Table of Contents
These quotes from Swami Vivekananda encompass his profound teachings on self-realization, spirituality, service, education, and the inherent divinity within every human being. His words continue to inspire millions around the world to strive for excellence and serve humanity with love and compassion.
- Self-Realization and Inner Strength – Quotes about believing in yourself and recognizing your inner power
- Knowledge and Education – His views on learning, thinking, and intellectual development
- Service and Compassion – Teachings on serving others and seeing divinity in all beings
- Courage and Fearlessness – Inspirational words about facing challenges boldly
- Spirituality and God – His spiritual insights and understanding of the divine
- Success and Achievement – Guidance on accomplishing goals and making progress
- Character and Morality – Building strong character and ethical behavior
- Truth and Reality – Understanding the nature of existence and truth
- Perseverance and Determination – Motivation to keep going despite obstacles
These quotes capture the essence of Swami Vivekananda’s philosophy, emphasizing the inherent divinity within every person, the importance of self-confidence, service to humanity, and the pursuit of truth through direct experience. His teachings remain profoundly relevant for personal growth, spiritual development, and creating positive change in the world.
Self-Realization and Inner Strength
- “Arise! Awake! and stop not until the goal is reached.”
- “You cannot believe in God until you believe in yourself.”
- “The greatest religion is to be true to your own nature. Have faith in yourselves.”
- “All power is within you; you can do anything and everything.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “If you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.”
- “Strength is life, weakness is death.”
- “Never think there is anything impossible for the soul.”
- “You are the creator of your own destiny.”
Knowledge and Education
- “Education is the manifestation of perfection already in man.”
- “Books are infinite in number and time is short. The secret of knowledge is to take what is essential. Take that and try to live up to it.”
- “Learn everything that is good from others but bring it in, and in your own way absorb it; do not become others.”
- “The only true teacher is he who can immediately come down to the level of the student, and transfer his soul to the student’s soul and see through the student’s eyes and hear through his ears and understand through his mind.”
- “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life – think of it, dream of it, live on that idea.”
- “Truth can be stated in a thousand different ways, yet each one can be true.”
- “We are what our thoughts have made us; so take care about what you think.”
- “The brain and muscles must develop simultaneously. Iron nerves with an intelligent brain — and the whole world is at your feet.”
- “Knowledge can only be got in one way, the way of experience; there is no other way to know.”
- “Fill the brain with high thoughts, highest ideals, place them day and night before you, and out of that will come great work.”
Service and Compassion
- “They alone live who live for others; the rest are more dead than alive.”
- “Serve man as God. That is really the highest worship.”
- “He who sees Shiva in the poor, in the weak, and in the diseased, really worships Shiva.”
- “If you want to find God, serve man.”
- “Do not stand on a high pedestal and take 5 cents in your hand and say, ‘here, my poor man’, but be grateful that the poor man is there, so that by making a gift to him you are able to help yourself.”
- “The moment I have realized God sitting in the temple of every human body, the moment I stand in reverence before every human being.”
- “Feel like Christ and you will be a Christ; feel like Buddha and you will be a Buddha.”
- “The world is the great gymnasium where we come to make ourselves strong.”
- “In a conflict between the heart and the brain, follow your heart.”
- “Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being.”
Courage and Fearlessness
- “Face the brutes.” That is a lesson for all life—face the terrible, face it boldly.
- “Never say ‘No’, never say ‘I cannot’, for you are infinite.”
- “Be not afraid of anything. You will do marvelous work.”
- “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.”
- “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.”
- “Never mind failures; they are quite natural, they are the beauty of life, these failures.”
- “Dare to be free, dare to go as far as your thought leads, and dare to carry that out in your life.”
- “If money help a man to do good to others, it is of some value; but if not, it is simply a mass of evil, and the sooner it is got rid of, the better.”
- “The world is ready to give up its secrets if we only know how to knock, how to give it the necessary blow.”
- “External nature is only internal nature writ large.”
Spirituality and God
- “God is to be worshipped as the one beloved, dearer than everything in this and next life.”
- “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.”
- “Religion is realization; not talk, nor doctrine, nor theories however beautiful they may be.”
- “Each soul is potentially divine.”
- “God is merciful to those who want to get out of His clutches.”
- “The nearer we are to God, the less we will have occasions to cry or weep.”
- “Ask nothing; want nothing in return. Give what you have to give; it will come back to you, but do not think of that now.”
- “Purity, patience, and perseverance are the three essentials to success and, above all, love.”
- “Where can we go to find God if we cannot see Him in our own hearts and in every living being?”
- “The greatest sin is to think yourself weak.”
Success and Achievement
- “Take risks in your life. If you win, you can lead! If you lose, you can guide!”
- “In a day, when you don’t come across any problems – you can be sure that you are travelling in a wrong path.”
- “Talk to yourself once in a day, otherwise you may miss meeting an excellent person in this world.”
- “The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.”
- “We are responsible for what we are, and whatever we wish ourselves to be, we have the power to make ourselves.”
- “Do one thing at a time, and while doing it put your whole soul into it to the exclusion of all else.”
- “When an idea exclusively occupies the mind, it is transformed into an actual physical or mental state.”
- “The best thermometer to the progress of a nation is its treatment of its women.”
- “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.”
- “The powers of the mind are like the rays of the sun dissipated; when they are concentrated, they illumine.”
Character and Morality
- “Character has to be established through a thousand stumbles.”
- “The ideal of all education, all training, should be this man-making.”
- “So long as the millions live in hunger and ignorance, I hold every person a traitor who, having been educated at their expense, pays not the least heed to them.”
- “If faith in ourselves had been more extensively taught and practiced, I am sure a very large portion of the evils and miseries that we have would have vanished.”
- “The cheerful mind perseveres, and the strong mind hews its way through a thousand difficulties.”
- “All differences in this world are of degree, and not of kind, because oneness is the secret of everything.”
- “The moment you think you are a body, you are nobody.”
- “Every work has got to pass through hundreds of difficulties before succeeding.”
- “If you have faith in all the three hundred and thirty millions of your mythological Gods, and in all the Gods which foreigners have now and again introduced into your midst, and still have no faith in yourselves, there is no salvation for you.”
- “Have faith in yourselves, great convictions are the mothers of great deeds.”
Truth and Reality
- “Truth does not pay homage to any society, ancient or modern. Society has to pay homage to Truth or die.”
- “All knowledge that the world has ever received comes from the mind; the infinite library of the universe is in our own mind.”
- “The whole secret of existence is to have no fear. Never fear what will become of you, depend on no one. Only the moment you reject all help are you freed.”
- “Whatever you think, that you will be. If you think yourselves weak, weak you will be; if you think yourselves strong, strong you will be.”
- “The greatest sin is to think that you are weak.”
- “As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God.”
- “When we know ourselves to be connected to all others, acting compassionately is simply the natural thing to do.”
- “The goal of mankind is knowledge… Now this knowledge is inherent in man. No knowledge comes from outside: it is all inside.”
- “The only way to come out of bondage is to go beyond the limitations of law, to go beyond causation.”
- “Anything that makes weak – physically, intellectually and spiritually, reject it as poison.”
Perseverance and Determination
- “Arise, awake, and stop not until the goal is reached.”
- “You have to grow from the inside out. None can teach you, none can make you spiritual. There is no other teacher but your own soul.”
- “The great secret of true success, of true happiness, is this: the man or woman who asks for no return, the perfectly unselfish person, is the most successful.”
- “Every new baby is a blind desperate vote for survival: people who find themselves unable to register an effective political protest against extermination do so by a biological act.”
- “Change is always happening. That’s one of the wonderful things about Jazz music.”
- “He is an atheist who does not believe in himself.”
- “Neither seek nor avoid, take what comes.”
- “The history of the world is the history of a few men who had faith in themselves.”
- “Do not believe in a thing because you have read about it in a book. Do not believe in a thing because another man has said it was true. Find out the truth for yourself.”
- “My ideal indeed can be put into a few words and that is: to preach unto mankind their divinity, and how to make it manifest in every movement of life.”
Final Inspirational Quotes
- “The moment you fear, you are nobody.”
- “Be a hero. Always say, ‘I have no fear.'”
- “If superstition enters, the brain is gone.”
- “All love is expansion, all selfishness is contraction.”
- “Work, but let not the action or the thought produce a deep impression on the mind.”
- “The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.”
- “That man has reached immortality who is disturbed by nothing material.”
- “Meditation can turn fools into sages but unfortunately fools never meditate.”
- “The power of concentration is the only key to the treasure-house of knowledge.”
- “Be yourself. The moment you go beyond yourself, you are nobody.”
