Quotes from Swami Vivekananda

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry.

Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thought leads, and dare to carry that out in your life.

Every idea has to become broad till it covers the whole of this world, every aspiration must go on increasing till it has engulfed the whole of humanity, nay, the whole of life, within its scope.

"I do not want to get material life, do not want the sense-life, but something higher." That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.

Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.

Shri Ramakrishna use to say, "As Long as I Live, so long do I learn". That man or that society which has nothing to learn is already in the jaws of death.

Society is an organism which obeys the immutable law of progress; and change, judicious and cautious change, is necessary for the well being, and indeed the preservation of the social system.

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.

The Gita is like a bouquet composed of the beautiful flowers of spiritual truths collected from the Upanishads.

God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come.

Realize your true nature. That is all there is to do. Know yourself as you are - infinite Spirit. That is practical religion. Everything else is impractical, for everything else will perish.

Spirituality is the science of the Soul.

Man is to become divine by realizing the divine. Idols or temples, or churches or books, are only the supports, the help of his spiritual childhood.

Anything that brings spiritual, mental, or physical weakness, touch it not with the toes of your feet.

No more materialism, no more this egoism, I must become spiritual.

The greatest help to spiritual life is meditation.

Even the lowest of the low have the Atman (Soul) inside, which never dies and never is born, immortal, without beginning or end, the all pure, omnipotent and omnipresent Atman!

This is the great lesson that we are here to learn through myriads of births and heavens and hells - that there is nothing to be asked for, desired for, beyond one's spiritual Self (atman).

This is the principle of Universal Brotherhood of man with one another, with all life down to the little ants.

Without birth or death, eternal, ever-existing, free, unchangeable and beyond all conditions is this Soul of man - the real Self of Man - the Atman.

The weak have no place here, in this life or any other life. Weakness leads to slavery. Weakness leads to all kinds of misery, physical and mental. Weakness is death.

The whole life is a succession of dreams. My ambition is to be a conscious dreamer, that is all.

God is to be worshiped as the one Beloved, dearer than everything in this and the next life.

This is a great fact: strength is life; weakness is death. Strength is felicity, life eternal, immortal; weakness is constant strain and misery, weakness is death.