Quotes from Swami Vivekananda

If there is sin, this is the only sin— to say that you are weak, or others are weak.

For what is force? - that which moves matter. And what is matter? that which is moved by force.. Like all other basic principles, this is also self contradictory.

Ignorance is death, knowledge is life.

The means should be loved and cared for as if it were the end itself.

Well, then, the human soul is eternal and immortal, perfect and infinite, and death means only a change of centre from one body to another

To the Hindu, man is not travelling from error to truth, but from truth to truth, from lower to higher truth. To him all the religions, from the lowest fetishism to the highest absolutism, mean so many attempts of the human soul to grasp and realise the Infinite, each determined by the conditions of its birth and association, and each of these marks a stage of progress; and every soul is a young eagle soaring higher and higher, gathering more and more strength, till it reaches the Glorious Sun.

Thus the man that has practiced control over himself cannot be acted upon by anything outside; there is no more slavery for him.

To be more free is the goal of all our efforts, for only in perfect freedom can there be perfection.

We have always heard it preached, "Love one another". What for? That doctrine was preached, but the explanation is here. Why should I love every one? Because they and I are one. Why should I love my brother? Because he and I are one. There is this oneness; this solidarity of the whole universe. From the lowest worm that crawls under our feet to the highest beings that ever lived – all have various bodies, but are the one Soul.

Great occasions rouse even the lowest of human beings to some kind of greatness, but he alone is the really great man whose character is great always, the same wherever he be.

In a day when you do not come across any problems you can be sure that you are travelling on the wrong path

Man has infinite power within himself, and he can realise it - he can realise himself as the one infinite Self. It can be done; but you do not believe it. You pray to God and keep your powder dry all the time. "The Complete Works of Swami Vivekananda", p.3573, Manonmani Publishers

D o not look back upon what has been done Go ahead!

Even the faults of a Guru must be told.

There are truths that are true only in a certain line, in a certain direction, under certain circumstances, and for certain times - those that are founded on the institutions of the times.

E xternal nature is only internal nature writ large

Go from village to village, do good to humanity and to the world at large.

An objective heaven or millenium therefore has existence only in fancy, but a subjective one is already in existence.

As the different streams having their sources in different places all mingle their water in the sea, so, O Lord, the different paths which men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to Thee

With the vast majority of mankind the fine states of these passions are not even known — the states in which they emerge from subconsciousness. When a bubble is rising from the bottom of the lake, we do not see it, nor even when it is nearly come to the surface; it is only when it bursts and makes a ripple that we know it is there.

When he first began to abuse me, I thought, "I am going to be angry". Anger was one thing, and I was another; but when I became angry, I was anger. These feelings have to be controlled in the germ, the root, in their fine forms, before even we have become conscious that they are acting on us.

And here is the test of truth: Anything that makes you weak physically, intelectually, and spiritually, reject as poison; there is no life in it, it cannot be true.

When a man is gloomy, that may be dyspepsia, but it is not religion. To the Yogi everything is bliss, every human face that he sees brings cheerfulness to him.

This world is like a dog's curly tail, and people have been striving to straighten it out for hundreds of years; but when they let it go, it has curled up again.