Swami Vivekananda

"Both the forces of good and evil will keep the universe alive for us, until we awake from our dreams and give up this building of mud pies."

"Come out into the broad light of day, come out from the little narrow paths, for how can the infinite soul rest content to live and die in small ruts?"

"Come out into the universe of Light. Everything in the universe is yours, stretch out your arms and embrace it with love. If you every felt you wanted to do that, you have felt God."

"Delusion will vanish as the light becomes more and more effulgent, load after load of ignorance will vanish, and then will come a time when all else has disappeared and the sun alone shines."

"Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage."

"Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be."

"Do any deserve liberty who are not ready to give it to others? Let us calmly go to work, instead of dissipating our energy in unnecessary fretting and fuming."

"Do not look back upon what has been done. Go ahead!"

"Don't look back—forward, infinite energy, infinite enthusiasm, infinite daring, and infinite patience—then alone can great deeds be accomplished."

"Each work has to pass through these stages—ridicule, opposition, and then acceptance. Those who think ahead of their time are sure to be misunderstood."

"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."

"Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil."

"Every individual is a center for the manifestation of a certain force. This force has been stored up as the resultant of our previous works, and each one of us is born with this force at our back."

"Every step I take in light is mine forever."

"Everything must be sacrificed, if necessary, for that one sentiment: universality."

"Fear is death, fear is sin, fear is hell, fear is unrighteousness, fear is wrong life. All the negative thoughts and ideas that are in the world have proceeded from this evil spirit of fear."

"Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work."

"First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge."

"First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything."

"Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself."

"Go on saying, “I am free.” Never mind if the next moment delusion comes and says, “I am bound.” Dehypnotize the whole thing."

"God is merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come."

"God is self-evident, impersonal, omniscient, the Knower and the Master of nature, the Lord of all. He is behind all worship and it is being done according to Him, whether we know it or not."

"God is very merciful to those whom He sees struggling heart and soul for spiritual realization. But remain idle, without any struggle, and you will see that His grace will never come."

"Great work requires great and persistent effort for a long time. … Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles."

"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?"

"He whom the sages have been seeking in all these places is in our own hearts; the voice that you heard was right, says Vedanta, but the direction you gave to the voice was wrong."

"Hold to the idea, “I am not the mind, I see that I am thinking, I am watching my mind act,” and each day the identification of yourself with thoughts and feelings will grow less, until at last you can entirely separate yourself from the mind and actually know it to be apart from yourself."

"However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite."

"I fervently wish no misery ever came near anyone; yet it is that alone that gives us an insight into the depths of our lives, does it not? In our moments of anguish, gates barred forever seem to open and let in many a flood of light."

"I, for one, thoroughly believe that no power in the universe can withhold from anyone anything he really deserves."

"If a piece of burning charcoal be placed on a man’s head, see how he struggles to throw it off. Similar will be the struggle for freedom of those who really understand that they are slaves of nature."

"If superstition enters, the brain is gone."

"If there is one word that you find coming out like a bomb from the Upanishads, bursting like a bombshell upon masses of ignorance, it is the word “fearlessness.”"

"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."

"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."

"Impurity is a mere superimposition under which your real nature has become hidden. But the real you is already perfect, already strong."

"Is there any sex-distinction in the Atman (Self)? Out with the differentiation between man and woman—all is Atman! Give up the identification with the body, and stand up!"

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

"It is the cheerful mind that is persevering. It is the strong mind that hews its way through a thousand difficulties."

"It is the patient building of character, the intense struggle to realize the truth, which alone will tell in the future of humanity."

"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."

"Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know."

"Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power."

"Learning and wisdom are superfluities, the surface glitter merely, but it is the heart that is the seat of all power. It is not in the brain but in the heart that the Atman, possessed of knowledge, power, and activity, has its seat."

"Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure."

"Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit."

"Look upon every man, woman, and everyone as God. You cannot help anyone, you can only serve: serve the children of the Lord, serve the Lord Himself, if you have the privilege."

"Nature, body, mind go to death, not we. We neither go nor come. The man Vivekananda is in nature, is born and dies; but the Self we see as Vivekananda is never born and never dies. It is the eternal and unchangeable Reality."

"Neither seek nor avoid; take what comes. It is liberty to be affected by nothing. Do not merely endure; be unattached."