Swami Vivekananda Quotes

The will is not free - it is a phenomenon bound by cause and effect - but there is something behind the will which is free.

Swami Vivekananda

The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.

Swami Vivekananda

All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.

Swami Vivekananda


Swami Vivekananda Quote - The fire that warms us can also consume us...

The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

All truth is eternal. Truth is nobody’s property; no race, no individual can lay any exclusive claim to it. Truth is the nature of all souls.

Swami Vivekananda

We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think. Words are secondary. Thoughts live; they travel far.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

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

Swami Vivekananda

If you think that you are bound, you remain bound; you make your own bondage. If you know that you are free, you are free this moment. This is knowledge, knowledge of freedom. Freedom is the goal of all nature. 

Swami Vivekananda

If the mind is intensely eager, everything can be accomplished - mountains can be crumbled into atoms.

Swami Vivekananda

There cannot be friendship without equality.

Swami Vivekananda

Take up an idea, devote yourself to it, struggle on in patience, and the sun will rise for you.

Swami Vivekananda

Every step I take in light is mine forever.

Swami Vivekananda

In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart.

Swami Vivekananda

Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.

Swami Vivekananda

This is the first lesson to learn: be determined not to curse anything outside, not to lay the blame upon anyone outside, but stand up, lay the blame on yourself. You will find that is always true. Get hold of yourself.

Swami Vivekananda

That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.

Swami Vivekananda

All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction. Love is therefore the only law of life. He who loves lives, he who is selfish is dying. Therefore love for love’s sake, because it is law of life, just as you breathe to live. 

Swami Vivekananda

In a day, when you don’t come across any problems. You can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path.

Swami Vivekananda

Give me few men and women who are pure and selfless and I shall shake the world.

Swami Vivekananda

Even the greatest fool can accomplish a task if it were after his or her heart. But the intelligent ones are those who can convert every work into one that suits their taste.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence.

Swami Vivekananda

Stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creator of your own destiny. All the strength and succor you want is within yourself. Therefore make your own future.

Swami Vivekananda

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

Swami Vivekananda

Education is the manifestation of the perfection already in man.

Swami Vivekananda

The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun when they are concentrated they illumine.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

To succeed, you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will.
Have that sort of energy, that sort of will; work hard, and you will reach the goal.

Swami Vivekananda

What the world wants is character. The world is in need of those whose life is one burning love, selfless. That love will make every word tell like a thunderbolt.

Swami Vivekananda

There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out aw the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth. 

Swami Vivekananda

The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

If you want to have life, you have to die every moment for it. Life and death are only different expressions of the same thing looked at from different standpoints; they are the falling and the rising of the same wave, and the two form one whole. 

Swami Vivekananda

Let us calmly and in a manly fashion go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary frettings and fumings. I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything he really deserves.

Swami Vivekananda

It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world, that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!

Swami Vivekananda

Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on that 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 is way great spiritual giants are produced.

Swami Vivekananda

Many times I have been in the jaws of death, starving, footsore, and weary; for days and days I had no food, and often could walk no further; I would sink down under a tree, and life would seem to be ebbing away. I could not speak, I could scarcely think, but at last the mind reverted to the idea: "I have no fear nor death; never was I born, never did I die; I never hunger or thirst. I am It! I am It! The whole of nature cannot crush me; it is my servant. Assert thy strength, thou Lord of lords and God of gods! Regain thy lost empire! Arise and walk and stop not!" And I would rise up, reinvigorated; and here I am today, living! Thus, whenever darkness comes, assert the reality and everything adverse must vanish. For after all, it is but a dream.Mountain-high though the difficulties appear, terrible and gloomy though all things seem, they are but Maya. Fear not, and it is banished. Crush it, and it vanishes. Stamp upon it, and it dies.

Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda Biography

Born: January 12, 1863
Died: July 4, 1902

Swami Vivekananda was a Indian philosopher. He is best known as a key figure in the introduction of hindu philosophies of Vedanta and Yoga to the Western World.


Related Authors
Ramakrishna (1836 - 1886)
Rabindranath Tagore (1861 - 1941)