Swami Vivekananda – Top Inspirational Quotes

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Swami Vivekananda was one of modern India’s great philosophers who worked relentlessly for national regeneration. Born on 12th January 1863, he played a pioneering role in presenting the ancient yet relevant Hindu world view to the west and spoke of universal religion as an ideal. He passed away at a young age on the 4th July 1902. His birth anniversary or jayanti is celebrated as National Youth Day in India. We have curated some of our favourite inspirational quotes from the vast body of speeches, writings and interviews that he left behind.

Swami Vivekananda On the Goal of all Religions

Each soul is potentially divine.

The goal is to manifest this divinity within, 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 On the Survival of all Religions

If anybody dreams of the exclusive survival of his own religion and the destruction of the others, I pity him from the bottom of my heart, and point out to him that upon the banner of every religion will soon be written, in spite of resistance: “Help and not Fight,” “Assimilation and not Destruction,” “Harmony and Peace and not Dissension.”

Swami Vivekananda On Karma Yoga

Karma-Yoga, therefore, is a system of ethics and religion intended to attain freedom through unselfishness, and by good works. The Karma Yogi need not believe in any doctrine whatever. He may not believe even in God, may not ask what his soul is, nor think of any metaphysical speculation. He has got his own special aim of realising selflessness; and he has to work it out himself. Every moment of his life must be realisation because he has to solve by mere work, without the help of doctrine or theory, the very same problem to which the Jnâni applies his reason and inspiration and the Bhakta his love.

Swami Vivekananda On India and the West

Have we not then to learn anything from the West? Must we not need, try and exert ourselves for better things? Are we perfect? Is our society entirely spotless, without any flaw? There are many things to learn, we must struggle for new and higher things till we die; struggle is the end of human life.

Yes, learn we must many things from the West but there are fears as well.

O India, this is your terrible danger. The spell of imitating the West is getting such a strong hold upon you that what is good or what is bad is no longer decided by reason, judgement, discrimination, or reference to the Shâstras. Whatever ideas, whatever manners the white men praise or like, are good; whatever things they dislike or censure, are bad! Alas! What can be a more tangible proof of foolishness than this?

Swami Vivekananda On the Belief in India’s Glorious Future

Each one of you has a glorious future if you dare believe me. Have a tremendous faith in yourselves, like the faith I had when I was a child, and which I am working out now. Have that faith, each one of you, in yourself that eternal power is lodged in every soul and you will revive the whole of India. Ay, we will then go to every country under the sun, and our ideas will before long be a component of the many forces that are working to make up every nation in the world. We must enter into the life of every race in India and abroad; we shall have to work to bring this about.

Swami Vivekananda On Realisation in Religion

Religion is realising, and I will call you a worshipper of God, when you have become able to realise the Idea. Before that it is the spelling of the word, and no more. It is this power of realisation that makes religion. No amount of doctrines or philosophies or ethical books that you may have stuffed into your brain will matter much, only what you are, and what you have realised. So, we have to realise religion, and this realisation of religion is a long process.

Swami Vivekananda On Realising the Atman and God

Let us say in the language of the Vedanta. “This Atman is not to be reached by too much talk, no, not even by the highest intellect, no, not even by the study of the Vedas. themselves.”

Let us speak to all the nations of the world in the language of the Vedas: — Vain are your fights and your quarrels; have you seen God whom you want to preach? If you have not seen, vain is your preaching; you do not know what you say, and if you have seen God, you will not quarrel, your very face will shine.

Swami Vivekananda On Universal Religion

What then do I mean by the ideal of a universal religion? I do not mean any one universal philosophy, or any one universal mythology, or any one universal ritual held alike by all; for I know that this world must go on working, wheel within wheel, this intricate mass of machinery, most complex, most wonderful. What can we do then? We can make it run smoothly, we can lessen the friction, we can grease the wheels, as it were. How? By recognising the natural necessity of variation. Just as we have recognised unity by our very nature, so we must also recognise variation. We must learn that truth may be expressed in a hundred thousand ways, and that each of these ways is true as far as it goes. We must learn that the same thing can be viewed from a hundred different standpoints, and yet be the same thing.

Swami Vivekananda On the Progress of the Soul

To the Hindu, man is not travelling 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 realise 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 On Maya

As we increase our power to be happy, we also increase our power to suffer, and sometimes I am inclined to think that if we increase our power to become happy in arithmetical progression, we shall increase, on the other hand, our power to become miserable in geometrical progression. We who are progressing know that the more we progress, the more avenues are opened to pain as well as to pleasure. And this is Maya.

Read Swami Vivekananda’s First Address at the Parliament of Religions

For the complete works of Swami Vivekananda – please refer to https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/complete_works.htm