Karma Yoga Quotes

“The very reason for nature's existence is for the education of the soul.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: the Yoga of Action

“You need not worry or make yourself sleepless about the world; it will go on without you.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“It is a very hard thing to understand, but you will come to learn in time that nothing in the universe has power over you until you allow it to exercise such a power.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“The help which tends to make us spiritually strong is the highest help, next to it comes intellectual help and after that comes physical help.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: the Yoga of Action

“The goal of mankind is knowledge. That is the one ideal placed before us by Eastern philosophy. Pleasure is not the goal of man, but knowledge. Pleasure and happiness come to an end. It is a mistake to suppose that pleasure is the goal.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“Although a man has not studied a single system of philosophy, although he does not believe in any God, and never has believed, although he has not prayed even once in his whole life, if the simple power of good actions has brought him to that state where he is ready to give up his life and all else for others, he has arrived at the same point to which the religious man will come through his prayers and the philosopher through his knowledge; and so you may find that the philosopher, the worker, and the devotee, all meet at one point, that one point being self-abnegation.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“No man is to be judged by the mere nature of his duties, but all should be judged by the manner and the spirit in which they perform them.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“It is a weakness to think that any one is dependent on me, and that I can do good to another. This belief is the mother of all our attachment, and through this attachment comes all our pain. We must inform our minds that no one in this universe depends upon us; not one beggar depends on our charity; not one soul on our kindness; not one living thing on our help. All are helped on by nature, and will be so helped even though millions of us were not here. The course of nature will not stop for such as you and me; it is, as already pointed out, only a blessed privilege to you and to me that we are allowed, in the way of helping others, to educate ourselves. This is a great lesson to learn in life, and when we have learned it fully, we shall never be unhappy; we can go and mix without harm in society anywhere and everywhere.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“Our Karma determines what we deserve and what we can assimilate.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“Absolute equality, that which means a perfect balance of all the struggling forces in all the planes, can never be in this world. Before you attain that state, the world will have become quite unfit for any kind of life, and no one will be there. We find, therefore, that all these ideas of the millennium and of absolute equality are not only impossible but also that, if we try to carry them out, they will lead us surely enough to the day of destruction.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“Just as inequality is necessary for creation itself, so the struggle to limit it is also necessary. If there were no struggle to become free and get back to God, there would be no creation either. It is the difference between these two forces that determines the nature of the motives of men. There will always be these motives to work, some tending towards bondage and others towards freedom. This”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“It is the worker who is attached to results that grumbles about the nature of the duty which has fallen to his lot; to the unattached worker all duties are equally good, and form efficient instruments with which selfishness and sensuality may be killed, and the freedom of the soul secured. We are all apt to think too highly of ourselves. Our duties are determined by our deserts to a much larger extent than we are willing to grant. Competition rouses envy, and it kills the kindliness of the heart. To the grumbler all duties are distasteful; nothing will ever satisfy him, and his whole life is doomed to prove a failure. Let us work on, doing as we go whatever happens to be our duty, and being ever ready to put our shoulders to the wheel. Then surely shall we see the Light!”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“इस जगत् रूप मिश्रण में प्रत्येक परमाण दूसरे परमाणुओं से पृथक् हो जाने की चेष्टा कर रहा है, पर दूसरे उसे आबद्ध करके रखे हुए हैं। हमारी पृथ्वी सूर्य से दूर भागने की चेष्टा कर रही है तथा चंद्रमा, पृथ्वी से। प्रत्येक वस्तु अनंत विस्तारोन्मुख है।”
― Swami Vivekanand, Karmayog

“Every act of love brings happiness; there is no act of love which does not bring peace and blessedness as its reaction.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“If there were no fanaticism in the world, it would make much more progress than it does now. It is a mistake to think that fanaticism can make for the progress of mankind. On the contrary, it is a retarding element creating hatred and anger, and causing people to fight each other, and making them unsympathetic. We”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“but I am prepared to go any distance to see the face of that man who can really make a distinction between the sin and the sinner. It is easy to say so.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“When you have trained your mind and your nerves to realise this idea of the world's nondependence on you or on anybody, there will then be no reaction in the form of pain resulting from work.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“leave upon it different pictures, and the result of these combined impressions is what is called man’s “character.” If you take the character of any man it really is but the aggregate of tendencies, the sum-total of the bent of his mind; you will find that misery and happiness are equal factors in the formation”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Path of Selfless Action

“To work we have the right, but not to the fruits thereof:” Leave the fruits alone. Why”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“Man is, as it were, a centre, and is attracting all the powers of the universe towards himself, and in this centre is fusing them all and again sending them off in a big current. Such a centre is the real man—the almighty, the omniscient—and he draws the whole universe towards him. Good and bad, misery and happiness, all are running towards him and clinging round him; and out of them he fashions the mighty stream of tendency called character and throws it outwards. As he has the power of drawing in anything, so has he the power of throwing it out.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: the Yoga of Action

“स्पर्धा से ईर्ष्या उत्पन्न होती है और उससे हृदय की कोमलता नष्ट हो जाती है। असंतुष्ट तथा तकरारी पुरुष के लिए सभी कर्तव्य नीरस होते हैं। उसे तो कभी भी किसी चीज से संतोष नहीं होता और फलस्वरूप उसका जीवन दूभर हो उठना और असफल हो जाना स्वाभाविक है।”
― Swami Vivekanand, Karmayog

“In the ocean we cannot raise a wave without causing a hollow somewhere else.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“Christianity was preached just on the basis of the fascination of this fanaticism, and that is what made it so attractive to the Greek and the Roman slaves. They believed that under the millennial religion there would be no more slavery, that there would be plenty to eat and drink; and, therefore, they flocked round the Christian standard. Those who preached the idea first were of course ignorant fanatics, but very sincere. In modern times this millennial aspiration takes the form of equality--of liberty, equality, and fraternity. This is also fanaticism. True”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“There are two things which guide the conduct of men: might and mercy.”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“બુદ્ધિપૂર્વક અને વૈજ્ઞાનિક રીતે કાર્ય કરવું તે કર્મયોગ એમ ગીતામાં કહેલું છે;”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga કર્મયોગ

“A fool may buy all the books in the world, and they will be in his library; but he will be able to read only those that he deserves to; and this deserving is produced by Karma”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“-our tears and our smiles, our joys and our griefs, our weeping and our laughter, our curses and our blessings, our praises and our blames--every one of these we may find, if we calmly study our own selves, to have been brought out from within ourselves by so many blows. The result is what we are. All these blows taken together are called Karma--work, action.”
― Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“In modern times this millennial aspiration takes the form of equality--of liberty, equality, and fraternity. This is also fanaticism. True equality has never been and never can be on earth.”
― Vivekananda, Karma Yoga: The Yoga of action

“When it is acute, we call it disease; when it is chronic, we call it nature. It is a disease”
― Vivekananda, Karma Yoga

“आदर्श पुरुष तो वे हैं, जो परम शांत एवं निस्तब्धता के बीच भी तीव्र कर्म का, प्रबल कर्मशीलता के बीच भी मरुस्थल की शांति एवं निस्तब्धता का अनुभव करते हैं। उन्होंने संयम का रहस्य जान लिया है—अपने ऊपर विजय प्राप्त कर चुके हैं। किसी बड़े शहर की भरी हुई सड़कों के बीच से जाने पर भी उनका मन उसी प्रकार शांत रहता है, मानो वे किसी निःशब्द गुफा में हों, और फिर भी उनका मन सारे समय कर्म में तीव्र रूप से लगा रहता है। यही कर्मयोग का आदर्श है, और यदि तुमने यह प्राप्त कर लिया है, तो तुम्हें वास्तव में कर्म का रहस्य ज्ञात हो गया।”
― Swami Vivekananda, Karmayog