to perform actions without any fruitive desires is taught by Lord Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita.

We must be bright and cheerful. Long faces do not make religion. Religion should be the most joyful thing in the world, because it is the best.

The highest manifestation of strength is to keep ourselves calm and on our own feet.

Service to man is service to god

Be not in despair, the way is very difficult, like walking on the edge of a razor; yet despair not, arise, awake, and find the ideal, the goal.

The Impersonal God seen through the mists of sense is personal.

The spirit is the cause of all our thoughts and body-action, and everything, but it is untouched by good or evil, pleasure or pain, heat of cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.

Renunciation is the very basis upon which ethics stands.