Quotes of Swami Vivekananda - Quotations by Swami Vivekananda
Here is a collection of beautiful quotes by Swami Vivekananda. He was one of the most influential Hindu leaders of 19th century India. It is an attempt to bring you some of the popular quotes of Swami Vivekananda. He is considered a key figure in the introduction of Hindu philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western World, mainly in America & Europe and is also credited with raising interfaith awareness, bringing Hinduism to the status of a major world religion during the end of the 19th century. Swami Vivekananda is considered to be a major force in the revival of Hinduism in modern India.
Swami Vivekananda Quotes
When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.
Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
If a man with an ideal makes a thousand mistakes, I am sure that the man without an ideal makes fifty thousand. Therefore, it is better to have an ideal.
You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
Education is the manifestation of perfection present already in man.
You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.
All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.
You have to grow from inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.
It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thoughts make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light.
Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
External nature is only internal nature writ large.
GOD is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.
If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.
If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.
In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
We can overcome the difficulty by constant practice. We must learn that nothing can happen to us, unless we make ourselves susceptible to it.
Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin; to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
Let people say whatever they like, stick to your own convictions, and rest assured, the world will be at your feet. They say, "Have faith in this fellow or that fellow", but I say, "Have faith in yourself first", that’s the way. Have faith in yourself - all power is in you - be conscious and bring it out.
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.
Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success.
That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.
The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this Divinity within, by controlling nature, external and internal. Do this either by work, or worship, or psychic control, or philosophy - by one or more or all of these - and be free. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details.
The more we come out and do good to others, the more our hearts will be purified, and God will be in them.
The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.
The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
Knowledge is inherent in man; no knowledge comes from outside; it is all inside. We say Newton discovered gravitation. Was it sitting anywhere in a corner waiting or him? It was in his own mind; the time came and he found it out. All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in your own mind. The external world is simply the suggestion, the occasion, which sets you to study your own mind.
Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.
Three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great:
- Conviction of the powers of goodness.
- Absence of jealousy and suspicion.
- Helping all who are trying to be and do good.