Swami Vivekananda Quotes

“Is it freedom to be a slave to the senses, to anger, to jealousies and a hundred other petty things that must occur every day in human life?”

“Get up, and set your shoulder to the wheel - How long is this life for? As you have come into this world, leave some mark behind. Otherwise, where is the difference between you and the trees and stones? They too come into existence, decay and die.”

“He who has infinite patience and infinite energy at his back, will alone succeed.”

“Liberty is the first condition of growth. It is wrong, a thousand times wrong, if any of you dares to say, 'I will work out the salvation of this woman or child.”

“The human will stands beyond all circumstances. Everything must go down before the will, for that comes from God Himself; a pure and a strong will is omnipotent. Before it all the powers, even of nature, must bow down, succumb, and become its servants - the strong gigantic, infinite will in man.”

“Satisfied is no test of truth. Actuality is steadily far from idiosyncratic secure.”

“The world cares little for principles. They care for persons.”

“I am teaching you now about it, but how many of you will practice it?”

“Body is an unreal dream, and we think we are all bodies.”

“So long as there is desire or want, it is a sure sign that there is imperfection. A perfect, free being cannot have any desire.”

“Be strong , my young friends; that is my advice to you. You will be nearer to Heaven through football than through the study of the Gita. These are bold words; but I have to say them, for I love you. I know where the shoe pinches.”

“Seek no praise, no reward, for anything you do. No sooner do we perform a good action than we begin to desire credit for it. No sooner do we give money to some charity than we want to see our names blazoned in the papers. Misery must come as the result of such desires.”

“The subtle are the causes, the gross the effects.”

“If the Absolute becomes limited by the mind, It is no more Absolute; It has become finite.”

“We become forgetful of the ego when we think of the body as dedicated to the service of others - the body with which most complacently we identify the ego.”

“Man can become like God and acquire control over the whole universe if he multiplies infinitely his centre of self-consciousness.”

“We know there is no progress in a straight line.”

“Have charity towards all beings. Pity those who are in distress. Love all creatures. Do not be jealous of anyone. Look not to the faults of others.”

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

“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.”

“All change is in the screen.”

“First, meditation should be of a negative nature. Think away everything. Analyse everything that comes in the mind by the sheer action of the will. Next, assert what we really are-existence, knowledge, and bliss-being, knowing, and loving.”

“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?”

“Forgive offences by the million. And if you love all unselfishly, all will by degrees come to love one another.”

“Suppose cats became philosophers, they would see a cat universe and have a cat solution of the problem of the universe, and a cat ruling it. So we see from this that our explanation of the universe is not the whole of the solution.”