Swami Vivekananda Quotes

1,114 Sourced Quotes

Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.

Swami Vivekananda
"Learn good knowledge with all devotion from the lowest caste. Learn the way to freedom, even if it comes from a Pariah, by serving him. If a woman is a jewel, take her in marriage even if she comes from a low family of the lowest caste." Such is the law laid down by our great and peerless legislator, the divine Manu.

Swami Vivekananda
The more you think of yourself as shining immortal spirit, the more eager you will be to be absolutely free of matter, body, and senses. This is the intense desire to be free.

Swami Vivekananda
The Imitation of Christ is a cherished treasure of the Christian world. This great book was written by a Roman Catholic monk. "Written", perhaps, is not the proper word. It would be more appropriate to say that each letter of the book is marked deep with the heart's blood of the great soul who had renounced all for his love of Christ.

Swami Vivekananda
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.

Swami Vivekananda
I hate cowardice; I will have nothing to do with cowards or political nonsense.

Swami Vivekananda
Through the imparting of moral principles, good behaviour, and education we must make the Chandala come up to the level of the Brahmana.

Swami Vivekananda
In nature alone are forms. That which is not of nature cannot have any forms, fine or gross. It must be formless.

Swami Vivekananda
Many of us get many messages in our lives, or think we get them. As long as the message is regarding our own selves, go on doing what you please. But when it is in regard to our contact with and behavior to others, think a hundred times before you act upon it-and then you will be safe.

Swami Vivekananda
Language is the chief means and index of a nation's progress.

Swami Vivekananda
Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.

Swami Vivekananda
We get caught. How? Not by what we give but by what we expect. We get misery in return for our love: not from the fact that we love but from the fact that we want love in return. There is no misery where there is no want. Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery.

Swami Vivekananda
Who makes us ignorant? We ourselves. We put our hands over our eyes and weep that it is dark.

Swami Vivekananda
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 or cold, and all the dualism of nature, although it lends its light to everything.

Swami Vivekananda
The world cares little for principles. They care for persons.

Swami Vivekananda
Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood.

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

Swami Vivekananda
As soon as you know the voice and understand what it is, the whole scene changes. The same world which was the ghastly battlefield of maya is now changed into something good and beautiful.

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

Swami Vivekananda
Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.

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

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
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.

Swami Vivekananda
The wave is the same thing as the water, the effect is the cause in another form

Swami Vivekananda
Man can think of divine things only in his own human way, to us the Absolute can be expressed only in our relative language.

Swami Vivekananda