Quotes of Swami Vivekananda

Quotes of Swami Vivekananda

Swami Vivekananda’s actual 150th birth anniversary year is January 2013-January 2014. The event will no doubt be celebrated by many organizations and lakhs of people all over India and in many other parts of the world. The Government of India itself may make it a national celebration.

1. “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”

2. “They alone live who live for others, the rest are more dead than alive.”

3. “Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached.”

4. “To be good and to do good - that is the whole of religion.”

5. “Strength is life, Weakness is death.”

6. “All the power is within you; you can do anything and everything.Believe in that; don’t believe that you are weak.Stand up and express the divinity within you.”

7. “What ever you think, that you will be. If you think yourself weak,weak you will be; if you think yourself strong; strong you will be.”

8. “Stand and die in your own strength; if there is any sin in the world,it is  weakness; avoid all weakness,for weakness is sin, weakness is death.”

9. “Neither money pays, nor name pays,nor fame, nor learning; it is CHARACTER that cleave through adamantine walls of difference.”

10. “He is anatheist who does not believe in himself. The old religion said that he was an atheist who does not believe in God. The new religion says that he is an atheist who does not believe in himself.”

11.“The greatest sin is to think yourself weak.”

12. “Help if you can; if you cannot, fold your hands and stand by and see things go on.Do not injure, if you cannot render help.”

13. Three things are necessary to make every man great, every nation great:
1. Conviction of the powers of goodness,
2. Absence of jealousy and suspicion,
3. Helping all who are trying to be and do good.

14. “Are you unselfish? That is the question. If you are,you will be perfect without reading a single religious book, without going into a single church or a temple.”

15.“Misery comes through attachment,not through work. As soon as we identify ourselves with work we do, we feel miserable; but if we don’t identify ourselves with it,we do not feel that misery.”

16. “Nature wants us to react, to return blow for blow, cheating for cheating, lie for lie, to hit back with all our might, then it requires a super divine power not to hit back, to keep control, to be unattached.”

17. “Always first learn to be a servant, and then you will be fit to be a master.Avoid jealousy, and you will do great works that are yet to be done.”

18. “You must have an iron will if you would cross the ocean. You must be strong enough to pierce the mountains.”

19. “Take up one idea, make that one idea your life,think of it,dream of it,live of it,let the brain, muscle, nerves, every part of your body be full of that idea and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way great spiritual giants are produced, others are mere talking machines.”

20. “Your country requires heroes; be heroes; your duty is to go on working,and then everything will follow of itself.”

21. “Go on; remember - patience and purity and courage and steady work. . . . So long as you are pure, and true to your principles, you will never fail”

22. “All great undertakings are achieved through mighty obstacles. Keep up the deepest mental poise. Take not even the slightest notice of what puerile creatures may be saying against you.”

23. “If it is impossible to attain perfection here and now, there is no proof that we can attain perfection in any other life.”

24. “Things do not grow better. They  remain as they are; and we grow better by the changes we make in them”.

25. “Be good, and evil will vanish for you. The whole universe will thus be changed. This is the greatest gain to society. This is the great gain to the human organism.”

26. “Sincerity of conviction & purity of motive will surely gain the day; and even a small minority, armed with these, is surely destined to prevail against all odds.”

27. The essence of true success is what you make of yourself. It is the conduct of life that you develop, it is the character that you cultivate and it is the type of person you become.  This is the central meaning of successful living.

28. “Your success is not measured in terms of what all you obtained but in term of what you become, how you live and what actions you do.  Upon this point reflect well and attain great happiness.”

29. Live for an ideal, and that one ideal alone. Let it be so great, so strong, that there may be nothing else left in the mind; no place for anything else, no time for anything else.

30. “Take care! Beware of everything that is untrue; stick to truth and we shall succeed, maybe slowly, but surely.”