Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Man will have to go beyond intellect in the end.

If religion and life depend upon books or upon the existence of any prophet whatsoever, then perish all religion and books! Religion is in us. No books or teachers can do more than help us to find it, and even without them we can get all truth within. You have gratitude for books and teachers without bondage to them; and worship your Guru as God, but do not obey him blindly; love him all you will, but think for yourself. No blind belief can save you, work out your own salvation. Have only one idea of God - that He is an eternal help.

Advance like a hero. Do not be thwarted by anything. How many days will this body last, with its happiness and misery? When you have the human body, then rouse the Atman within and say-I have reached the state of fearlessness!...and then as long as the body endures, speak unto others this message of fearlessness: 'Thou art That', 'Arise, awake, and stop not till the goal is reached'

The finer is always the cause, the grosser the effect. So the external world is the effect, the internal the cause.

Hinduism threw away Buddhism after taking its sap. The attempt of all the Southern Acharyas was to effect a reconciliation between the two. Shankaracharya's teaching shows the influence of Buddhism. His disciples perverted his teaching and carried it to such an extreme point that some of the later reformers were right in calling the Acharya's followers "crypto-buddhists".

Here in this blessed land, the foundation, the backbone, the life-centre is religion and religion alone.

The truths of Upanishadas are before you. Take them up, live up to them, and the salvation of Bharat will be at hand.

Strength is life, Weakness is death.

One atom in this universe cannot move without dragging the whole world along with it. There cannot be any progress without the whole world following in the wake, and it is becoming every day dearer that the solution of any problem can never be attained on racial, or national, or narrow grounds.

Persevere on, my brave lads, We have only just begun. Never despond! Never say enough!

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.

If there's a God, we must see him and if there's a soul we must perceive it. Otherwise, it's better not to believe.

In all our Yogas this renunciation is necessary. This is the stepping-stone and the real centre and the real heart of all spiritual culture - renunciation. This is religion - renunciation.

The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.

Whenever there is a conflict between the pure heart and the intellect, always side with the pure heart.

If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine.

Here lies the secret. Says Patanjali, the father of Yoga, "When a man rejects all the superhuman powers, then he attains to the cloud of virtue." He sees God. He becomes God and helps others to become the same. This is all I have to preach. Doctrines have been expounded enough. There are books by the million. Oh, for an ounce of practice!

All the superior religions had their growth between the Ganga and the Euphrates.

Know that every time you feel weak, you not only hurt yourself but also the cause. Infinite faith and strength are the only conditions of success.

There are the altars, but here is the greatest of altars, the living, conscious human body, and to worship at this altar is far higher than the worship of any dead symbols.

Christ, Buddha, and Krishna are but waves in the Ocean of Infinite Consciousness that I am!

While real perfection is only one, relative perfections must be many.

It is a retarding element creating hatred and anger, and causing people to fight each other, and making them unsympathetic.

This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.

To give up the world is to forget the ego, to know it not at all - living in the body, but not of it.

It is practice first, and knowledge afterwards.

Strength and manliness are virtue; weakness and cowardice are sin.

First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.

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].

Truth, purity, and unselfishness wherever these are present, there is no power below or above the sun to crush the possessor thereof. Equipped with these, one individual is able to face the whole universe in opposition.

Man is the highest being that exists, and this is the greatest world.

I am teaching you now about it, but how many of you will practice it?

When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were but we shall understand the whole thing. The same phenomena will remain but with a new meaning.

The apparent man is only a limitation of that Real Man.

All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.

These births and deaths are changes in nature which we are mistaking for changes in us.

It is not God's fault. It is our fault that we suffer. Whatever we sow we reap.

It is fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven in a moment "The earth is enjoyed by heroes" - this is the unfailing truth.

The following story is one which he related recently regarding the practice of fault - finding among creeds: A frog lived in a well. It had lived there for a long time. . . .

I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything they really deserve.

Marriage and sex and money the only living devils.

All the work you do, is done for your own salvation, is done for your own benefit.

Expansion is life. Love is expansion. Love is therefore the only law of life.

If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature.

Many a time comes when we want to interpret our weakness and cowardice as forgiveness and renunciation.

Whenever we attain a higher vision, the lower vision disappears of itself.

Have faith in yourselves, be proud of your ancestors, instead of being ashamed of them.

Expansion is life, contraction is death. Love is life, hatred is death.