Swami Vivekananda Quotes

Each nation has a theme: everything else is secondary. India's theme is religion.

It is only by doing good to others that one attains to one's own good

Excepting the infinite spirit, everything else is changing. There is the whirl of change.

The waters of the Ganga are roaring among his matted locks.

The main feature should be the teaching of principles through stories. Don't make it metaphysical at all.

You know your real nature [to be divine]. You are the king and play you are a beggar. . . . It is all fun. Know it and play. That is all there is to it. Then practice it. The whole universe is a vast play.

The Hindus have a peculiar slovenliness in business matters, not being sufficiently methodical and strict in keeping accounts etc.

Faith in ourselves will do everything. I have experienced it in my own life, and am still doing so; and as I grow older that faith is becoming stronger and stronger. He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is the atheist who does not believe in himself

To weep is a sign of weakness, of bondage.

What do we call the river? Every moment the water is changing, the shore is changing, every moment the environment is changing, what is the river then? It is the name of this series of changes.

This ego - the less there is of it, the nearer I am to that which I really am: the universal body.

All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.

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.

Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished.

It is good and very grand to conquer external nature, but grander still to conquer our internal nature.... This conquering of the inner man, understanding the secrets of the subtle workings that are within the human mind, and knowing its wonderful secrets, belong entirely to religion.

This life is a tremendous assertion of freedom

The body is subject to the law of growth and decay, what grows must of necessity decay.

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

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.

Renunciation is in our blood.

Our religion teaches that anger is a great sin, even if it is "righteous".

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

Charity never faileth.

Nature grinds all of us. Keep count of the ounce of pleasure you get. In the long run, nature did her work through you, and when you die your body will make other plants grow. Yet we think all the time that we are getting pleasure ourselves. Thus the wheel goes round.

We must approach religion with reverence and with love, and our heart will stand up and say, this is truth, and this is untruth.

Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.

Wherever in any society there are too many laws, it is a sure sign that that society will soon die. If you study the characteristics of India, you will find that no nation possesses so many laws as the Hindus, and national death is the result.

Man is the best mirror, and the purer the man, the more clearly he can reflect God.

I am in every religion as the thread through a string of pearls. Wherever thou seest extraordinary holiness and extraordinary power raising and purifying humanity, know thou that I am there.

Too much faith in personality has a tendency to produce weakness and idolatry, but intense love for the Guru makes rapid growth possible.

There is no happiness higher than what a man obtains by this attitude of non-offensiveness, to all creation.

Jesus Christ was willing to admit every good man to the family of God. It is not the man who believes a certain something, but the man who does the will of the Father in heaven, who is right. On this basis-being right and doing right-the whole world can unite.

He who asserts he is free, shall be free. He who says he is bound, bound he shall remain.

Strength, strength it is that we want so much in this life, for what we call sin and sorrow have all one cause, and that is our weakness. With weakness comes ignorance, and with ignorance comes misery.

Man has wanted to look beyond, wanted to expand himself; and all that we call progress, evolution, has been always measured by that one search, the search for human destiny, the search for God.

We say that if a temple, or a symbol, or an image helps you to realize the Divine within, you are welcome to it. Have two hundred images if you like. If certain forms and formulas help you to realize the Divine, God speed you; have, by all means, whatever forms, temples, whatever ceremonies you want to bring you nearer to God. But do not quarrel about them; the moment you quarrel, you are not going Godward, you are going backward towards the brutes.

We want to know in order to make ourselves free. That is our life: one universal cry for freedom.

Today the West is awakening to its wants; and the "true self of man and spirit" is the watchword of the advanced school of Western theologians. The student of Sanskrit philosophy knows where the wind is blowing from, but it matters not whence the power comes so longs as it brings new life.

You must have an iron will, if you would cross the ocean. You must be strong enough to pierce mountains.

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

Motion is the sign of life.

We first observe facts, then generalise, and then draw conclusions or principles.

As body, mind, or soul, you are a dream; you really are Being, Consciousness, Bliss (satchidananda). You are the God of this universe.

We must recognise that duty and morality vary under different circumstances; not that the man who resists evil is doing what is always and in itself wrong, but that in the different circumstances in which he is placed it may become even his duty to resist evil.

Give up bondage; become a son, be free, and then you can "see the Father", as did Jesus.

Infinite perfection is in every man, though unmanifested.

If you intend to study the mind, you must have systematic training; you must practice to bring the mind under your control, to attain to that consciousness from which you will be able to study the mind and remain unmoved by any of its wild gyrations. Otherwise the facts observed will not be reliable; they will not apply to all people and therefore will not be truly facts or data at all.

There is nothing so high as renunciation of self.