quotes by 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

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

"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

"Strength is Life, Weakness is Death.
Expansion is Life, Contraction is Death.
Love is Life, Hatred is Death."
— Swami Vivekananda

"They alone live, who live for others."
— 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

"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

"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

"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."
— Swami Vivekananda (Complete Works)

"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

"Each soul is potentially divine. The goal is to manifest this divinity 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. This is the whole of religion. Doctrines, or dogmas, or rituals, or books, or temples, or forms, are but secondary details."
— 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."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes."
— Swami Vivekananda

"The Tapas and the other hard Yogas that were practiced in other Yugas do not work now. What is needed in this Yuga is giving, helping others. "
— Swami Vivekananda

"Blessed are they whose bodies get destroyed in the service of others."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now."
— Swami Vivekananda

"We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about that you think."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Be Grateful to the Man you help, think of Him as God. Is it not a great privilege to be allowed to worship God by helping our fellow men?"
— Swami Vivekananda

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

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

"If a man can realize his divine nature with the help of an image, would it be right to call that a sin? Nor, even when he has passed that stage, should he call it an error. [...] man is not traveling 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 realize 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."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Learn Everything that is Good from Others, but bring it in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others."
— Swami Vivekananda

"We must be Bright and Cheerful, long faces do not make Religion"
— Swami Vivekananda

"The Heart and core of everything here is good, that whatever may be the surface waves, deep down and underlying everything, there is an infinite basis of Goodness and Love."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Now is wanted intense Karma-Yoga with unbounded courage and indomitable strength in the heart. Then only will the people of the country be roused."
— Swami Vivekananda

"If in this hell of a world one can bring a little joy and peace even for a day into the heart of a single person, that much alone is true; this I have learnt after suffering all my life; all else is mere moonshine. . . ."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Put the good before them, see how eagerly they take it, see how the divine that never dies, that is always living in the human..."
— 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

"The Older I grow, the more everything seems to me to lie in manliness. This is my new gospel"
— Swami Vivekananda

"Anything that makes weak - physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison."
— Swami Vivekananda

"All condemnation of others really condemns ourselves. Adjust the microcosm which is in your power to do) and the macrocosm will adjust itself for you."
— Swami Vivekananda

"There is no limit to the power of the human mind. The more concentrated it is, the more power is brought to bear on one point"
— Swami Vivekananda

"Religion is being and becoming. Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man."
— Swami Vivekananda

"He is an atheist who does not believe in himself. The old religions said that he was an atheist who did not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself."
— Swami Vivekananda

"whatever you think that you will be.
if you think yourself weak,weak you will be;
if you think yourself strong,you will be"
— Swami Vivekananda

"Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life - think of it, dream of it, live on 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. "
— Swami Vivekananda

"The only religion that ought to be taught is the religion of fearlessness. Either in this world or in the world of religion, it is true that fear is the sure cause of degradation and sin. It is fear that brings misery, fear that brings death, fear that breeds evil. And what causes fear? Ignorance of our own nature."
— Swami Vivekananda

"The more we grow in Love, Virtue and Holiness, the more we see Love, Virtue and Holiness outside."
— Swami Vivekananda

"What is now wanted is a combination of the greatest heart with the highest intellectuality, of infinite love with infinite knowledge."
— Swami Vivekananda

"The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Be not Afraid of anything. You will do Marvelous work. it is Fearlessness that brings Heaven even in a moment."
— Swami Vivekananda

"In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart. "
— Swami Vivekananda

"We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves. If what we are now has been the result of our own past actions, it certainly follows that whatever we wish to be in the future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Why should a Man be Moral? Because this strengthens his will."
— Swami Vivekananda

"Do one thing at a Time, and while doing it put your whole Soul into it to the exclusion of all else."
— Swami Vivekananda

"This World will always continue to be a mixture of Good and Evil. Our duty is to sympathize with the weak and to Love even the wrongdoer."
— Swami Vivekananda

"God is present in every Jiva; there is no other God besides that. Who serves Jiva serves God indeed."
— Swami Vivekananda

"This attachment of Love to God is indeed one that does not bind the soul but effectively breaks all its bondages."
— 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