101 Best Quotes of Swami Vivekananda

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Here I have made a collection of  101 most effective quotes (sayings) of Swami Vivekananda
1) 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 future can be produced by our present actions; so we have to know how to act.
2) 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.
3) Bear in mind, my children, that only cowards and those who are weak commit sins and tell lies. The brave are always moral. Try to be moral, try to be brave, try to be sympathizing.
4) The earth is enjoyed by heroes—this is the unfailing truth. Be a hero. Always say, “I have no fear."
5) Never think there is anything impossible for the soul. It is the greatest heresy to think so. If there is sin, this is the only sin ? to say that you are weak, or others are weak.
6) A few heart-whole, sincere, and energetic men and women can do more in a year than a mob in a century.
7) This life is a hard fact; work your way through it boldly, though it may be adamantine; no matter, the soul is stronger.
8) The goal of mankind is knowledge. Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside. What we say a man 'knows', should, in strict psychological language, be what he 'discovers' or 'unveils'; what man 'learns' is really what he discovers by taking the cover off his own soul, which is a mine of infinite knowledge.
9) Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.
10) No need of looking behind, FORWARD! We want infinite energy, infinite zeal, infinite courage, and infinite patience, then only will great things be achieved.
11) Go on bravely. Do not expect success in a day or a year. Always hold on the highest. Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness. Always hold on to the highest. Be steady. Avoid jealousy and selfishness. Be obedient and eternally faithful to the cause of truth, humanity, and your country, and you will move the world. Remember it is the person, the life, which is the secret of power, nothing else
12) The great thing is to have faith in oneself, even before faith in God; but the difficulty seems to be that we are loosing faith in ourselves day by day. That is my objection.
13)  It is always for greater joy that you give up the lesser. This is practical religion—the attainment of freedom, renunciation. Renounce the lower so that you may get the higher. Renounce! Renounce! Sacrifice! Give up! Not for zero. Not for nothing, but to get the higher.
14) BY the study of different RELIGIONS we find that in essence they are one.
15) You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.
16) The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.
17) Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.
18) To devote your life to the good of all and to the happiness of all is religion. Whatever you do for your own sake is not religion
19) MY nature is love Him. And therefore I love. I do not pray for any-thing. I do not ask for anything. Let Him place me wherever He likes. I must love Him for love’s sake. I can not trade in love.
20) Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.
21) Religion is the manifestation of the Divinity already in man
22) In one word, this ideal is that you are divine.
23) The Vedanta recognizes no sin it only recognizes error. And the greatest error, says the Vedanta is to say that you are weak, that you are a sinner, a miserable creature, and that you have no power and you cannot do this and that.
24) GOD of truth, be Thou alone my guide…
25) Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth
26) If you think about disaster, you will get it. Brood about death and you hasten your demise. Think positively and masterfully, with confidence and faith, and life becomes more secure, more fraught with action, richer in achievement and experience.
27) “Comfort” is no test of truth; on the contrary, truth is often far from being “comfortable.”
28) “Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly. Like the monkeys, the hardships of life fall back when we cease to flee before them.
29) All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.
30) All that is real in me is God; all that is real in God is I. The gulf between God and me is thus bridged. Thus by knowing God, we find that the kingdom of heaven is within us.
31) All who have actually attained any real religious experience never wrangle over the form in which the different religions are expressed. They know that the soul of all religions is the same and so they have no quarrel with anybody just because he or she does not speak in the same tongue.
32) 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 temple.
33) Be perfectly resigned, perfectly unconcerned; then alone can you do any true work. No eyes can see the real forces; we can only see the results. Put out self, forget it; just let God work, it is His business.
34) GOD is to be worshiped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.
35) Condemn none: if you can stretch out a helping hand, do so. If you cannot, fold your hands, bless your brothers, and let them go their own way.
36) The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being and see God in him - that moment I am free from bondage, everything that binds vanishes, and I am free.
37) Do not hate anybody, because that hatred which comes out from you must, in the long run, come back to you. If you love, that love will come back to you, completing the circle.
38) Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.
39) First get rid of the delusion “I am the body,” then only will we want real knowledge.
40) 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.
41) Have faith in Guru, in his teachings, and in the surety that you can get free. Think day and night that this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.
42) Let each one of us pray day and night for the downtrodden millions, who are held fast by poverty, priestcraft, and tyranny. Pray day and night for them. I care more to preach religion to them than to the high and the rich. I am no metaphysician, no philosopher, nay, no saint. But I am poor and I love the poor.
43) Let us not depend upon the world for pleasure.
44) Let us worship the spirit in spirit, standing on spirit. Let the foundation be spirit, the middle spirit, the culmination spirit.
45) 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.
46) Arise! Awake! And stop not till the goal is reached!
47) Bold words and bolder deeds are what we want. Awake, awake, great ones! The world is burning with misery. Can you sleep? Let us call and call till the sleeping God awake, till the God within answer the call. What more is in life? What greater work?
48) First, believe in the world—that there is meaning behind everything.
49) Tell the truth boldly, whether it hurts or not. Never pander to weakness. If truth is too much for intelligent people and sweeps them away, let them go; the sooner the better.
50) Why are people so afraid? The answer is that they have made themselves helpless and dependent on others. We are so lazy, we do not want to do anything ourselves. We want a Personal God, a Savior or a Prophet to do everything for us.
51) There is one thing to be remembered: that the assertion—I am God—cannot be made with regard to the sense-world.
52) Every action that helps us manifest our divine nature more and more is good; every action that retards it is evil.
53) Are great things ever done smoothly? Time, patience, and indomitable will must show.
54) Love is always mutual and reflective. You may hate me, and if I want to love you, you repulse me. But if I persist, in a month or a year you are bound to love me. It is a well-known psychological phenomenon.
55) May I be born again and again, and suffer thousands of miseries so that I may worship the only God that exists, the only God I believe in, the sum total of all souls--and, above all, my God the wicked, my God the miserable, my God the poor of all races, of all species, is the special object of my worship.
56) Look here—we shall die! Bear this in mind always, and then the spirit within will wake up. Then meanness will vanish from you, practicality in work will come, you will get new vigor in mind and body, and those who come in contact with you will also feel that they have really got something uplifting from you.
57) My child, what I want is muscles of iron and nerves of steel, inside which dwells a mind of the same material as that of which the thunderbolt is made.
58) 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!
59) Pray all the time, read all the scriptures in the world, and worship all the gods there are ...but unless you realize the Truth, there is no freedom.
60) 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?
61) Renunciation is the very basis of our true life. Every moment of goodness and real life that we enjoy is when we do not think of ourselves.
62) Self-realization is to be attained by renunciation, by meditation—renunciation of all the senses, cutting the knots, the chains that bind us down to matter.
63) If superstition enters, the brain is gone.
64) Say "So'ham, So'ham" whatever comes. Tell yourself this even in eating, walking, suffering. Tell the mind this incessantly—that what we see never existed, that there is only "I". Flash--the dream will break! Think day and night, this universe is zero, only God is. Have intense desire to get free.
65) 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.
66) 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.
67) Despondency is not religion, whatever else it may be.
68) 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?
69) Change is always subjective. To talk of evil and misery is nonsense, because they do not exist outside. If I am immune from all anger, I never feel angry. If am immune from all hatred, I never feel hatred.
70) Do you think these sannyasi children of Sri Ramakrishna are born to simply to sit under trees lighting dhuni-fires? Whenever any of them will take up some work, people will be astonished to see their energy. Learn from them how to work.
71) Desire, want, is the father of all misery. Desires are bound by the laws of success and failure. Desires must bring misery. The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the person who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.
72) Desire, ignorance, and inequality—this is the trinity of bondage.
73) Be strong! Don’t talk of ghosts and devils. We are the living devils. The sign of life is strength and growth. The sign of death is weakness. Whatever is weak, avoid! It is death. If it is strength, go down into hell and get hold of it! There is salvation only for the brave.
74) However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Soul is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.
75) A tremendous stream is flowing toward the ocean, carrying us all along with it; and though like straws and scraps of paper we may at times float aimlessly about, in the long run we are sure to join the Ocean of Life and Bliss.
76) The less passion there is, the better we work. The calmer we are the better for us and the more the amount of work we can do. When we let loose our feelings, we waste so much energy, shatter our nerves, disturb our minds, and accomplish very little work.
77) Religion has no business to formulate social laws and insist on the difference between beings, because its aim and end is to obliterate all such fictions and monstrosities.
78) Put God behind everything—people, animals, food, work. Make this a habit.
79) Learn to feel yourself in other bodies, to know that we are all one. Throw all other nonsense to the winds. Spit out your actions, good or bad, and never think of them again. What is done is done. Throw off superstition. Have no weakness even in the face of death. Do not repent, do not brood over past deeds. Be âzâd ("free")
80) Stick to God! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else! Through the terrors of evil, say--my God, my love! Through the pangs of death, say--my God, my love! Through all the evils under the sun, say--my God, my love! Thou art here, I see Thee. Thou art with me, I feel Thee. I am Thine, take me. I am not of the world’s but Thine, leave not then me.
81) Stick to God! Who cares what comes to the body or to anything else! Through the terrors of evil, say—my God, my love! Through the pangs of death, say—my God, my love! Through all the evils under the sun, say my God, my love!
82) TO worship God even for the sake of salvation or any other reward is equally degenerate. Love knows no reward. Give your love unto to God, but do not ask anything in return even from Him through pray.
83) All the powers in the universe are already ours. It is we who have put our hands before our eyes and cry that it is dark.
84) The less the thought of the body, the better it is for us. For it is the body that drags us down. It is attachment, identification, which makes us miserable.
85) The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. He is there. He is the soul of our souls. See Him in your own soul. That is practical religion. That is freedom
86) The moment you fear, you are nobody. It is fear that is the great cause of misery in the world. It is fear that is the greatest of all superstitions. It is the fear that is the cause of our woes, and it is fearlessness that brings heaven in a moment.
87) The weak, the fearful, the ignorant will never reach the Atman. You cannot undo what you have done; the effect must come. Face it, but be careful never to do the same thing again. Give up the burden of all deeds to God. Give all, both good and bad. God helps those who do not help themselves.
88) The nature of the brutes is to remain where they are, of human beings to seek good and avoid evil, and of God to neither seek nor avoid but just to be blissful eternally. Let us be like God.
89) The whole universe is one. There is only one Self in the universe, only One Existence.
90) There is hope for all. None can die; none can be degraded forever. Life is but a playground, however gross the play may be. However we may receive blows, and however knocked about we may be, the Atman is there and is never injured. We are that Infinite.
91) Our duty is to encourage every one in his struggle to live up to his own highest idea, and strive at the same time to make the ideal as near as possible to the Truth.
92) The essential thing in religion is making the heart pure; the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, but only the pure in heart can see the King. While we think of the world, it is only the world for us; but let us come to it with the feeling that the world is God, and we shall have God.
93) 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.
94) There is no help for you outside of yourself; you are the creator of the universe. Like the silkworm you have built a cocoon around yourself…. Burst your own cocoon and come out aw the beautiful butterfly, as the free soul. Then alone you will see Truth.
95) To succeed you must have tremendous perseverance, tremendous will. “I will drink the ocean,” says the persevering soul, “at my will mountains will crumble.” Have that sort of energy, that sort of will, work hard, and you will reach the goal.
96) This world is nothing. It is at best only a hideous caricature, a shadow of the Reality. We must go to the Reality. Renunciation will take us to It.
97) “I do not want to get material life. I do not want sense-life but something higher.” That is renunciation. Then, by the power of meditation, undo the mischief that has been done.
98) It is our own mental attitude which makes the world what it is for us. Our thought make things beautiful, our thoughts make things ugly. The whole world is in our own minds. Learn to see things in the proper light. First, believe in this world, that there is meaning behind everything. Everything in the world is good, is holy and beautiful. If you see something evil, think that you do not understand it in the right light. Throw the burden on yourselves!
99) The important thing is: how much less you think of the body, of yourself as matter—as dead, dull, insentient matter; how much more you think of yourself as shining immortal being.
100) 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.
101) Bless people when they revile you. Think how much good they are doing by helping to stamp out the false ego. Hold fast to the real Self. Think only pure thoughts, and you will accomplish more than a regiment of mere preachers. Out of purity and silence comes the word of power.

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Acknowledgement: 1) Wikiquote 2) Vivekananda Vedanta Network