Swami Vivekananda quotes - page 9

Swami Vivekananda was an Indian Hindu monk and a key figure in the introduction of Indian philosophies to the Western world. His speeches, particularly at the Parliament of the World's Religions in Chicago, inspired global interest in Vedanta and Yoga. He played a significant role in promoting interfaith understanding and spiritual awakening. Here are 292 of his quotes:

The greatest truths are the simplest things in the world, simple as your own existence.

Swami Vivekananda

The brain and muscles must develop simultaneously. Iron nerves with an intelligent brain - and the whole world is at your feet.

Swami Vivekananda

Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others.

Swami Vivekananda

Devotion to duty is the highest form of worship of God.

Swami Vivekananda

Bless people when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing by helping to stamp out the false ego.

Swami Vivekananda

So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every person a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them!

Swami Vivekananda

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.

Swami Vivekananda

If I do an evil action, I must suffer for it; there is no power in this universe to stop or stay it.

Swami Vivekananda

Say, ‘This misery that I am suffering is of my own doing, and that very thing proves that it will have to be undone by me alone.' That which I created, I can demolish; that which is created by someone else, I shall never be able to destroy. Therefore, stand up, be bold, be strong. Take the whole responsibility on your own shoulders, and know that you are the creators of your own destiny. All the strength and success you want is within ourselves.

Swami Vivekananda

It is the coward and the fool who says, This is my fate – so says the Sanskrit proverb. But it is the strong man who stands up and says, I will make my own fate. It is people who are getting old who talk of fate. Young men generally do not come to astrology.

Swami Vivekananda

The remedy for weakness is not brooding over weakness, but thinking of strength. Teach men of strength that is already within them.

Swami Vivekananda

Worship of society and popular opinion is idolatry. The soul has no sex, no country, no place, no time.

Swami Vivekananda

The past was great no doubt, but I sincerely believe that the future will be more glorious still.

Swami Vivekananda

When we have become free, we need not go mad and throw up society and rush off to die in the forest or the cave; we shall remain where we were, only we shall understand the whole thing.

Swami Vivekananda

The greatest error is to call a man a weak and miserable sinner. Every time a person thinks in this mistaken manner, he rivets one more link in the chain of avidya that binds him, adds one more layer to the "self-hypnotism” that lies heavy over his mind.

Swami Vivekananda

There is only one sin. That is weakness.... The only saint is that soul that never weakens, faces everything, and determines to die game.

Swami Vivekananda

Have you got the will to surmount mountain-high obstructions? If the whole world stands against you sword in hand, would you still dare to do what you think is right?

Swami Vivekananda

The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter-as dead, dull, insentient matter; how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being.

Swami Vivekananda

Karma is the eternal assertion of human freedom. If we can bring ourselves down by our karma, surely it is in our power to raise ourselves by our own karma.

Swami Vivekananda

It is feeling that is the life, the strength, the vitality, without which no amount of intellectual activity can reach God.

Swami Vivekananda

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

Swami Vivekananda

This life is short, the vanities of the world are transient, but they alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.

Swami Vivekananda