Swami Vivekananda Mind Quotations

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.

There is really no difference between matter, mind and Spirit. They are only different phases of experiencing the One.

Know that the mind which is born to succeed joins itself to a determined will and perseveres.

The powers of the mind should be concentrated and the mind turned back upon itself; as the darkest places reveal their secrets before the penetrating rays of the sun, so will the concentrated mind penetrate its own innermost secrets.

The mind generally takes up various objects, runs into all sorts of things. That is the lower state. There is a higher state of the mind, when it takes up one object and excludes all others.

We must always bear in mind that we are not going to be free, but are free already. Every idea that we are bound is a delusion.

Ishvara is the highest manifestation of the Absolute Reality, or in other words, the highest possible reading of the Absolute by the human mind. Creation is eternal, and so also is Ishvara.

Knowledge is inherent in man; no knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere waiting for him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind.

Cowards only sin, brave men never, no, not even in mind.

The mind is but the subtle part of the body. You must retain great strength in your mind and words.

Education is not filling the mind with a lot of facts. Perfecting the instrument and getting complete mastery of my own mind [is the ideal of education].

Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.

The cheerful mind perseveres and the strong mind hews its way through a thousand difficulties.

The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.

Let him who has courage in his mind and love in his heart come with me. I want none else.

If the Absolute becomes limited by the mind, It is no more Absolute; It has become finite.

Only by practice and non-attachment can we conquer mind.

My countrymen should have nerves of steel, muscles of iron, and minds like thunderbolt.

The infinite library of the Universe is in your mind.

Never mind these failures, these little backslidings; hold the ideal a thousand times, and if you fail a thousand times, make the attempt once more.

Look here we shall die! Bear this in mind always & then the spirit within will wake up. Only then will meanness vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigor in mind & body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.

If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished—mountains can be crumbled into atoms.

Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.

He who knows even how to prepare a smoke properly, knows also how to meditate. And he who cannot cook well cannot be a perfect sannyasin. Unless cooking is performed with a pure mind and concentration, the food is not palatable.

The only way to study the mind is to get at facts, and then intellect will arrange them and deduce the principles.

Internal and external nature, mind and matter, are in time and space, and are bound by the law of causation.

The calm man is not the man who is dull. You must not mistake Sattva for dullness or laziness. The calm man is the one who has control over the mind waves. Activity is the manifestation of inferior strength, calmness, of the superior.

Man's free agency is not of the mind, for that is bound. There is no freedom there.

Man is not mind, he is soul.

To the Indian mind there is nothing higher than religious ideals, that this is the keynote of Indian life.

The Indian mind is first religious, then anything else. So this is to be strengthened.

Religion is the peculiarity of the growth of the Indian mind.

I am neither the mind, nor the intellect, nor the ego, nor the mind-stuff

We know how often in our lives through laziness and cowardice we give up the battle and try to hypnotise our minds into the belief that we are brave.

Never allow weakness to overtake your mind. Remember Mahavira, remember the Divine Mother! And you will see that all weakness, all cowardice will vanish at once.

Just as I sit down to meditate, all the vilest subjects in the world come up. The whole thing is nauseating. Why should the mind think thoughts I do not want it to think? I am as it were a slave to the mind.

Where will you go to seek Brahman? He is immanent in all beings. Here, here is the visible Brahman! Shame on those who, neglecting the visible Brahman, set their minds on other things! Here is the visible Brahman before you as tangible as a fruit in one's hand! Can't you see? Here - here - is Brahman!

My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.

In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.

If there is no strength in body and mind, the Atman cannot be realized. First you have to build the body by good nutritious food-then only will the mind be strong.

Go on saying, I am free. Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, I am bound. Dehypnotize the whole thing.

Let the mind be cheerful but calm. Never let it run into excesses, because every excess will be followed by a reaction.

Always keep the mind cheerful. Everyone will die once. Cowards suffer the pangs of death again and again, solely due to the fear in their own minds.

Live for an ideal and leave no place in the mind for anything else.

When a man is perfect, he sees perfection in others. When he sees imperfection, it is his own mind projecting itself.

The whole point is to discipline the mind.

The mind has to be gradually and systematically brought under control.

Mind you, there is no value in learning. You are all mistaken in learning. The only value of knowledge is in the strengthening, the disciplining, of the mind.

Whose meditation is real and effective? Who can really surrender to the will of God? Only the person whose mind has been purified by selfless work.

Thought ceases in meditation; even the mind's elements are quite quiet. Blood circulation stops. His breath stops, but he is not dead.

Meditation, you know, comes by a process imagination. You go through all these processes purification of the elements - making the one melt the other, that into the next higher, that into mind, that into spirit, and then you are spirit.

Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.

There are hundreds of thousands of microbes surrounding us, but they cannot harm us unless we become weak, until the body is ready and predisposed to receive them. There may be a million microbes of misery floating about us. Never mind! They dare not approach us, they have no power to get a hold on us, until the mind is weakened. This is the great fact: strength is life. Weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal. Weakness is constant strain and misery: weakness is death

The one eternal religion is applied to the opinions of various minds and various races. There never was my religion or yours, my national religion or your national religion; there never existed many religions, there is only the one. One infinite religion existed all through eternity and will ever exist, and this religion is expressing itself in various countries in various ways.

The book one must read to learn natural sciences is the book of nature. The book from which to learn religion is your own mind and heart.

That which is nearest is least observed. The Atman is the nearest of the near, therefore the careless and the unsteady mind gets no clue to it. But the person who is alert, calm, self-restrained, and discriminating ignores the external world and, diving more and more into the inner world, realizes the glory of the Atman and becomes great.

He who is alone is happy. Do good to all, like everyone, but do not love anyone. It is a bondage, and bondage brings only misery. Live alone in your mind - that is happiness. To have nobody to care for and never minding who cares for one is the way to be free.

Every one is as much bound in thought, word, deed, and mind, as a piece of stone or this table. That I talk to you now is as rigorous in causation as that you listen to me. There is no freedom until you go beyond Maya. That is the real freedom of the soul.

The organs are the horses, the mind is the rein, the intellect is the charioteer, the soul is the rider, and the body is the chariot.

The body is the external coating and the mind is the internal coating of the Atman who is the real perceiver, the real enjoyer, the being in the body who is working the body by means of the internal organ or the mind.

The body is mortal and the mind is mortal; both, being compounds, must die.

The body and mind are dependent.

No two persons have the same mind or the same body.

If the mind is pleased with praise, it will be displeased with blame.

We want the education by which character is formed, strength of mind is increased, the intellect is expanded, and by which one can stand on one's own feet.

Our minds are forced to become fixed upon different things by an attraction in them which we cannot resist. To control the mind, to place it just where we want it, requires special training. It cannot be done in any other way. In the study of religion the control of the mind is absolutely necessary. We have to turn the mind back upon itself in this study.

Astrology and all these mystical things are generally signs of a weak mind

This world, this universe which our senses feel, or our mind thinks, is but one atom, so to say, of the Infinite, projected on to the plane of consciousness; and within that narrow limit, defined by the network of consciousness, works our reason, and not beyond. Therefore, there must be some other instrument to take us beyond, and that instrument is called inspiration.

Every atom is working and resisting every thought in the mind. Everything we see and know is but the resultant of these two forces.

Renunciation is of the mind.

Through faithful practice, layer after layer of the mind opens before us, and each reveals new facts to us.

If you intend to study the mind, you must have systematic training; you must practice to bring the mind under your control.

The finer the instrument, the greater the power. The mind is much finer and more powerful than the body.

What can be my highest idea of forgiveness? Nothing beyond myself. Which of you can jump out of your own bodies? Which of you can jump out of your own minds? Not one of you.

It is the calm, forgiving, equable, well-balanced mind that does the greatest amount of work.

To believe that mind is all, that thought is all is only a higher materialism.

Just as the body has its progress and decadence, so also has the mind, and, therefore, the mind is not the soul, because the soul can neither decay nor degenerate.

Matter is motion outside, mind is motion inside.

A certain motion becomes understood when it is referred to a force; certain sensations, to matter; certain changes outside, to law; certain changes in thought, to mind; certain order singly, to causation - and joined to time, to law.

The principles of the Vedanta not only should be preached everywhere in India, but also outside. Our thought must enter into the make-up of the minds of every nation, not through writings, but through persons.