Swami Vivekananda Quotes

In every attempt there will be one set of men who will applaud, and another who will pick holes. Go on doing your own work, what need have you to reply to any party?

Know this also to be one of the spiritual practices, a discipline for God - realisation. Its aim also is Self - realisation.

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.

If a person who lives in God becomes miserable, what is the use of living in God? What is the use of such a God? Throw such a God overboard into the Pacific Ocean. We do not want such a God!

Have faith. We will do

They aimless halt, who halt for others.

It is clear to us that, for good or for evil, our vitality is concentrated in our religion. You cannot change it. You cannot destroy it and put in its place another.

In India, religious life forms the centre, the keynote of the whole music of national life.

Religion is not in fault.

Even the lowest of the Hindus, the Pariah, has less of the brute in him than a Briton in a similar social status.

The coward, afraid of the lash, with one hand wipes his eyes and gives with the other. Of what avail are such gifts?

Do not blame any supernatural being, neither be hopeless and despondent, nor think we are in a place from which we can never escape unless someone comes and lends us a helping hand.

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

Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.

It is the Prana that is manifesting as motion.

It is practice first, and knowledge afterwards.

Shri Krishna says: "Better die in your own path than attempt the path of another."

[The seers call him wise] whose every attempt is free, without any desire for gain, without any selfishness.

Books never make religions, but religions make books. We must not forget that. No book ever created God, but God inspired all the great books. And no book ever created a soul.

One possessing Vairagya does not understand by Atman the individual ego but the All-pervading Lord, residing as the Self and Internal Ruler in all. He is perceivable by all as the sum total.

Those giants of old, the ancient Rishis, who never walked but strode, of whom if you were to think but for a moment you would shrivel up into a moth, they sir, had time-and you have no time!

Good works are continually being undone by the tons of hatred and anger which are being poured out on the world.

All these practices and struggles to become religious are only negative work, to take off the bars, and open the doors to that perfection which is our birthright, our nature.

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

External motion we call action; internal motion is human thought.

Moths like me die by the thousands every minute. Her work goes on all the same. Glory unto Mother!

Out of this idea of separation between atom and atom comes all misery.

These tremendous contradictions in our intellect, in our knowledge, yea, in all the facts of our life face us on all sides.

Present-day Hinduism and Buddhism were growths from the same branch. Buddhism degenerated, and Shankara lopped it off!

See Christ, then you are a Christian; all else is talk.

Some men, who begin by saying that the world is a hell, often end by saying that it is a heaven when they succeed in the practice of self-control.

Practice makes us what we shall be.

Your country requires heroes; be heroes; your duty is to go on working, and then everything will follow of itself.

Even forgiveness, if weak and passive, is not true: fight is better. Forgive when you could bring legions of angels to the victory.

The moment you think creed and form and ceremony the "be-all" and "end-all", then you are in bondage. Take part in them to help others, but take care they do not become a bondage.

You gain nothing by becoming cowards.

Know for certain that there is no power in the universe to injure us unless we first injure ourselves.

We shall progress inch by inch.

Whatsoever has form must be the result of combinations of particles and requires something else behind it to move it.

The Upanishads do not reveal the life of any teacher, but simply teach principles.

Religion for a long time has come to be static in India. What we want is to make it dynamic. I want it to be brought into the life of everybody.

Only man makes Karma.

We have none of us seen a form which had not a beginning and will not have an end.

To cowards what advice shall I offer? - nothing whatsoever have I to say.

Everything that has name and form must begin in time, exist in time, and end in time. These are settled doctrines of the Vedanta, and as such the heavens are given up.

Until we give up the world manufactured by the ego, never can we enter the kingdom of heaven. None ever did, none ever will.

Whatever had form or shape must be limited, and could not be eternal.

Perfection can be had by everybody.

The Indian mythology has a theory of cycles, that all progression is in the form of waves.

Man cannot live upon words, however he may try.