Swami Vivekananda Quotes

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.

Every atom is trying to go and join itself to the next atom. Atoms after atoms combine, making huge balls, the earths, the suns, the moons, the stars, the planets. They in their turn, are trying to rush towards each other, and at last, we know that the whole universe, mental and material, will be fused into one.

Until we realise ourselves as the Absolute, we cannot attain to deliverance.

My name should not be made prominent. It is my ideas that I want to see realized. The disciples of all the prophets have always inextricably mixed up the ideas of the Master with person, and at last killed the ideas for the person. The disciples of Sri Ramakrishna must guard against doing the same thing. Work for the idea, not the person.

This world is not for cowards.

Hold to the idea, "I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act," and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself.

No one is to blame for our miseries but ourselves.

Meditation means the mind is turned back upon itself. The mind stops all the thought-waves and the world stops. Your consciousness expands. Every time you meditate you will keep your growth.

I am persuaded that a leader is not made in one life. He has to be born for it. For the difficulty is not in organisation and making plans; the test, the real test, of the leader, lies in holding widely different people together along the line of their common sympathies. And this can only be done unconsciously, never by trying.

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

When a man is perfect, he sees perfection in others. When he sees imperfection, it is his own mind projecting itself.

Life is short, and therefore, one thing being certain, death, let us take up a great ideal, and give up the whole life to it. For what is the value of life, this vegetating little low life of man? Subordinating it to one high ideal is the only value that life has.

When we free ourselves from name and form, especially from a body - when we need no body, good or bad - then only do we escape from bondage.

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.

Not one is constant, but everything is changing.

Take courage and work on. Patience and steady work- this is the only way.

He who conquers self conquers all.

We see many persons talking the most wonderfully fine things about charity and about equality and the rights of other people and all that, but it is only in theory. I was so fortunate as to find one who was able to carry theory into practice. He had the most wonderful faculty of carrying everything into practice which he thought was right.

Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else.

Every one is struggling for freedom-from the atom to the star. The ignorant man is satisfied if he can get freedom within a certain limit-if he can get rid of the bondage of hunger or of being thirsty. But that sage feels that there is a stronger bondage which has to be thrown off. He would not consider the freedom of the Red Indian as freedom at all.

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

All real progress must be slow.

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.

This is the great fact: strength is life.

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

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.

The earth is enjoyed by heroes

Perfection is always infinite. We are the Infinite already. You and I, and all beings, are trying to manifest that infinity.

One ounce of practice is worth a thousand pounds of theory.

There is implanted in every man, naturally, a strong desire for progress.

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

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

I have a message for the world, which I will deliver without fear and care for the future. To the reformers I will point out that I am a greater reformer than any one of them. They want to reform only little bits. I want root-and-branch reform.

I am a socialist not because I think it is a perfect system, but half a loaf is better than no bread. The other system has been tried and found wanting

Those who die, merely suffering the woes of life like cats and dogs, are they men?

The Jivanmukta ('the living free' or one who knows) alone is able to give real love, real charity, real truth, and it is truth alone that makes us free.

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

They alone live whose lives are in the whole universe, and the more we concentrate our lives on limited things, the faster we go towards death. Those moments alone we live when our lives are in the universe, in others; and living this little life is death, simply death, and that is why the fear of death comes.

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

Change is always subjective.

The moment you fear, you are nobody.

Ahimsa (non-killing), truthfulness, purity, mercy, and godliness are always to be kept.

The same power is in every man, the one manifesting more, the other less; the same potentiality is in everyone.

Infinite perfection is in every man, though unmanifested.

Talk to yourself atleast once in a Day.. Otherwise you may miss a meeting with an EXCELLENT person in this World.

Nothing else is necessary but these - love, sincerity, and patience.

None deserves liberty who is not ready to give liberty

Praise and blame, good and bad, even heat and cold, must be equally acceptable to us.

Marriage is not for individual happiness, but for the welfare of the nation and the caste.

Renunciation is in our blood.

The greatest sin is to think yourself weak

Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.

An allopath comes and treats cholera patients and gives them his medicines. The Homeopath comes and gives his medicines and cures perhaps more than the allopath does because the Homoeopath does not disturb the patients but allows the nature to deal with them.

I hate this world, this dream, this horrible nightmare, with its churches and chicaneries, its books and blackguardisms, its fair faces and false hearts, its howling righteousness on the surface and utter hollowness beneath and, above all, its sanctified shopkeeping!

The benefits of knowledge can only be realized in practice.

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

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.

Doing is very good, but that comes from thinking. Little manifestations of energy through the muscles are called work. But where there is no thought, there will be no work. Fill the brain, therefore, with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.

No two persons have the same mind or the same body.

If you can get absolutely still for just one moment, you have reached the goal.