Top 100 Swami Vivekananda Quotes
#1. Man can think of divine things only in his own human way, to us the Absolute can be expressed only in our relative language.
Swami Vivekananda
#2. Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.
Swami Vivekananda
#3. Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others.
Swami Vivekananda
#4. Cut the bondage of all worldly affections; go beyond laziness and all care as to what becomes of you.
Swami Vivekananda
#5. To work with undaunted energy! What fear! Who is powerful enough to thwart you.
Swami Vivekananda
#6. A little of the infinite is projected into consciousness, and that we call our world.
Swami Vivekananda
#7. Man makes the mistake of separating himself from God and identifying himself with the body.
Swami Vivekananda
#8. This body is a combination. It is only a fiction to say that I have one body, you another, and the sun another.
Swami Vivekananda
#9. He reminds us that true renunciation is mental, not necessarily physical. We are not required to disown our husbands or wives and turn our children out of doors. We must only try to realize that they are not really ours; to love them as dwelling-places of Brahman, not as mere individuals.
Swami Vivekananda
#10. Put God behind everything-human beings, animals, food, and work. Make this a habit.
Swami Vivekananda
#11. When the forces that hold it together go away, the body must fall.
Swami Vivekananda
#13. Real freedom is not merely doing what you like, but also NOT doing what you like.
Swami Vivekananda
#14. All great undertakings are achieved through mighty obstacles. Keep up the deepest mental poise. Take not even the slightest notice of what puerile creatures may be saying against you.
Swami Vivekananda
#15. if you want to do a great or a good work, do not trouble to think what the result will be.
Swami Vivekananda
#16. All forms are transitory, that is why all religions say, "God has no form".
Swami Vivekananda
#17. Be contented with the things of the present. The cows and the dogs are, and so are all animals; and that is what makes them animals. So if man rests content with the present and gives up all search into the beyond, mankind will have to go back to the animal plane again.
Swami Vivekananda
#18. Practice is absolutely necessary. You may sit down and listen to me by the hour every day, but if you do not practice, you will not get one step further. It all depends on practice.
Swami Vivekananda
#19. This animal called man has some religious influence, but he is guided by economy.
Swami Vivekananda
#20. He in whose mind is no anger, hatred, or envy, who never loses his balance, dies, or is born, who is he but God?
Swami Vivekananda
#21. Each soul is a star and all stars are set in the infinite azure, the eternal sky-the Lord.
Swami Vivekananda
#23. To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. "I will drink the ocean," says the persevering soul, "at my will mountains will crumble up." Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal. (I.
Swami Vivekananda
#24. 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.
Swami Vivekananda
#25. Come out into the Universe of Light. Everything in the Universe is Yours, stretch out your arms and Embrace it with Love
Swami Vivekananda
#26. Freedom is the first condition of growth. What you do not make free, will never grow.
Swami Vivekananda
#27. Stand up, be bold, and take the blame on your own shoulders. Do not go about throwing mud at others; for all the faults you suffer from, you are the sole and only cause.
Swami Vivekananda
#28. 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.
Swami Vivekananda
#29. Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realizing not in believing, but in being and becoming.
Swami Vivekananda
#30. The greatest force is derived from the power of thought. The finer the element, the more powerful it is. The silent power of thought influences people even at a distance, because mind is one as well as many. The universe is a cobweb; minds are spiders.
Swami Vivekananda
#31. Praise and blame, good and bad, even heat and cold, must be equally acceptable to us.
Swami Vivekananda
#33. 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.
Swami Vivekananda
#34. Real existence, real knowledge, and real love are eternally connected with one another, the three in one: where one of them is, the others also must be; they are the three aspects of the One without a second - the Existence - Knowledge - Bliss.
Swami Vivekananda
#35. Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will.
Swami Vivekananda
#36. Chemistry ceases to improve when one element is found from which all others are deductible. Physics ceases to progress when one force is found of which all others are manifestations. So religion ceases to progress when unity is reached, which is the case with Hinduism.
Swami Vivekananda
#37. As long as a man thinks, this struggle must go on, and so long man must have some form of religion.
Swami Vivekananda
#38. It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.
Swami Vivekananda
#40. 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].
Swami Vivekananda
#41. Never talk about the faults of others, no matter how bad they may be. Nothing is ever gained by that. You never help one by talking about his fault; you do him an injury, and injure yourself as well.
Swami Vivekananda
#42. In nature alone are forms. That which is not of nature cannot have any forms, fine or gross. It must be formless.
Swami Vivekananda
#43. Everything can be sacrificed for truth, but truth cannot be sacrificed for anything.
Swami Vivekananda
#44. This idea of body is a simple superstition. It is superstition that makes us happy or unhappy. It is superstition caused by ignorance that makes us feel heat and cold, pain and pleasure.
Swami Vivekananda
#45. Do not be afraid of a small beginning. great things come afterwards. Be courageous. Do not try to lead your brethren, but serve them. The brutal mania for leading has sunk many a great ships in the waters of life. Take care especially of that, i.e. be unselfish even unto death, and work.
Swami Vivekananda
#46. Things do not grow better; they remain as they are. It is we who grow better, by the changes we make in ourselves.
Swami Vivekananda
#47. Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.
Swami Vivekananda
#49. So long as we perceive this world in motion, we have to conceive will behind it.
Swami Vivekananda
#50. Eka-Nishtha or devotion to one ideal is absolutely necessary for the beginner in the practice of religious devotion.
Swami Vivekananda
#51. Who can work without any attachment? That is the real question.
Swami Vivekananda
#52. If I am unhappy, it has been of my own making, and that very thing shows that I can be happy if I will.
Swami Vivekananda
#53. Understanding human nature is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing it can we know God. It is also a fact that the knowledge of God is the highest knowledge, and only by knowing God can we understand human nature.
Swami Vivekananda
#54. Know for certain that there is no power in the universe to injure us unless we first injure ourselves.
Swami Vivekananda
#55. Despite the many iniquities that have found entrance into the practices of image-worship as it is in vogue now, I do not condemn it. Ay, where would I have been if I had not been blessed with the dust of the holy feet of that orthodox, image-worshipping Brahmin!
Swami Vivekananda
#56. God is not to be reached by the weak. Never be weak. You have infinite strength within you. How else will you conquer anything? How else will you come to God?
Swami Vivekananda
#57. We must have life building, man-making, character-making assimilation of ideas.
Swami Vivekananda
#58. Books cannot teach God, but they can destroy ignorance; their action is negative.
Swami Vivekananda
#59. Renunciation, and renunciation alone, is the real secret, the Mulamantra, of all Realisation.
Swami Vivekananda
#61. Man is the highest being that exists, and this is the greatest world.
Swami Vivekananda
#62. Have faith that you are all, my brave lads, born to do great things! Let not the barks of puppies frighten you, no, not even the thunderbolts of heaven, but stand up and work!
Swami Vivekananda
#63. So long as you have faith in your Guru, nothing will be able to obstruct your way.
Swami Vivekananda
#64. Woman has suffered for eons, and that has given her infinite patience and infinite perseverance.
Swami Vivekananda
#67. We read many books, but that does not bring us knowledge. We may read all the Bibles in the world, but that will not give us religion. Theoretical religion is easy enough to get, any one may get that. What we want is practical religion.
Swami Vivekananda
#68. Well has it been said that man is the only animal that naturally looks upwards; every other animal naturally looks down.
Swami Vivekananda
#69. All the weak and undeveloped minds in every religion or country have only one way of loving their own ideal, i.e. by hating every other ideal.
Swami Vivekananda
#71. Work on with the intrepidity of a lion but at the same time with the tenderness of a flower.
Swami Vivekananda
#72. The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure-house of knowledge.
Swami Vivekananda
#74. Man cannot be satisfied by wealth. Man cannot go beyond his nature, no more than you can jump out of your body.
Swami Vivekananda
#75. Let me draw your attention to one thing which unfortunately we always forget: that is - "O man, have faith in yourself."
Swami Vivekananda
#76. All is the Self or Brahman. The saint, the sinner, the lamb, the tiger, even the murderer, as far as they have any reality, can be nothing else, because there is nothing else.
Swami Vivekananda
#77. Have faith in yourself. You people were once the Vedic Rishis. Only, you have come in different forms, that's all. I see it clear as daylight that you all have infinite power in you. Rouse that up; arise, arise - apply yourselves heart and soul, gird up your loins.
Swami Vivekananda
#79. It is nature that is driving us towards perfection, and eventually she will bring everyone there.
Swami Vivekananda
#80. Desire, ignorance, and inequality - this is the trinity of bondage.
Swami Vivekananda
#81. True religion comes not front the teaching of men or the reading of books; it is the awakening of the spirit within us, consequent upon pure and heroic action.
Swami Vivekananda
#82. If a man, day and night, thinks he is miserable, low and nothing, nothing he becomes. If you say yea, yea, "I am, I am", so shall you be;
Swami Vivekananda
#83. We reap what we sow. We are the makers of our own fate. The wind is blowing; those vessels whose sails are unfurled catch it, and go forward on their way, but those which have their sails furled do not catch the wind. Is that the fault of the wind? ... We make our own destiny.
Swami Vivekananda
#84. This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.
Swami Vivekananda
#86. Anything that is western origin, first you verify it, then accept it. Anything that is Indian origin, first accept it, then verify it if necessary.
Swami Vivekananda
#87. Rituals are the kindergarten of religion. They are absolutely necessary for the world as it is now; only we shall have to give people newer and fresh rituals. A party of thinkers must undertake to do this. Old rituals must be rejected and new ones substituted.
Swami Vivekananda
#88. We are like the caterpillar which takes the thread out of his own body and of that makes the cocoon, and behold, he is caught.
Swami Vivekananda
#89. Charity is great, but the moment you say it is all, you run the risk of running into materialism.
Swami Vivekananda
#90. Virtue is the only friend which follows us even beyond the grave. Everything else ends with death.
Swami Vivekananda
#91. If the Student thinks he is the Spirit, he will be a better Student. If the Lawyer thinks he is the Spirit, he will be a better Lawyer, and so on.
Swami Vivekananda
#92. Have faith in yourself, all power is in you, be conscious and bring it out
Swami Vivekananda
#93. In everything, there are two kinds of development-analytical and synthetical. In the former the Hindus excel other nations. In the latter they are nil.
Swami Vivekananda
#94. Philosophy insists that there is a joy which is absolute, which never changes.
Swami Vivekananda
#95. The Tapas and the other hard Yogas that were practiced in other Yugas do not work now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others.
Swami Vivekananda
#97. Never forget the glory of human nature! We are the greatest god.. Christs and Buddhas are but waves in the boundless ocean which I AM.
Swami Vivekananda
#98. The uplift of the women, the awakening of the masses must come first, and then only can any real good come about for the country, for India.
Swami Vivekananda
#99. He whose book of the heart has been opened needs no other books.
Swami Vivekananda
#100. 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.
Swami Vivekananda
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