Quotes from Swami Vivekananda

To the Hindu, says Vivekananda, "Man is not travelling from error to truth, but climbing up from truth to truth, from truth that is lower to truth that is higher.

Our Karma determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate.

the easiest way to make ourselves happy is to see that others are happy.

What is it that is whirling the mind? Imagination, creative activity. Stop creation and you know the truth. All power of creation must stop, and then you know the truth at once.

He who has no faith in himself can never have faith in God. 

When by analyzing his own mind, man comes face to face, as it were, with something which is never destroyed, something which is, by its own nature, eternally pure and perfect, he will no more be miserable, no more unhappy.

To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. "I will drink the ocean," says the persevering soul, "at my will mountains will crumble up." Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal. (I.

You may ask, "Who wrote the Vedas?" They were not written. The words are the Vedas. A word is Veda, if I can pronounce it rightly. Then it will immediately produce the [desired] effect.

If there is something here that is not in the Vedas, that is your delusion. It does not exist.

Every work that we do, every movement of the body, every thought that we think, leaves such an impression on the mind-stuff, and even when such impressions are not obvious on the surface, they are sufficiently strong to work beneath the surface, subconsciously. What we are every moment is determined by the sum total of these impressions on the mind.

The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making. But, instead of that, we are always trying to polish up the outside. What use in polishing up the outside when there is no inside? The end and aim of all training is to make the man grow. The man who influences, who throws his magic, as it were, upon his fellow-beings, is a dynamo of power, and when that man is ready, he can do anything and everything he likes; that personality put upon anything will make it work.

Man is a slave of nature, and slave eternally he has got to remain. We call it Karma. Karma means law, and it applies everywhere. Everything is bound by Karma.

You find in Krishna that non-attachment is the central idea.

you are all bound by the law of Karma, the Upanishads admit, but they declare the way out.

Realisation is real religion, all the rest is only preparation — hearing lectures, or reading books, or reasoning is merely preparing the ground; it is not religion.

Hindu religion does not consist in struggles and attempts to believe a certain doctrine or dogma, but in realising — not in believing, but in being and becoming.

Krishna preached in the midst of the battlefield.

The Land where humanity has attained its highest towards gentleness, towards generosity, towards purity, towards calmness - it is India.

Circumstances can never be good or bad. Only the individual man can be good or bad.

The sages of the world have only the right to tell us that they have analysed their minds and have found these facts, and if we do the same we shall also believe, and not before.

For all of us in this world life is a continuous fight.

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

Who is the seer? The Self of man, the Purusha. What is the scene? The whole of nature beginning with the mind, down to gross matter.

If a person who can [give a blow] forbears, there is merit in that.