Swami Vivekananda Quotes (59 Quotes)


    TO worship God even for the sake of salvation or any other reward is equally degenerate. Love knows no reward. Give your love unto to God, but do not ask anything in return even from Him through pray.

    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.

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


    Civilizations have arisen in other parts of the world. In ancient and modern times, wonderful ideas have been carried forward from one race to another...But mark you, my friends, it has been always with the blast of war trumpets and the march of embattled cohorts. Each idea had to be soaked in a deluge of blood..... Each word of power had to be followed by the groans of millions, by the wails of orphans, by the tears of widows. This, many other nations have taught but India for thousands of years peacefully existed. Here activity prevailed when even Greece did not exist... Even earlier, when history has no record, and tradition dares not peer into the gloom of that intense past, even from until now, ideas after ideas have marched out from her, but every word has been spoken with a blessing behind it and peace before it. We, of all nations of the world, have never been a conquering race, and that blessing is on our head, and therefore we live...


    We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in future can be produced by our present actions so we have to know how to act.

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

    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.

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

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


    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.

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

    The first sign of your becoming religious is that you are becoming cheerful

    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.

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

    Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on 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.

    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.

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

    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.

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

    YOU know, I may have to be born again, you see, I have fallen in love with mankind.

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

    The goal of mankind is knowledge ... Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils' what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.

    From the high spiritual flights of the Vedanta philosophy, of which the latest discoveries of science seem like echoes, to the low ideas of idolatry with its multifarious mythology, the agnosticism of the Buddhists and the atheism of the Jains, each and all have a place in the Hindu's religion.

    Whatever you are doing, put your whole mind on it. If you are shooting, your mind should be only on the target. Then you will never miss. If you are learning your lessons, think only of the lesson. In India boys and girls are taught to do this.

    The Vedas teach that the soul is divine, only held in the bondage of matter perfection will be reached when this bond will burst, and the word they use for it is, therefore, Mukti - freedom, freedom from the bonds of imperfection, freedom from death and misery.

    Infinite power of the spirit, brought to bear upon matter evolves material development, made to act upon thought evolves intellectuality, and made to act upon itself makes of man a God. First, let us be Gods, and then help other to be GOds. Be and Make. Let this be our motto.

    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.


    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.

    There is nothing beyond God, and the sense enjoyments are simply something through which we are passing now in the hope of getting better things.

    Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha. It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

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

    To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion.

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

    If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.

    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.

    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.

    Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man


    EACH soul is potentially Divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity with in by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work or worship or psychic control or philosophy- by one or more all of these- and be free. This is whole of RELIGION.

    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.


    When I Asked God for Strength He Gave Me Difficult Situations to Face When I Asked God for Brain Brown He Gave Me Puzzles in Life to Solve When I Asked God for Happiness He Showed Me Some Unhappy People When I Asked God for Wealth He Showed Me How to Work Hard When I Asked God for Favors He Showed Me Opportunities to Work Hard When I Asked God for Peace He Showed Me How to Help Others God Gave Me Nothing I Wanted He Gave Me Everything I Needed.

    My nature is love Him. And therefore I love. I do not pray for any-thing. I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for loves sake. I can not trade in love.

    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. First, believe in this world, that.

    BY the study of different RELIGIONS we find that in essence they are one.

    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.

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


    More Swami Vivekananda Quotations (Based on Topics)


    God - Religions & Spirituality - Man - World - Soul - Love - Mind - Education - Nature - Success - Perfection - Idea - Life - Truth - Mankind - Belief & Faith - War & Peace - Redemption & Salvation - Power - View All Swami Vivekananda Quotations

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