Swami Vivekananda Quotes

1,114 Sourced Quotes

In Buddha we had the great, universal heart and infinite patience, making religion practical and bringing it to everyone's door.

Swami Vivekananda
Bold has been my message to the people of the west, bolder is my message to you, my beloved countryman.

Swami Vivekananda
There is no such thing as "righteous" anger or justifiable killing.

Swami Vivekananda
All growth, progress, well - being, or degradation is but relative.

Swami Vivekananda
One thing I must tell you. Idolatry in India does not mean anything horrible. It is not the mother of harlots.

Swami Vivekananda
We are all born idolaters, and idolatry is good, because it is in the nature of man. Who can get beyond it? Only the perfect man, the God-man. The rest are all idolaters. So long as we see this universe before us, with its forms and shapes, we are all idolaters. This is a gigantic symbol we are worshipping. He who says he is the body is a born idolater.

Swami Vivekananda
No negative, all positive, affirmative. I am, God is, everything is in me. I will manifest health, purity, knowledge, whatever I want.

Swami Vivekananda
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
Ay! says the Vedanta, it is not the fault of God that this partiality exists, that this competition exists. Who makes it? We ourselves. There is a cloud shedding its rain on all fields alike. But it is only the field that is well cultivated, which gets the advantage of the shower; another field, which has not been tilled or taken care of cannot get that advantage. It is not the fault of the cloud.

Swami Vivekananda
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.

Swami Vivekananda
Every attempt to solve the laws of causation, time, and space would be futile, because the very attempt would have to be made by taking for granted the existence of these three.

Swami Vivekananda
I direct my attention to the individual, to make him strong, to teach him that he himself is divine, and I call upon men to make themselves conscious of this divinity within. That is really the ideal --conscious or unconscious --of every religion.

Swami Vivekananda
I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor. I see what they call the poor of this country and how many there are who feel for them!

Swami Vivekananda
But on the heights of the Himalayas I have a place where I am determined nothing shall enter except pure truth. There I want to work out this idea about which I have spoken to you today. There are an Englishman and an Englishwoman in charge of the place. The purpose is to train seekers of truth and to bring up children without fear and without superstition. They shall not hear about Christs and Buddhas and Shivas and Vishnus - none of these.

Swami Vivekananda
What makes a man stand up and work? Strength. Strength is goodness, weakness is sin.

Swami Vivekananda
A Sannyasin cannot belong to any religion, for his is a life of independent thought, which draws from all religions; his is a life of realisation, not merely of theory or belief, much less of dogma.

Swami Vivekananda
Men may have given millions of dollars and fed rats and cats, as some do in India. They say that men can take care of themselves, but the poor animals cannot...

Swami Vivekananda
The one theme of the Vedanta philosophy is the search after unity. The Hindu mind does not care for the particular; it is always after the general, nay, the universal. "what is it that by knowing which everything else is to be known." That is the one search.

Swami Vivekananda
Prana is the driving power of the world, and can be seen in every manifestation of life.

Swami Vivekananda
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
The attempt to remove evil from the world by killing a thousand evil - doers, only adds to the evil in the world.

Swami Vivekananda
This external worship of images has, however, been described in all our Shastras as the lowest of all the low forms of worship. But that does not mean that it is a wrong thing to do.

Swami Vivekananda
Two attempts have been made in the world to found social life: the one was upon religion, and the other was upon social necessity. The one was founded upon spirituality, the other upon materialism; the one upon transcendentalism, the other upon realism.

Swami Vivekananda
Only when creation stops can we find the Absolute. The Absolute is in the soul, not in creation. So by stopping creation, we come to know the Absolute.

Swami Vivekananda
If you have knowledge and see a man weak, do not condemn him. Go to his level and help him if you can. He must grow.

Swami Vivekananda
In this external world, which is full of finite things, it is impossible to see and find the Infinite. The Infinite must be sought in that alone which is infinite, and the only thing infinite about us is that which is within us, our own soul. Neither the body, nor the mind, nor even our thoughts, nor the world we see around us, is infinite.

Swami Vivekananda
I do not believe in eternal progress, that we are growing on ever and ever in a straight line. It is too nonsensical to believe. There is no motion in a straight line. A straight line infinitely projected becomes a circle. The force sent out will complete the circle and return to its starting place.

Swami Vivekananda
Change is always in regard to something which does not change, or which changes relatively less.

Swami Vivekananda
The sign of vigour, the sign of life, the sign of hope, the sign of health, the sign of everything that is good, is strength. As long as the body lives, there must be strength in the body, strength in the mind, [and strength] in the hand.

Swami Vivekananda
When once you consider an action, do not let anything dissuade you. Consult your heart, not others, and then follow its dictates.

Swami Vivekananda